As number-one daughter said Tuesday evening, ‘what is it with this family?’
Earlier that evening, I’d learned that a member of the extended family was — good news — alive, conscious, and home.
Not good news — a vehicle had hit another vehicle, which hit another — and eventually the kinetic energy was transferred to the one he was in.
He became conscious about a half-hour later, I gather. The concussion has left him with (best-case scenario) vertigo that keeps him from walking.
But, hey: he’s alive. And he’s another person whose specific concerns are going into my daily prayer routine.
I’m writing this Tuesday evening, February 6, in central Minnesota. A Catholic Citizen in America is on UTC/Greenwich time, so “More Family Health Issues, or, NOW What?!” will be dated February 7, 2024.
Either way, number-two daughter is scheduled for surgery Wednesday: which, from where I’m sitting, is tomorrow.
Recapping what I said week before last: our number-two daughter has cancer, but our granddaughter’s left arm has healed nicely. I’m still feeling blank, emotionally.
As I said then:
“…how do I feel about one of our children having cancer?
“That’s a good question.
“I’m pretty sure I’m worried, but it’s hard to tell.
I’d say that I feel numb, but that’d be a step up. It’s more like I feel blank, emotionally. That’s a bit unsettling; or would be: if I hadn’t experienced unpleasant emotions, and their oxymoronic — it’s a real word, look it up! — absence, before….”
She’s had one operation, which removed a cancerous salivary gland. Or most of it, at any rate. This week — tomorrow — she’ll have another operation, removing more dubious tissue. After that, I understand, comes radiation therapy.
Again, I’m pretty sure I’m worried. Partly because I’m having a harder-than-usual time focusing on tasks-at-hand.
The situation could be much worse. Number-two daughter, son-in-law, granddaughter and all are handing the unpleasant news very well. Medicos have learned a great deal about cancer and how to treat it, since my youth.
Meanwhile, here in Sauk Centre, there’s not much I can do to help: apart from praying, which I’ve been doing. So I’ll keep doing that, and see what I can do about getting a post ready by Saturday.
I’ve talked about this sort of thing before, and probably will again:
Spectators and vendors at John Pegsworth’s execution. (1837) Detail of trial broadside.
It seems that, no matter how bad things are: they could be worse.
Take Alabama’s recent execution of a Mr. Smith, for example.
There’s been discussion of whether or not using nitrogen gas was okay, along with the ongoing capital punishment debate.
But at least the State of Alabama didn’t defray expenses by livecasting the execution: despite pay-per-view being a well-established part of our society.
I’ll be talking about capital punishment this week: along with Hammurabi’s laws, the breaking wheel, and a trend that might be good news.
Detail, Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s ‘”The Triumph of Death”, with breaking wheels at right. (ca. 1562)
Capital punishment has been around for a long time.
Some 3,700 years back, the Code of Hammurabi said that folks who accuse others of capital crimes, but couldn’t prove it, “shall be put to death”.
Other capital crimes included giving false testimony in a capital case, or not being able to prove that testimony was true; several sorts of theft, purchasing stolen property; and lying about accusations of stolen property.
Non-lethal sanctions under Hammurabi included removal of fingers or ears, but the only specified form of execution mentioned was impalement.
I don’t think my country’s laws are perfect. But I don’t yearn for the days folks like Hammurabi were writing their law codes.
Fast-forward a few millennia.
Persians, Carthaginians, and Macedonians introduced Romans to crucifixion as an execution technique. Maybe one of them developed it, or maybe they picked the idea up from someone else.
Scaphism, a particularly unpleasant sort of execution by nibbling vermin, may or may not have been a Persian specialty.
Plutarch, a Greek who became a Roman citizen, said it was something Persians did. Considering Persian-Roman relations, I’ll take the claim with a grain of salt.1
The Breaking Wheel
Around the time St. Columba set up an abbey on Iona, folks in Europe apparently thought particularly heinous crimes warranted death on the breaking wheel.
Using a breaking wheel, executioners could kill someone quickly, slowly, or very slowly. Some subjects lasted three or four days. One took nine days to die.
I don’t know when folks started wondering about death by breaking wheel, but one region after another dropped it.
By the mid-19th century, the breaking wheel was history. Europe’s public executions were on their way out, too. They peaked around 1600, along with literal witch hunts. I strongly suspect that religion-themed propaganda for Europe’s turf wars helped stoke those fires.
Interestingly, we don’t call capital punishment judicial homicide anymore. Maybe because it sounds too much like judicial murder, a subset of wrongful execution.2 And that’s another topic. Almost.
