Tag Archives: Jeremiad

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Sheep in Wolf Clothing

I suppose it has always happened -there’s very little that’s really new around; I still wonder why it’s necessary, though. Even through the lens of my white male privilege –my through-a-glass-darkly upbringing- I continue to wonder about these things. Why, for example, do I even have a lens? Was it necessary simply because in the chromosomal lottery, I got the Y? Or is it rather because others lack one? Others? There’s a difference, I guess: one side brings children -even the Y’s- into the world, and nourishes them until they are old enough to be independent; the other side… what, fears  that ability, despite experiencing it themselves? I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Call me naïve, but does that not make us interdependent? Partners in survival?

Anyway, despite my anguished jeremiad, and notwithstanding my somewhat childish credulity, I love it that people have always pressed against boundaries. Crossed borders. Transcended gender constraints. Limits which have been arbitrarily imposed have been challenges from time immemorial.

Until we searched, records of past successes were unfortunately few in number -hidden, or at least difficult to access- not necessarily because they failed, but more often I would suspect because history is written by the dominant. Controlled by those who commanded the prevailing power structure and had greater access to whatever educational resources were available at the time. Military and church, after all, were predominately unisexual, so it seemed rare to read about females that stood out for things other than pandering to male needs, or gaining fame as consorts to royalty.

A few exceptions proved the rule, of course. To pick only a few of my favourites of the many historical examples we were once offered: the fourth century Greek mathematician and philosopher, Hypatia; Lady Li, an artist in tenth century China; the twelfth century polymath Hildegard von Bingen. She was not only a Benedictine abbess, but also a philosopher, natural historian and writer -and she first came to my attention for her musical compositions; Fanny Mendelssohn, a composer and pianist, the talented sister of the more well-known Felix. And then there was the nineteenth century novelist Georges Sand, albeit perhaps more famous for her association with Chopin (and other famous men of the time) than her writings.

The list has recently become much, much longer -and growing- as we begin to delve into historical documents more thoroughly. It would seem that our knowledge of the past is directly proportional to the prevailing ethos –the effort expended… There have always been women who’ve excelled, but there have not always been people who wanted to hear about it…

I do, though; I’m always inspired by anyone who is able to critically assess that which represses them, and come up with a solution. I suppose most of the answers are variations on the same methodology, and yet they still make me want to cheer. An article I found in the BBC news was particularly heartening I think –especially its little twist: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-39705424

It’s the story of a woman in Tanzania who ran away from an abusive husband and ended up in the ‘small Tanzanian town of Mererani, in the foothills of Africa’s highest mountain, Kilimanjaro – the only place in the world where mining for a rare, violet-blue gemstone called tanzanite takes place.’

Only men were allowed in the mine so, like in a fairy story, she disguised herself as a man and went to work. She called herself ‘Uncle Hussein’. ‘”I acted like a gorilla,” she says, “I could fight, my language was bad, I could carry a big knife like a Maasai [warrior]. Nobody knew I was a woman because everything I was doing I was doing like a man.”’

And, just like in a real fairy story, ‘after about a year, she struck it rich, uncovering two massive clusters of tanzanite stones. With the money that she made she built new homes for her father, mother and twin sister, bought herself more tools, and began employing miners to work for her.’

But, as in all parables like this, ‘her cover was so convincing that it took an extraordinary set of circumstances for her true identity to finally be revealed. A local woman had reported that she’d been raped by some of the miners and Pili [Uncle Hussein’s real name] was arrested as a suspect.’

Of course, the truth was soon revealed and she was released. ‘But even after that her fellow miners found it hard to believe they had been duped for so long. […] Pili has built a successful career and today owns her own mining company with 70 employees. Three of her employees are women, but they work as cooks not as miners. Pili says that although there are more women in the mining industry than when she started out, even today very few actually work in the mines. “Some [women] wash the stones, some are brokers, some are cooking,” she says, “but they’re not going down in to the mines, it’s not easy to get women to do what I did.”

She has married again, although ‘Finding a husband when everyone is accustomed to regarding you as a man is not easy, Pili found, though eventually she succeeded. “The question in his mind was always, ‘Is she really a woman?'” she recalls. “It took five years for him to come closer to me.”’

