Good morning.
Those who
are my Facebook friends saw this post of mine:
Having just lost an adult child to
illness rather than gun violence, I think I can only barely comprehend the
agony and grief that the parents of the victims at Parkland are feeling (as
well as the parents of the children who have died in earlier school shootings).
Their children died because some kid could get a gun. I know profound sorrow; I'll
never be the same after Krystin's death. I am sure these parents (and friends)
feel the same way, but their pain is multiplied enormously because it is
combined with an anger I didn't have to deal with, anger at a political system
that will not take the obvious steps necessary to halt these murders.
The only
place *I* can direct anger is to Krystin herself, for not taking care of her
medical needs for a dozen years. I could
try to be mad at the medical establishment for not developing a cure for
diabetes sooner, but that anger is directed to George W. Bush, who held up much
stem cell research for eight years (and there wouldn't be a cure even now, I'm
pretty sure). I really don't have much
anger at all, just grief.
I hope
those kids in Florida are able to start an effective national campaign against
politicians who refuse to vote for gun control laws. If they set up some kind of non-profit
organization, I'm going to contribute.
I wonder if
Mr. LaPierre of the National Rifle Association has any idea how history will
treat him. There is a strong case to be
made that he is an accomplice to mass murder, and that is how I suspect he will
be judged. Even though I don't believe
anyone ever really stands before a gate facing St. Peter, it's still satisfying
to imagine the scene, when Mr. LaPierre tries to defend himself of charges that
he aided and abetted the killing of hundreds of school children (and thousands
of other people). St. Peter will be
unimpressed with the arguments about the sanctity of the Second Amendment. There should be a special circle of hell in
Dante's Inferno for Mr. LaPierre and
his associates.
* * *
There is a fascinating study by the
Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, the "Harvard
Study of Adult Development." It
joins together the thoughts about long-term friendships and cortisol levels.
Composed of two different studies, both have looked at men (only,
unfortunately) for 75 years; they "tracked the physical and emotional
well-being of two populations: 456 poor
men growing up in Boston from 1939 to 2014 and 268 male graduates from Harvard's
classes of 1939-1944. Needless to say,
these studies have required different research teams over the decades.
The primary
finding? "According to Robert
Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one thing
surpasses all the rest in terms of importance:
'The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this: Good
relationships keep us happier and healthier.
Period.'" Not your jobs,
house, car, power, money. "No, the
biggest predictor of your happiness and fulfillment overall in life is,
basically, love." More
specifically, "the study demonstrates that having someone to rely on helps
your nervous system relax, helps your brain stay healthier for longer, and
reduces both emotional as well as physical pain."
And,
unsurprisingly, the converse is true as well:
"those who feel lonely are more likely to see their physical health
decline earlier and die younger."
Waldinger
also emphasizes that it's quality, not quantity, both in emotional
relationships as well as friendships.
Having 300 Facebook friends means nothing unless you are close
personally to at least a few of them, unless you can share information with
them, unless you can relax with them and be yourself.
Given what
is known about women and close relationships—they're better at them and have
more of them—I would bet that these findings would be equally true for
women. Women, one might suggest, have
understood these findings for ages and didn't need a Harvard study to tell them
what they already knew.
* * *
I have revised my view about voters
who supported Trump. One reason for
doing so was the astonishing statistics about the "mortality crisis"
among middle-aged whites who are lower-income and blue-collar workers. ["Mortality Crisis Redux: The Economics
of Despair"]. One aspect of the
data that is surprising is that the same phenomenon has not been observed with
similarly-situated Blacks and Hispanics.
Epidemiologists
are not used to considering 'despair' as a leading cause of death. Yet, just as 'stress' transitioned with
better diagnostics from colloquial psychological annoyance to full fledged
physiological affliction, economic 'despair' may be poised to make a similar
transition.
The change in perspective is due
primarily to a 2015 report by economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton. They updated their report in 2016: "Deaths by Despair." What they concluded about the increased
mortality in their 2015 report was that "the proximate causes of death
driving this increase [were] suicide, drug and alcohol poisoning, and chronic
liver diseases and cirrhosis." The
2016 update looked more carefully at what had happened. What they found later was that the uptick "can
be traced to a 'cumulative disadvantage over life', where declining labor
market opportunities have led to declining outcomes not just in the labor
market but also in health, marriage, and child rearing. In other words, the stress accompanying the
shock of downward mobility is likely driving this health crisis."
In
addition to dying at a higher rate than the rest of us, and than around the
rest of the industrialized world, the people in that situation also voted in
overwhelming numbers for a dramatic change in American politics. It is hard to blame them. We can review all the factors that played
into Trump's victory/Clinton's loss, including Russian meddling and FBI
Director Comey and other things, and we can argue long that a Clinton victory
would have helped these people much more than Trump's, but the fact is the
status quo wasn't working for them and they voted for a reset.
What's
happening to this subset of the American population is similar to what happened
to the same group of people in the Soviet Union and its puppet states after the
collapse in 1989.
In
the early 1990s, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, life
expectancy in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe fell dramatically. In
Russia alone, it was estimated that between 1989 and 1995 there were 1.3 to 1.7
million premature deaths as life expectancy fell from 70 in 1989 to 64 in 1995.
. . . [It was] suicides and drug and
alcohol abuse, leading to an increase in cardiovascular and liver diseases. . .