But We’ve Always Done It This Way
The British Library’s Copy of “Constitution of the Athenians”, found in a garbage dump.
If you google “we’ve always done it this way”, you’ll probably get links to articles, posts and the occasional video, saying or implying that it’s “the most dangerous phrase in business”. I did, at any rate. Your experience may vary.
I was going somewhere with this. Let me think. Capital punishment. Death by nitrogen. Hammurabi’s law code, Plutarch, the breaking wheel. Right.
We know about how folks lived, and the laws they lived with, because we’ve got written records from the times they lived in. Sometimes.
The Sachsenspiegel, for example, says that someone who commits murder, or arson that resulted in fatalities, gets — or, rather, got — killed on a breaking wheel.
The original Sachsenspiegel was called the Sassen Speyghel, and either way it means “Saxon Mirror”.
I gather that officials in the Holy Roman Empire used the Sachsenspiegel as a reference, when they needed to know what folks in their territory saw as good legal process. I was going to talk about “customary law”, but this has been another one of those weeks.
So I’ll skip lightly over the idea that what’s legal and/or proper depends at least partly on what folks have ‘always been doing’.
Anyway, We’ve got a pretty good handle on what was considered legal in Europe over the last millennium, because we’ve still got records like the Sachsenspiegel from that period.
Well, some records. Stuff gets lost as centuries roll by.
That’s why documents like the Codes of Hammurabi and Ur-Nammu are so important for those of us trying to sort out what was happening back then. They show us at least part of Sumerian and Babylonian legal systems.3
I think we’ve learned a bit since then.
Statistics, a Little History, and Science
Note: total (estimated, in China’s case) numbers, not adjusted for population.
Considering that something like 334,000,000 folks call my country home, having only 18 legal executions in 2022 is a pretty low number.
We’re number five in that list, but I’m not sure we could be called a world leader in the criminal-killing category.
And, although on the whole I like being an American, and want my country to be outstanding: I can’t say that I mind America lagging behind China and Iran in executions.
Some of what I say next may intersect the 2024 presidential plebiscitary pandemonium, so I’d better start with a disclaimer.
I’m not “political”.
Not in the sense that I’ll try convincing you that one candidate or party is in league with Satan, corporate interests, and an international cabal that keeps sending someone to take your parking spot.
By the same token, I won’t claim God or a panel of experts is 100 percent behind someone or something that’s on this year’s ballots.
I do, however, think that human life matters. Even when it’s the life of someone who has committed egregious acts.
Okay. Enough of that.
I’ll take a very quick look at the decisions and science involved last month’s “nitrogen gas” execution, then talk about some numbers.
Nitrogen Asphyxiation: Bad News, Good News
Top persistent executors of malefactors, 2018-2022.
Three American states — Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma — say that killing a prisoner with nitrogen gas is okay. Some of Ohio’s leadership think that state should follow suit.
I gather that some lawmakers think there are crimes so “heinous” that killing the perpetrator is a good idea. But, oddly enough, nitrogen gas asphyxiation isn’t used because it’s a particularly nasty way to go.
A little biology 101.
We need a steady supply of oxygen, or we stop living.
There’s been considerable research into how long someone can think straight, and survive, with little to no oxygen. That’s partly because aircraft routinely fly where the air gets thin.
Turns out that if a pilot climbs to 18,000 feet without cabin pressurization, he or she has maybe 20 to 30 minutes before oxygen deprivation becomes an issue. A blowout at that altitude would give maybe 10 to 15 minutes.
The “time of useful consciousness” goes down to something like six to eight seconds in low Earth orbit. We think.
Nitrogen, at normal pressures, doesn’t hurt us, but it’s not the oxygen we need to keep living. I gather that a few deep breaths of pure nitrogen gives us about a minute of consciousness — maybe a few seconds — before our brain started shutting down.
The bad news is that, although our bodies have an ‘excess carbon dioxide’ alarm, lack of oxygen by itself won’t push our panic button.
Good news is the same thing. After several seconds to a minute of breathing pure nitrogen, our vision would go offline, we’d become unconscious, maybe have convulsions; and then our heart would stop.4 But our internal warning systems wouldn’t be screaming at us.
Compared to the breaking wheel, it’s a humane way of killing folks who break the rules.
Excessive Bail, Excessive Fines, Cruel and Unusual Punishment
Vermont finally ratified the United States Constitution in 1791.
There’s a story behind that, but it’s a can of worms I’ll ignore this week.