‘Pili’s success has enabled her to pay for the education of more than 30 nieces, nephews and grandchildren. But despite this she says she wouldn’t encourage her own daughter to follow in her footsteps. “I’m proud of what I did – it has made me rich, but it was hard for me,” she says. “I want to make sure that my daughter goes to school, she gets an education and then she is able to run her life in a very different way, far away from what I experienced.”’

I love the kind of story of someone encountering and then overcoming seemingly overwhelming odds. I suppose we all do –it’s a classic fable, isn’t it? A veni, vidi, vici episode to be sure. But I am still saddened that it has to be like this. Not that there have to be challenges, you understand –it would be a boring world that offered none- nor even that only a few manage to see it as an opportunity, a fence that needs climbing. No, I’m sad that after all this time, whether out of fear or mistrust, there are still walls like this.

And yet, I remember lines from a poem by William Ernest Henley –‘Invictus’: ‘In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed’. And, more especially, the last stanza: ‘It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.’

Let us all hope so…

 

 

 

 

 

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Trust in the Tameness of a Wolf?

Okay, enough is enough! All these years I have been an advocate of cultural relativism. Ethical parity when societal mores and folkways are accounted for. I still am a staunch defender of freedom of belief and societally derived variations from what might be seen as a Western norm, but there are times when I must step back and shake my head. Some things beggar all tenets of humane behaviour. Beggar belief, for that matter… Beggar all conceptions of canon, doctrine, creed… They are ethically and philosophical bereft!

The example -the proximate cause of  this jeremiad- is one that was reported in a BBC News article entitled The WhatsApp Suicide: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37735370 ‘A 40-year-old woman from northern India killed herself in January after a video of her being raped was circulated on WhatsApp.’ And, as if this madness itself weren’t sufficient to turn the country inside out, the article goes on to say ‘At village level, many are more bothered about women using mobile phones at all than they are about men using them to intimidate rape victims or to share videos of sexual assaults. A number of local councils in Uttar Pradesh, concerned with what they see as technology’s corrupting effect on traditional moral values, have prohibited girls from owning mobile phones.’ This follows from what seems to exist in some villages -at least in the region of northern India: ‘[…]in the patriarchal and honour-bound culture of the village, she could be blamed for “inviting” the sexual advances of a man – even if those advances were unwelcome, intimidating, or violent.’

It’s a two-edged sword, really, isn’t it? The women are able to use the phone and its network both for business and, presumably, to call for help, but the same phone can be used to shame and intimidate her. Blackmail her.

‘In August 2016, the Times of India found that hundreds – perhaps thousands – of video clips of sexual assault were being sold in shops across Uttar Pradesh every day. One shopkeeper in Agra told the newspaper, “Porn is passé. These real life crimes are the rage.” Another, according to the same report, was overheard telling customers that they might even know the girl in the “latest, hottest” video.’

But lest we delude ourselves into thinking that India is somehow unique in this regard, consider the case of a young woman in Egypt named Ghadeer: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37735368 She shared the enthusiasm of youth throughout the world –they are, after all, young and although as privy to the social constraints as their elders, not necessarily as wedded to them. She was 18 and videoed herself dancing –fully clothed, mind you, but too clearly enjoying the freedom. It ended up being shared on YouTube by a former boyfriend in an attempt to shame her in ‘a society in which women were required to cover their bodies and behave with modesty.’ But, unlike many, Ghadeer decided to fight back.

‘[…] in the years since she had sent the video, Ghadeer had also taken part in the Egyptian revolution, taken off her hijab, and started to speak out about the rights of women. Outraged that a man had attempted to publicly shame her, she took legal action. Although she succeeded in having him convicted for defamation, the video remained on YouTube – and Ghadeer found herself attacked on social media by men who sought to discredit her by posting links to it. In 2014, sick of the abuse and tired of worrying about who might see the film, Ghadeer made a brave decision: she posted the video on her own Facebook page. In an accompanying comment, she argued that it was time to stop using women’s bodies to shame and silence them. Watch the video, she said. I’m a good dancer. I have no reason to feel ashamed.’

But as the article goes on to note, ‘Most cases of this form of abuse go unreported because the same forces that make women vulnerable also ensure they remain silent.’ Just being photographed in defiance of the prevailing dress code –a hijab, for example- could be used by the unscrupulous for blackmail or intimidation.

