3: Epidemic
"‘Tis bitter cold. And
I am sick at heart"
Hamlet
How yuh doin’?
“I’m doing well,” is the standard answer around here, but
this is just a thing we say without meaning it, because no one is, in fact, feeling
well.
As a number of the pundits on the left noted in the last
Congressional election, though the country is economically on the upswing from
“The Great Recession,” the mood of the country remains sour. Unhappy. Cranky.They took it out on the President, who seems nice enough to me, and they
elected some more really angry people to Congress. Perhaps it was the way wages
for most of us have stagnated, while the wealthy are going back to getting
wealthier, as some pundits have
suggested. Perhaps -- but I see signs that it runs deeper than that. I feel like it’s deeper than that.
Superficially, I’m doing well, but I don’t feel like all is well and I’m angry,
though I’m not quite sure at who.
“Epidemic,” in fact, is one of our favorite words for
qualifying the things in contemporary life that seem to afflict or worry us the
most. The following is a short list of some recently described “epidemics”:
The autism (or autism spectrum) epidemic
The epidemic of police violence against Blacks
The epidemic of violence against police
The ADHD epidemic
The opioid epidemic
The psychiatric drug epidemic
The epidemic of campus rape
The epidemic of victimization
The “trigger warning” epidemic
The depression epidemic
The epidemic of peanut/nut allergies
The anxiety disorder epidemic
The epidemic of gluten intolerance
The teen suicide epidemic
The epidemic of sleep disorders
The chronic fatigue epidemic
The epidemic of lactose intolerance
The epidemic of internet addiction
The epidemic of gun violence
The obesity epidemic
The epidemic of narcissism
The Alzheimers epidemic
The epidemic of abortion
The epidemic of religious fundamentalism
The (breast, prostate, liver, lung, etc.) cancer epidemic
Any number of these have claimed me as a “victim,” and, if I
didn’t fight against it, I could easily be convinced that some sinister entity,
environmental cataclysm or force out there is out to ruin my life. This is a
natural tendency many of us share – trying to understand all the difficulties in
our lives discover a simple root cause for all the distempers we feel. The only
problem is, there are too many culprits for me to focus on just one…
Everything on this list, however is perceived by a large group of people as a problem that is
growing and perhaps even spinning out of control, which makes the “epidemic” in
question an issue of great concern – a concern that in general overshadows the
affected group’s concern over actual epidemics like flu, Ebola or AIDS. Unlike an actual epidemic disease, however,
each of these epidemics, whether it is a
social or a public worry, is hard to document with actual medical statistics
that prove it is spreading and growing like an epidemic: the issue is mainly perceived to be increasing at an
alarming rate, and it has advocates who demand that public notice of the
problem. None of these issues are really new things (like H5N2 influenza or
Ebola), but are issues that have generally been around for a long time (pick
holes in this assertion if you like) but now seem to be becoming much more
important… at least in our awareness.
The epidemics issues I listed all concern our mental state or our health
state or our social state but are not actual contagious diseases – they all
concern our state and thus are seen
as critical to our well-being. No
wonder we are concerned.
But should we be? Each of these “epidemics” also has its
critics who insist that either nothing different is going on, or that it is
only an “epidemic” because we have decided to notice something that has always
been out there in normal life and now we are seeing it everywhere. For most of
the items on this list, I tend to fall on the second camp, but I will admit
that life is complicated, and some of these things may be increasing in a way
we perhaps should be concerned with.
Let me give an example of one item on the list: ADHD. I pick
this because I have some personal experience with it and have two members of my
family who have been diagnosed with the condition. If you’ve had children
(especially boys) in the last 30 years, or are under 35 or so, you are aware of
how “epidemic” attention-deficit disorder is – a huge chunk of our children and
many adults are now diagnosed with it, and are treated by being given regular,
daily or twice-daily doses of something like an amphetamine. The general
diagnosis of the “disorder” is that the person with ADHD is unable to focus or
even sit still for more than a brief period, which makes it hard for them to
stay on task and complete a long or difficult task. In children, this often is
first noticed with bad grades and/or complaints of bad behavior at school.
Sounds pretty serious, doesn’t it? One might expect
widespread panic when so many of the nation’s children are afflicted with such
a serious brain disorder, but the cure is cheap and generally very effective
(children -- including my own – have tended to give testimonials, like “wow! I
feel so much more awake and able to concentrate
now!”). In fact, it’s so easy and effective that parents
whose children are performing only slightly sub-par (or adults who are having a
hard time keeping up at work) have been known to take the “afflicted” into the
office and demand a diagnosis and a prescription. No one wants to be at a
disadvantage because they don’t have the benefit of the drugs.