A whole bunch of folks thought the Constitution needed work, so by 1791 they’d more-or-less agreed on 10 amendments. We call those our “Bill of Rights”. They were ratified in 1791, too; and we’ve been arguing about them ever since.
The Eighth Amendment, AKA Amendment VIII, protects us against official bullying.
“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” (Eighth Amendment, Constitution Annotated, congress.gov)
Various folks have defined their version of what “cruel and unusual punishments” means. But to date, we don’t have a consensus opinion. Looking at the airborne verbal fewmets splatting into my news feed, I don’t think we’ll agree on one any time soon.
Where capital punishment is concerned, I think part of the problem is that whether it involves death by hanging, shooting, stoning, lethal injection, or something else: the key word is death.5 And there arguably isn’t a pleasant way to kill someone.
Graphs and Charts, Numbers and — Maybe — a Trend
Executions per year, 1985-2022, not counting China’s contribution.United States: number of executions per year, 1983-2023.
I appreciate the way BBC News uses graphs and charts. But I’d appreciate it more, in these cases, if they’d shown executions per population unit. Like, say, the number of executions per 1,000 people per year.
That’s not what they did, though. So I’ll just note executions peaked, globally, in the late 1980s and again in 2015. And that American executions were on an upward trend at least from 1983 to 1999, then fell from 1999 to 2008: blipped up, then kept sliding down.
I don’t know what made 1999 a bumper year for American executions.
I could say that it was the 1998 elections. Or I could turn it around, saying that the 1998 elections went the way they did because of the rising number of executions.
For that matter, I could give the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak credit for causing executions that year.
Or claim that the storms were divine retribution for the election results. Or the Almighty’s response to “A Bug’s Life” by Pixar.6
But I won’t. As I see it, there are far too many folks making crazy claims. And that’s yet another topic.
The more-or-less steady decline in American executions from 1999 to 2021 looks like a trend: not a statistical hiccup. Particularly since the raw numbers have been decreasing, while America’s population has been increasing.
Growth Curves: Executions Go Down as Population Goes Up
World population, 1950-2017.United States population, 1950-2021.
The Great Famine of 1315-1317 and the Black Death left 370,000,000 survivors, globally. World population has been growing ever since. Right now, I have a bit upwards of 8,000,000,000 living neighbors.
Growth curves on those two population growth charts aren’t quite straight. But they’re not the exponential curves I’d see in “population explosion” articles, a half-century back.
I talked about an 18th century English gentleman’s concerns regarding “the lower classes of people”, math, and assumptions, back in 2018; and that’s yet again another topic.
A point I think matters is that the number of executions has been going down in my country, on average, for two decades — while the population has been going up.7
I’m pretty sure that executions haven’t gone down because population has gone up. But I don’t have nearly enough information to know what’s behind the decrease.
Whatever the cause, I’ll see fewer executions as good news. Maybe my country’s powers that be are developing an appreciation for human life. That’d be nice.
Acting As If Human Life Matters
Last month’s execution of a Mr. Smith probably wasn’t wrong, legally.
There seems little doubt that he had been paid to help kill someone: which, in this case, was illegal.
The murder led to three more deaths — the person who paid for the killing committed suicide, two of the killers were executed. Four more deaths, including the killer who died in prison.
The person who paid for the murder had a familiar motive. He’d been married. He later told his sons that he was having an affair, which was why he paid to have his wife killed. Then he killed himself.
One of the few bright spots I see in the mess that the sons have apparently forgiven the hirelings who killed their mother.8
Responsibility and Dignity: For Everyone
I’ve talked about why I think that life matters and murder is a bad idea before, recently: so here’s a quick summary.
Human life is sacred, a gift from God. That’s every human life, eachhuman life: no matter how young or old, healthy or sick we are. That’s one reason why suicide is a really bad idea. I have no authority to end my own life. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2258-2317)
Murder, deliberately killing an innocent person, is wrong for pretty much the same reason.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Or maybe irksome is the word.
Deciding to kill an innocent person is wrong. But it doesn’t make the killer not-human.
No matter what we do, what we believe, or where we live, we’re all obliged to “to do what is good and avoid what is evil”. And, like it or not, we’re all made “in the image and likeness of God.” Respecting “the transcendent dignity of man” may be inconvenient, and it’s often not easy, but it’s part of my faith. (Catechism, 360, 1700-1706, 1928-1942)
So is remembering that responsibility and justice matter.
So no matter how much I might feel like getting even with someone — yeah. I’d better move along.