. It was not direct deprivation, nor
collapse of the health system that were driving these deaths. Rather they could be traced to the
psychological stress likely brought on by the shock of the severe economic
transition.
"We
ignore the social and political impacts of economic hopelessness among working
class Americans at our own peril."
Not only because any sense of humanity demands that the country take
steps to remediate their predicament, but also because such circumstances
predictably lead to an increase in xenophobia and support for far-right
political parties.
The
second reason I changed my mind is because the Trump voters, surely in at least
some cases, recognized that they were probably voting against their own best
(economic) interests. Those on the
progressive side of the spectrum often bemoan the fact that lower-income voters
seem to support political positions that will do them harm.
At
the same time, progressive/liberal voters (at least among those I know)
consistently vote against THEIR own economic interests (because, for example,
they favor higher taxes on themselves).
They do so because they believe such policies are in the best interests
of the country.
It
finally occurred to me that lower-income, sometimes less well educated, voters
do the same thing. They don't think gay
marriage is a good idea for the country, they are not thrilled about the
advances that women and people of color are making (however modest those
advances are in reality), they are fervent nationalists, and so on, and vote as
they do because they think it best for the country. There have been plenty of articles in the
media reporting that Trump voters were still supportive of him even though they
realized his policies might hurt them personally.
* * *
A friend wrote back apropos both of
Epicurus & death as well as of complimenting people. Eliot puts the two together.
Silence
before being born, silence after death: life
is nothing but noise between two unfathomable silences. (Isabel Allende)
I
like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough
beyond the grave. This is the world of
light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear. (George Eliot)
* * *
This is an amazing picture. A single strontium atom. "Using long exposure, PhD candidate
David Nadlinger took a photo of a glowing atom in an intricate web of
laboratory machinery. In it, the single
strontium atom is illuminated by a laser while suspended in the air by two
electrodes. For a sense of scale, those
two electrodes on each side of the tiny dot are only two millimeters apart." My guess, however, is that we're seeing the
glow, much larger than the atom itself by many orders of magnitude.
* * *
Elliott
came over for dinner on a recent Sunday.
When I was taking him back home—he doesn't have a car—I asked him if he
ever thought about Krystin. He said he
did, usually when he comes across something on the web that he would have sent
to her. I told him I hoped he continued
to remember her for the rest of his life, and reiterated my thought that he'd
probably be the last one who had more than a passing memory of her (assuming
Elliott lives out his predicted lifespan).
That led me
to revisit, once again, my mom, which I do several times per year--I will of
course remember her to the end of *my* days.
(Now more with happiness than sadness, although I'm still sad she died
so young—at age 62 in 1989—and never knew Elliott.)
That string of thoughts led me to
an epiphany of sorts. Of Elliott's four
grandparents, his personality is most like that of my mother—the one
grandparent he never met (she died the year before he was born). She was always the lively one at social
gatherings, but in a good way. She wasn't
a chatterbox but she always kept the conversations alive--and kept the
gatherings interesting. My dad was more
quiet, although he certainly contributed more to social discourse when he was
younger (e.g., in his 40s - 60s).
Elliott's grandfathers were similar in a number of ways, including their
social reserve. (Elliott's grandmother
on Pat's side was reclusive.)
So, I told Elliott, now I think
even more that it's too bad my mom didn't live to see him grow up. She'd almost certainly not be alive now--she'd
be 90, turning 91 in August--but she certainly could have seen him into your
late teens at least. My mom would have
liked him as much as any of her other grandchildren--and I think he would have
liked her.
* * *
A friend
took issue with one of my comments on the "12 Rules for Life."
I must disagree with your
commentary on being grateful. We all
have things to be grateful for. I can't
think of anyone who has nothing to be thankful for. It is all a matter of perspective. When I was little, we had very few material
things . . . one Christmas gift each . . . etc., which by today's standards is
poverty, unfair, all those nasty things.
But we were always grateful for the gift and for the celebration made
around opening it. You don't need to be
wealthy or middle class to be grateful.
It is an attitude . . . and that attitude makes you want to work harder
to have more to be grateful for.
I told my friend that didn't make
it very clear that I was thinking about extreme circumstances when I said there
are some who don't have anything to be grateful for. Like being in a concentration camp in Germany
in 1944. But I would say that while she
is right in the absolute sense, there are plenty of people, both in this
country and around the world, who have far more to be angry about than grateful
about--and are in circumstances where they can't do much (e.g., Bangladesh,
Syria). I would *not* have put her when
young in the category of having nothing to be grateful for because life was safe
and happy in a close family, even if they didn't have the mounds of material
goods that we do now.
* * *
Most of us
know of the myth of deaths coming in threes.
They don't. That aside, there
have been three Engstrand obituaries in the last five months. Krystin in October and then two very elderly
cousins of mine, the children of my dad's older brother. My dad's brother Allen was born in 1901; my
dad was born in 1922. Allen married and
had two children, in 1923 and 1924, Ralph and Doris. (So my dad had a nephew who was five months
younger than he was and a niece who was a year and a half younger. Allen died of smallpox in 1924, leaving
behind his widow and two very young children.)
Ralph died in November, Doris died in February. That is enough Engstrand obituaries. And if they do come in threes, I think I'm
safe for awhile. Too bad they don't.
On that happy note,
Gary
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