And yet, a generation before, though similar drugs were
already available, no one had heard of this “disorder.” Sure, some kids did not
do as well in school, but they were otherwise considered “normal,” and many
grew out of their academic difficulties. The drugs, though sometimes prescribed
by psychiatrists to improve people’s moods, were generally considered to be
strong stimulants or “uppers” that could help you stay awake if you were really
tired, like super-strong coffee. Other than as carefully prescribed psychiatric
use they were generally seen as powerful drugs that could be abused. In the
60’s (when I grew up) kids bought them
from drug dealers and took them to get high.
What happened was that modern psychology decided that inability
to concentrate well was a “disorder,” and probably the result of a mental
defect. Actual causes of the disorder were not clear, nor was the permanence of
the condition. Once it was defined,
we began seeing it everywhere, and the word “epidemic” slowly began to be used.
If it really was an epidemic – a sudden, alarming increase in a bad mental
condition, what was causing it? A virus? Chemical pollutants? Vaccines? Preservatives
in our foods? Bad parenting? Television or video games? Possibly, I guess, for
some of these, though nothing like any of that has ever been proved.
What does seem to
be a possible cause are changes in the school environment, larger classes and
the cutting of break times like recess in order to get more academics into the
too-short school day – all really negative effects of underfunding public
education. Kids are expected to “focus” for longer periods in more difficult
conditions and more and more of them are not up to it. We could notice the
environmental problem here and try fixing it by spending more money, but… the
pill fix is easier. I first became aware of ADHD 24 years ago when my oldest
child was entering kindergarten. The teacher called us in, suggested my
daughter had the disorder and wanted us to take her to the doctor to get
Ritalin. She was overwhelmed with a large classroom she couldn’t handle and she
wanted the children to be docile and easy to handle, which a number of them
weren’t. We refused, that daughter never was diagnosed and she did just fine in
the rest of her schooling. To be fair to
the teacher though, I’m sure she genuinely thought my daughter had a problem
because, as the definition of the disorder had emerged, it seemed to explain
the problem she was having with children in the classroom and offer an easy –
in fact, miraculous – solution.
Notice that the general story that emerges here is that we
have a social problem – large numbers of kids not doing well in school, perhaps
an effect of changes in schooling due to other social problems – and we define a semi-legendary medical condition/physical
problem that explains it (conveniently denying the existence of another larger
problem of our own making) and since the solution (stimulants all around) seems
to make the symptom go away, we decide we’ve nailed the problem and move on.
We’ve told a story to ourselves that makes the problem go away.
Worried about getting older and sicker and slowly losing
your mind? Here’s a story that may help you get a grasp on your own
impermanence: there’s an epidemic of a mysterious new disease – Alzheimer’s,
caused by some mysterious environmental, genetic or pathogenic cause. (Never mind that the most obvious
cause is human mortality –that story has no possible resolution.) Feeling sick
or have children who seem to have frequent physical illnesses? It must be food
allergies – let’s pick something common in the diet and scientific sounding
(like gluten) – that must be it! (This is not to say that some people do not
have serious, life-threatening allergies to some foods, but they always did –
just not in the numbers we see now.)
Stories are powerful, and the serious problems of a few can
become explanations for the more minor problems of far more of us. Profound
autism – a very serious set of mental problems in a very small fraction of the
population can be seen as a spectrum of “similar” behaviors in far more of us –
which are now seen as “disorders” because of their relationship to the really
debilitating conditions. It’s all in how someone tells it and and then in how you
choose to see it.
But then, we all tell stories and we all think they make
sense out of chaos. I’m telling you one right now.
Why are there currently so many stories about epidemics? Epidemic
“disorders” make perfect sense because life feels disordered. We’re telling
ourselves that there are disorders and diseases suddenly emerging and we are
seeing them everywhere. We sense that there is something(s) wrong in our being
– it’s not well. I guess that finding
a plausible villain responsible for life’s troubles makes reality easier to
handle, to control. As I said in my first essay in this series, I’m all for the
illusion of control.
De Nile |
On the other hand, de Nile is not just a river in Egypt.
Maybe, just maybe, we need to be tackling our problems with modern reality at a
more fundamental level… and find a cure
for our epidemic of denial… For now, that’s my
story and I’m sticking to it.