“…An Increasing Awareness….”
English justice, 1606: public vivisection after the Gunpowder Treason Plot.
Sound and fury has died down, in my social media and news feeds at any rate, from a change in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Until August of 2018, the death penalty was recognized as something that might be okay: for authorities who were so desperately hard-up that their only option was to kill prisoners who might otherwise hurt or kill others.
That was then. Now, since I’m a Catholic, working for an end to capital punishment is on my to-do list.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2267, prior to August 2018
“Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against an unjust aggressor.
“If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person.
“Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm — without definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself — the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity ‘are very rare, if not practically non-existent.’†” (†Pope St. John Paul II, Encyclical Evangelium vitae 56)
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2267, after August 2018
“Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.
“Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.
“Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person’,‡ and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.” (‡ Francis, Address to Participants in the Meeting organized by the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, 11 October 2017: L’Osservatore Romano, 13 October 2017, 5.)
Not that there’s much I can do on a global, national, or state level. I’m just some guy living in central Minnesota.
But I can suggest that human life matters. Even when it’s the life of someone who has behaved very badly.
First, the good news. Our number-two daughter’s cancer is slow-growing. The not-so-good news is that it’s aggressive. And, of course, that she’s got cancer.
I learned about the cancer in early January.1 The family knows a little more now, and I’ve gotten the okay to talk about it. Which isn’t easy. I’ve been — distracted — and that’ll very likely continue.
Another bit of good news is that our granddaughter’s left arm has healed nicely. She broke all three bones last year. It’s particularly good news, since she’s a lefty.
Which doesn’t — emphatically doesn’t — mean that I felt good about our granddaughter’s pain, or our number-two daughter’s recent cancer diagnosis.
So — how do I feel about one of our children having cancer?
That’s a good question.
I’m pretty sure I’m worried, but it’s hard to tell.
I’d say that I feel numb, but that’d be a step up. It’s more like I feel blank, emotionally. That’s a bit unsettling; or would be: if I hadn’t experienced unpleasant emotions, and their oxymoronic — it’s a real word, look it up! — absence, before.
Our youngest child died in early February of 2002.
Previous Experience
We’d lost one of our children in a miscarriage, but figured our sixth pregnancy would end in a normal delivery.
It didn’t. As we were approaching the Interstate exit nearest the hospital, something went wrong.
My wife tells me that our baby thrashed around: then stopped moving.
I see that I haven’t talked much about this since 2017: not surprising, since it wasn’t a pleasant experience. The good news is that my wife survived, which I’m told wouldn’t have happened if the placenta had given way near the edge.
The point of reviewing that spot of unpleasantness is — actually, it’s at least two points.
First, I learned what another sort of sudden loss and grief feels like. I could rehash that, but I won’t. Here’s an excerpt from 2017, discussing what happened in 2002:
“I tried — briefly — bargaining with God when we lost Elizabeth, our youngest child.
“When the somewhat one-sided conversation was over, I was accepting the unpleasant realities, and asking for help dealing with them: so I don’t feel particularly guilty.
“I suspect that some folks say bargaining with God is always wrong because they see it as trying to manipulate God. That’s a bad idea: also impossible. The Almighty is just that. I can’t make God do anything. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 268-274, 2118-2119)
“God is good, merciful, and loving. But because we live with consequences of a really bad decision, seeing that love as jealousy and vengeance is easy; and that’s another topic. (Exodus 34:6; Psalms 73:1, 103:8, 136:1–26; Catechism, 270-271, 385, 397-406, 1472)…” (“New Daily Prayer Routine” (February 19, 2017))
Second, when I wasn’t stewing, fretting, or praying, I was postponing sadness, misery, grief, and emotions whose ID tags got lost in the shuffle.
I’d been sitting up with my wife. Folks at the St. Cloud hospital were on duty, and would have been far more useful in a medical situation. But I wanted to be available, in case she woke up and wanted unskilled help. Besides, I wanted to be there.
At the time, I could feel — metaphorically — things snap in my mind, each time I blocked a rush of emotion.
I knew that there would be consequences: later, when I had free time. Which there were, but the nervous tic and auditory hallucinations eventually ended.
What I’m feeling, or not feeling, now is different. No surprises there. I’m 22 years older, and the circumstances are different. Just the same, I’m wondering when or if this ‘blank’ feeling will give way to something more definite.
“…Feelings, Woah, Woah, Woah, Feelings….”
Despite a distinct gap where feelings like fear, anxiety, and great galloping heebie-jeebies should be,2 I’m pretty sure that at some level I’m worried about our number-two daughter’s health.
