Most of the time I really don’t have much use for trying to defend vaccines, or why masks are important. And therein lies our cross to bear. The truth is the majority of people, even the fairly well educated ones, are never going to be experts in most, if any, scientific fields.I’ve read the occasional books, journals, articles, none of which ever turned me into a scientist. So then what… are we destined to blow a lot of hot air without ever really knowing what we’re talking about? I mean, it’s practically written in our DNA: “Go forth and talk out of your ass because there is ZERO chance you will EVER understand where you came from and where you’re going.” I mean, only the entire meaning of life, that’s all.
And yet we all get over that existentialist kick in the ass fairly quickly. Well, maybe not that quickly. We spend our first four years on earth (give or take), crying, whining, and throwing tantrums like we are being tortured within inches of our lives by our own DNA. Perhaps in some incomprehensible way, we are.
But once we figure out how to break the cycle of being stuck in the first Four Stages of Grief (Kübler-Ross Model) during our initiation on earth, our hazing if you will, we eventually find the labyrinth’s exit to that fifth and final stage: Acceptance. The wisest of religious folks even came up with a prayer (The Serenity Prayer for those of us who were raised Catholic) to sooth and remind us of that rite of passage: “God give me the strength to change the things I can, the patience to accept the things I can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I always thought it peculiar that we have to ask a mystical being for that, when we essentially have zero choice in the matter. We might as well pray for oxygen.
Fine. We are more practically “born” into this life the day we discover Acceptance. The Shangri-la of our brief journey through this thing we call life. Just in time to be deemed self-manageable enough to be shipped out of the house for the first time. Away from the mothership, to something us Westerners call Kindergarten. Of course some moms or parents may scoff here, reminding me of the ground zero of kindergarten: Day Care. But not a lot of self-manageable skills there, let’s agree on that.
So back to our quest to understand science, or undermine it in the case of those who never quite found their way out of the first four stages of grief (especially Anger). Maybe our part is to at least try to understand the basics of science, in order not to stand in the way of ourselves. Besides, it’s true enough: there are a few “mad” scientists out there. There’s nothing wrong with being on guard.
Upon reading about a certain subject, enough to poke thru the surface, I often proceed to entertain the devil’s advocate for a bit. After all, even science teaches us that to prove something you should also explore how the opposite is or isn’t true.
So far so good. But all good intentions, if milked for too long, lead to a rabbit hole. In the realm of undermining science, that hole is known as mental masturbation. AKA conspiracy theory.
Which is probably how Occam’s Razor came to be, if I were to take a wild guess. “All else being equal the simpler explanation is the better one.” Seems fair enough, except I’m pretty sure old Occam’s razor cuts both ways. Oversimplification and overcomplication, opposite sharpenings of the same blade, will invariably and soon enough make the knife disappear.
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I was perusing recently through humanity’s new Encyclopedia Brittanica, AKA Google, about the science of masks. To understand better how they work, and sure, how they don’t. So Dr. Google refers me over to the YouTube department, for some dynamic visuals on the subject. As I scroll down the list of lessons on the subject, I notice something a little disturbing: the first two or three video posts are created to positively explain the science behind masks, fair enough. But the subsequent eight or so try to lure you into that rabbit hole of semi-science, pseudo-science, and just downright anti-science. Good grief. Really, YouTube? But more importantly, why. Or should I ask in the new lingo of abbreviations: WTF?
Et tu, Brute? You might as well change your name to YouHub, because you KNOW what the pre-fifth stagers are doing in there. Oh yeah, you perverter of science: they are masturbating their minds like their mental penis will never fall off. And I use the word “penis” in its non-binary form here.
But every dark cloud does eventually collapse down to the earth’s surface, every dark tunnel does invariably have a light at the opposite end. It was at that precise bewilderment that I experienced an epiphany. Those poor souls that dive into the rabbit hole of skepticism without ever resurfacing from it, instead digging deeper down to the second, third and fourth circles of pseudo and anti-science hell, never set out to understand anything in the first place. They set out to kill. They kill what they fear, they fear what they don’t understand. That’s what happens when the unfortunate ones never find their way out of the first four stages of Kübler-Ross. It’s a deafening, maddening pinballing between anger and depression. A nightmare where dark clouds never collapse, where dark tunnels have no light at the other end.
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At the end of one of the first realistic disaster films (Earthquake, 1974), Charlton Heston’s gritty semi-hero character has to make an existentialist Sophie’s Choice: survive in the ever-after aftermath of the planet’s worst mega-earthquake ever, along with his young, hot and fleshy lover, or jump into a savage torrent of flooding to rescue his nagging old wife, with the obvious understanding that it would be a certain and fairly instant death. I think you know which one our semi-hero chose.
Apparently that’s what’s required of us: never leave a fellow human behind. Maybe there’s a sixth stage of life, beyond acceptance. A stage where we no longer merely survive. A stage where we thrive. Rather than ridicule, or worse, condemn our fellow humans stuck in the fourth circle of Kübler-Ross hell, maybe we need to jump in the foxhole with them sometimes. Stretch our arm as deep we can down that rabbit hole, in hope that we can pull them up. No need to self-sacrifice in the process, unless it’s that important to you. But the alternative, perpetual disdain and contempt for them, is only going to turn you into the monster you are fighting.
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“I believe humanity will not merely endure: it will prevail.”
- William Faulkner on his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