I’d be worried if I wasn’t worried.
Now, about emotions and me.
First off, emotions — feelings — happen. They’re part of being human. So is thinking, or should be. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 154-159, 1763ff)
Thinking. Right. About that: I have free will. I can decide to act, or not act. Believe, or not believe. Think, or let feelings, whims, and impulses decide for me. (Catechism, 1730-1794)
Developing, maintaining, and using, my conscience isn’t always simple or easy. But it’s a good idea, anyway. (Catechism, 1786-1794)
Feelings connect “the life of the senses and the life of the mind.” (Catechism, 1764)
By themselves, feelings aren’t good or bad. They just happen. What I do with them: that’s up to me. With practice, I can control them. To an extent. St. Thomas Aquinas talked about that. And, as usual, it’s complicated. (Catechism, 1767)
Emotions can tell me that something needs attention. Feeling worried, for example, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. What I decide to do about feeling worried, or angry, or elated, or whatever — that’s what can be good or bad. (Catechism, 1765, 1767-1769)
Ideally, my feelings and my reason would be working together. In any case, I’m expected to think. (Catechism, 1777-1780)
Diagnoses, Definitions, Surgery, and (Probably) Good News
Metastasis: scary? Yes: very.
I deleted much of the research I’d done for this post Wednesday morning. By accident, which didn’t make it any less lost.
If I wasn’t so distracted, distraught (probably), and discombobulated: well, that’s how I’ve been this week, so I’ll work with what I’ve got and move on.
On January 15, I heard that our number-two daughter is dealing with an adenoidal cystic carcinoma, that it’s aggressive (bad news) but slow-growing (sort of good news). Also that this sort of cancer tends to travel along nerves.
Odds are that you haven’t heard about an adenoidal cystic carcinoma before. It’s what one resource called “a rare malignancy”. On the other hand, our daughter’s version of this problem is a ‘normal’ sort: one of her salivary glands has gone bad.
I was going to talk more about that, and maybe I will — eventually. But for now, here’s an excerpt from a resource that I hadn’t scrambled:
“Adenoid Cystic Cancer“ Mohammad Ammad Ud Din; Hira Shaikh, editor; StatPearls [Internet] (last update April 14, 2023)
“Adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC) is a rare malignancy arising from the secretory glands, most commonly seen involving the salivary glands. Although uncommon, it is an important differential to consider for a painless swelling in the head and neck region because of its high tendency to metastasize….”
That “high tendency to metastasize” got my attention.
What ‘aggressive but slow-growing’ means isn’t so clear. Particularly since an “aggressive” cancer is (apparently) one that is not slow-growing.
aggressive cancer Cancer that develops, grows, or spreads quickly.
metastasis [meh-tas-tuh-sis] Cancer cells that spread from the primary site where they started to other parts of the body through the lymph system or bloodstream.
metastasize [ meh-TAS-tuh-size] The spread of cancer cells from where the cancer started (primary site) to one or more sites elsewhere in the body, often by way of the lymph system or bloodstream.
metastatic [meh-tuh-STAT-ick] A way to describe cancer that has spread from the primary site (where it started) to other structures or organs in the body. (“Cancer Glossary: Definitions & Phonetic Pronunciations“, American Cancer Society)
And at least one sort of slow-growing cancer is called “indolent”, not “slow-growing”. According to one source, anyway:
“…We defined an indolent cancer as including all of the following criteria: clinical stage I nodule on prevalence LDCT scan with a volumetric doubling time >400 days and maximal standardized uptake value (SUVmax) ≤1 on positron emission tomography (PET) scan (when available)….” (“Indolent, Potentially Inconsequential Lung Cancers in the Pittsburgh Lung Screening Study” , Prashanth M. Thalanayar et al., Annals of the American Thoracic Society (August 2015) via PubMed Central (PMC)) [emphasis mine]
I don’t know how a carcinoma — a particular sort of cancer, and that’s yet another topic — can be both “aggressive” and “slow growing”. The gap in my knowledge is unsettling, but I don’t actually need to understand that particular bit of the current family situation.
Our daughter has had a PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scan3 — details of PET technology are among the notes I inadvertently deleted this week.
The scan picked up a number of anomalies, but no obvious sign that the cancer has metastasized. I’ll take that as good news.
“…Cancer cells can break away from the original tumor and travel through the blood or lymph system to distant locations in the body, where they exit the vessels to form additional tumors. This is called metastasis….” (“What Is Cancer?” , Fundamentals of Cancer, What is Metastasis?; National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health) [emphasis mine]
Another Operation, Radiation, and Prayer
Before outlining what’s being done about our daughter’s cancer, I’d better explain how I see life, health, medical treatments, and prayer. Or, rather, repeat what I said a couple years back:
“…Being healthy is okay. Being sick is okay. What matters is how I act. It’s even okay to help others get or stay healthy. Life and physical health are ‘precious gifts.’ Taking care of both is a good idea. Within reason. Obsessing over either isn’t. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1509, 2288-2291, 2292-2296)
“Prayer isn’t always easy, but it’s always possible. Which is a good thing, because living as a Christian without prayer doesn’t work. Prayer is what makes sharing the love Jesus has for us possible. (Catechism, 2742-2745)…” (“Experiencing COVID-19: It Could Have Been Worse” , Prayer and Making Sense (February 19, 2022))
Our number-two daughter has had her cancerous salivary gland removed. They’ll go in again, I gather, removing ‘might be cancerous’ tissue.
That second surgery will add to the existing scar on her neck, making it more noticeable: which I’m sure is the least of her, or our, concerns.
Then she’ll start radiation therapy.
This is not going to be a particularly placid period for any of us.
But we’re getting by. I don’t know the odds that number-two daughter’s treatments and monitoring will keep the cancer at bay. But I insist on hoping that they’re successful.
Meanwhile, I’ve added prayer for her medical situation to my daily routine.
Happily, if that’s the right word, an item from my role in a parish prayer chain had me looking up prayers specifically mentioning cancer — which resulted in my learning about St. Peregrine; and that’s yet again another topic.
“What Is Cancer?“ National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health
National Institutes of Health
“Adenoid Cystic Cancer“ Mohammad Ammad Ud Din; Hira Shaikh, editor; StatPearls [Internet] (last update April 14, 2023) via US National Library of Medicine
Utopian and dystopian futures, clockwise from upper left: “The Shape of Things to Come” (1936); “Metropolis” (1927), “Judge Dredd” (1995), “Across the Park” digital art by Jadrien Cousens (ca. 2016).
This week I’ll be talking about what’s changed over the last century, what hasn’t, and why I think progress isn’t inevitable. On the other hand, I don’t think we’re doomed. That last may take explaining.
Populations perished as climate change swept the globe (they called it “drought”).
Death and disease ran rampant as chaos stalked the streets.
In the aftermath of a war unlike any other, scientists meddled with powers that might destroy humanity — and the great globe itself.
Meanwhile, crosswords threatened the very foundations of society.
It was as if the unsinkable Titanic’s sinking had been the harbinger of a particularly dreadful doomsday.
That was the situation, back in 1924.
Small wonder Alfred Döblin wrote “Mountains, Oceans, Giants”: a tale of social, economic and ecological collapse; followed by a man-made environmental catastrophe.
And melting Greenland’s ice cap had seemed like such a good idea at the time.
Anyway, M.O.G. is “perhaps the most forgotten modernist epic of the Anthropocene”, according to Alex Langstaff (Los Angeles Review of Books).1
O Tempora, O Mores, O Wow!
In the news: war in the Middle East, the continuing climate change crisis, more war in the Middle East.
A century later, I can count on reading headlines heralding the latest dreadful developments, including but not limited to: climate change, war in the Middle East, and the looming threat of artificial intelligence.
Details have changed since Döblin’s day, but not by all that much.
They had the 1918-1920 flu pandemic. We had, and still have, the COVID-19 pandemic.
They were getting over “The War That Will End War”. We’ve recovered from World War II and the boom times that followed.
But these are sincerely not peaceful times.
Although New York City rebuilt their World Trade Center, blaming the “Great Satan America” is still easier than facing social issues. My opinion.
They had fictional dystopias. We have fictional dystopias.
I’m not sure how many folks take atomic Nazi zombies, chrome-plated robot cops, and giant mutant frogs seriously.
Make that took them seriously. Times have changed, along with our A-list boogeymen.
These days, dystopian malefactors are more likely to be climate change, fossil-fuel crises, the fatal lure of online communities, and — of course — evil corporations. Impressively, that calamitous quartet was the collective big bad in one movie.
We’ve had utopian fiction, too. The Star Trek franchise, for example, has somehow avoided diving into the conventional ‘we’re all gonna die but it doesn’t matter because life has no meaning’ platitudinous profundity.
How and why “Logan’s Run” ended up in a “Utopian films” category, I don’t know.2 And that’s another topic.
Progress is Inevitable Possible
Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay. (2019)
I’ll occasionally run across an opinion piece suggesting that we’re not doomed.
That happened last year, and again last week; which got me started writing this.
Here’s where I’d like to talk about golden ages, Aristotle, both nostalgia and optimism above and beyond the call of reason, and a bunch of other stuff.
But it’s Thursday afternoon. I’m having a time focusing this week — I’ll get back to that, maybe — so I’ll pick up part of humanity’s continuing story, about two and a half centuries back. And lean heavily on a few ‘for example’ excerpts.
“…The Good or Evil Performed by Nations … in a Cosmopolitical View…”
I’ll start with Immanuel Kant’s ‘big picture’ look at history:
“…what seems complex and chaotic in the single individual may be seen from the standpoint of the human race as a whole to be a steady and progressive though slow evolution of its original endowment….”
“…we know that History, simply by taking its station at a distance and contemplating the agency of the human will upon a large scale, aims at unfolding to our view a regular stream of tendency in the great succession of events,—so that the very same course of incidents which, taken separately and individually, would have seemed perplexed, incoherent, and lawless, yet viewed in their connexion and as the actions of the human species and not of independent beings, never fail to discover a steady and continuous, though slow, development of certain great predispositions in our nature.…”
“…Reason in a creature … works, however, not instinctively, but tentatively, by means of practice, through progress and regress, in order to ascend gradually from one degree of illumination to another. … or else, supposing the actual case that Nature has limited his term of life, she must then require an incalculable series of generations (each delivering its quota of knowledge to its immediate successor) in order to ripen the germs which she has laid in our species to that degree of development which corresponds with her final purpose.…
“…My object in this essay would be wholly misinterpreted if it were supposed that, under the idea of a Cosmopolitical History which to a certain degree has its course determined a priori, I had any wish to discourage the cultivation of empirical History in the ordinary sense. On the contrary, … There is no doubt that they will estimate the historical details of times far removed from their own, the original monuments of which will long have perished, simply by the value of that which will then concern themselves,—viz. by the good or evil performed by nations and their governments in a cosmopolitical view. To direct the eye upon this point as connected with the ambition of rulers and their servants, in order to guide them to the only means of bequeathing an honourable record of themselves to distant ages, may furnish some small motive (over and above the great one of justifying Providence) for attempting a Philosophic History on the plan I have here explained.”
I don’t know why translators, including Thomas de Quincey, translated “weltbürgerlicher” in Kant’s title — “Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht” — as “cosmopolitical”.
Google Translate says it means “cosmopolitan” or “more cosmopolitan”, which lines up with another source.3
Science, Religion, Progress, and — Maybe — Mything the Point
Anyway, fast-forwarding to the century I was born in.
Kant’s view of a slow but steady progress throughout history had morphed into the notion that progress is inevitable.
Bear in mind that I’m simplifying the situation something fierce.
Now, about this next excerpt: I prefer citing my sources accurately.
But in this case, the source’s format was — sophisticated. I’ve assumed that what they formatted as a link was the title, and put the rest down in the order they did.
“…The myth of progress states that civilization has moved, is moving, and will move in a desirable direction. Progress is inevitable. The myth in its origin coincides with the gradual decline in the christian belief in heaven and hell. According to the Christian myth man is only saved from damnation by Divine intervention. The great strides recently made in scientific discovery and invention have encouraged man in the belief that the millennium is not far distant. Science has become god. Philosophers, men of science and politicians have accepted the idea of the inevitability of progress. But the hopes built on science are proving as illusory as those built on religion and other myths.…” [emphasis mine]
Oh, boy: there’s a lot to talk about there. Starting with what “myth” means.
Oxford Reference: myth In popular usage, a widespread belief which is untrue, distorted, stereotypical, or romanticized, as in ‘the myth of the American West’
In my dialect of English, what Oxford Reference calls “popular usage” has “myth” meaning “something that is not true”.
That may be what the author(s) had in mind. Or maybe the “myth of progress” was seen as a narrative which served to put the idea of progress in a larger context: like “religion and other myths”: which are “illusory”.
Maybe because I grew up in a time and place where ranting radio preachers were doing their best to support the notion that someone could either accept what we’re learning about this wonder-packed universe or be “Christian” —
Never mind.
One point is that by 1932 science “had become a god”, at least in the eyes of a few.
And that at least a few folks had noticed that methodical study of natural phenomena wasn’t up to filling a god’s role: let alone God’s.
Another point is that, although various flavors of “progressivism” are still in play — often relabeled and rebranded4 — saying that progress is inevitable is no longer in fashion. Unless it’s “progress” toward doom and destruction.
Truth, Facts, Science: and Hope
Looking ahead: and not screaming in horror.
Now, finally, I’m coming to what got me started with this week’s post.
Articles in BBC Future (“We believe in truth, facts, and science. We take the time to think. And we don’t accept — we ask why.”) occasionally pop up in my feeds. Probably because I have a habit of clicking on ‘science news’ items.
That could have filled me with fear and dread of the omnipresent botnets which even now probe our minds, seeking to enslave us in the hive mind of — Oi. No. I’m nowhere near as obsessed with privacy/anonymity as some folks, and that’s yet another topic.
Seeing “future” and “hope” in the same title got my attention. So did the article’s introduction:
“Historian Thomas Moynihan explores what we can learn from the hopeful and ‘flagrantly fictional’ forecasts written 100 years ago, just as humanity was emerging from a global pandemic, the end of the First World War and encountering rapid technological change.…”
It’s now late Thursday afternoon, I won’t have time Friday to work on this, so here’s another whacking great excerpt, with highlights.
I’ll be back, after “… from X-rays to radioactivity….”
“…If we look back 100 years, how was tomorrow imagined back then? A century ago, there were dystopias and utopias, but many writers and thinkers also approached the future in other ways: with an open, nuanced and often playful perspective. And they did so despite the grave challenges they faced in their societies. What might we learn from these visions?…”
“…Understandably, back then, there was similarly a burst of dystopian fiction. There were chilling visions of tech-fuelled totalitarianism, where Earth’s oceans are filled in and its mountains levelled, whilst humans become drones serving like neurons powering one centralised, mechanised mega-brain. There were even prescient visions of climate disaster. …
“…Amid the dystopias, there remained widespread conviction that technology could be harnessed, in harmony with the natural world, to emancipate, rather than to suppress, humanity. Speaking to a crowded hall in Yorkshire in 1923, Keir Hardie — who founded the UK’s left-leaning Labour Party in 1900 — directly compared science’s empowerments to those of his movement. He noted how physicists had recently discovered entirely new forms of energy, from X-rays to radioactivity.…” [emphasis mine]
I strongly recommend reading Thomas Moynihan’s article. He’s probably not on exactly the same page as I am, but he does know history.
And he realizes that if progressive and allegedly-scientific eugenics policies hadn’t been reversed, “…many of us wouldn’t be here today….”
Today’s world is no more stable and serene that it was in 1924. Blind optimism didn’t make sense then, and it still doesn’t.
But neither does blind pessimism.
And I am convinced that hope is a reasonable option.
Works in Progress
“Summer Walk”, MeganeRid / Ridwan Chandra. (2012)
I think Kant had a point. Progress does happen. Slowly.
Life is better now, on average, in many parts of the world, for most folks, than it was a thousand years back. Or two thousand, or three and a half thousand plus a few centuries, when Hammurabi’s law code was new.
Granted, a few centuries after Hammurabi, something went horribly wrong. But on the ‘up’ side, we haven’t had anything like the Late Bronze Age collapse since.5
Basically, I see slow — very slow — progress over the millennia. On average.
We keep learning new ways of staying healthy, or getting healthy when we’re not.
Producing enough food has become less difficult.
Seeing to it that food and other necessities get to the folks who need it — that’s a work in progress, but I think the key word is progress.
Basically, progress can happen: but it’s not automatic.
It depends on enough of us deciding to do what’s right, instead of what’s easy or selfish. And that’s another work in progress.
Now, I’m done for this week.
I’ve talked about science, technology, and using our brains before; and probably will again:
Something new each Saturday.
Life, the universe and my circumstances permitting. I'm focusing on 'family stories' at the moment. ("A Change of Pace: Family Stories" (11/23/2024))
I was born in 1951. I'm a husband, father and grandfather. One of the kids graduated from college in December, 2008, and is helping her husband run businesses and raise my granddaughter; another is a cartoonist and artist; #3 daughter is a writer; my son is developing a digital game with #3 and #1 daughters. I'm also a writer and artist.
I live in Minnesota, in America's Central Time Zone. This blog is on UTC/Greenwich time.
Support this Blog:
More Perspectives From the Catholic Laity:
Blog - David Torkington
Spiritual theologian, author and speaker, specializing in prayer, Christian spirituality and mystical theology [the kind that makes sense-BHG]