Or another example –one of too many, unfortunately: ‘the 16-year-old victim of a gang rape in Morocco, set herself on fire in July this year, after her rapists threatened to share images of the attack online. The eight accused were trying to intimidate the girl’s family into dropping the charges against them but instead drove her to suicide, as she suffered third-degree burns and died in hospital.’

Enough examples! That anyone would disparage the ebullience of youth is in itself despicable, but to turn that same scorn on the most vulnerable of that demographic –the culturally disadvantaged status of females in many countries- smacks of almost terminal insecurity on the part of the (largely male) perpetrators. It’s still unclear to me what it is that renders them so fearful. Surely our very identity as males derives from our difference from –not inferiority to- females.  Much as ‘up’ is only so, in relation to ‘down’, there is an ‘inside’ only if an ‘outside’ exists. These are not value-laden; not better or worse –they merely mark a difference. We are mutually needful of the contrast.

And yet, the two have come to be pitted in an almost eternal battle within both myth and reality alike -the Givers of Life against the beneficiaries… As if Oedipus had turned on his mother or sided with the Sphinx rather than killing his father -all equally pointless. Meaningless.

In a way, I’m reminded of the Fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear: ‘He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf…’ –or the excuses so readily proffered by those who, in any sane world, should have none.

A question might well be asked about the state of our domestication.

 

 

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The Bicameral Mind

Time to unwrap the Jeremiad again, I’m afraid; I’m getting tired of this. Really tired. I know it’s an American thing, but stop it will you? Or can you? Every time there’s a bicameral shift it tears the fabric a little more and unravels what I want to believe about your country. Yes, I’m Canadian and watching with unvetted eyes I guess, and yet sometimes it is good to hear from the other side of the mirror. To listen to the indrawn breath and pause to look around. Sometimes acumen travels in disguise: the dusty traveller leaning on the fence, the unwashed face of Vishnu. Wisdom does not always wear a flag.

One of the things I’m referring to, of course, is the perpetually probationary status in the United States of both family planning and pregnancy termination. Women’s rights seem contingent upon the prevailing ideology, their status as stable as the government in power -guaranteed only conditionally, and as changeable as the pen that underwrites them.

As a non-combatant, I suppose I should only listen with firmly closed lips; perhaps the border should be a closed curtain so I cannot see through. And maybe I should apologize for being so critical, but when is this vacillation going to stop? I accept that there are valid differences of opinion, and that any decision is inevitably temporally adjudicated. Times change, and so do populations and their ethnic and cultural compositions. It’s happening to us all. But surely the answer isn’t to retreat behind the doors and barricade the walls.

And defunding organizations that seek to address the issues of involuntary overpopulation would seem unduly parochial and even internationally misunderstood. It is the special duty of an enlightened nation to accept that there are many roads and many destinations. It has, it seems to me, the burden of reasonable neutrality, grounded observation, and judicious guidance.

The issue, I think, should be one of choice not fiat. Conscience, not doctrine. To offer alternatives is not to coerce, nor to prejudice the selection; it is surely to achieve the goal for which the options were offered in the first place. Not all things are equally acceptable; not all choices are politically or culturally permissible, to be sure. So a variety of solutions might have a greater likelihood of admissibility. A greater possibility of success.

Several years ago, I travelled to the States to attend a gynaecological convention and discovered that not only was pregnancy termination still an inflammable topic for many delegates, but even the provision of Family Planning counselling for whoever requested it. I found this hard to understand, especially at a meeting of specialists in the field.

I remember questioning one of the doctors I met there and she rolled her eyes at my Canadian naïveté. “Do you remember that fable of Aesop called ‘the Belly and the Members’?” Now I felt really naïve because I had to shake my head.

She seemed surprised. “Well,” she said, after interrogating my face for a moment to make sure I wasn’t kidding her. “The version my daddy told me when I was young went something like this. One day, after carrying the body through a long day of heavy work, the feet complained that they seemed to be the only ones in the body who had to work. Of course the hands argued with them that they were the ones who should complain -the feet may have carried the body, but they had to carry and even balance the load. The only thing they could agree on, after a long argument, was that although the four of them worked all day, in the end it was the stomach who got all the food.

“So, they devised a plan. The feet refused to walk to the stove, and the hands refused to pick up any food.”  The doctor smiled at this point and pierced me with her eyes. “And you can guess what happened after a while… They all got weak and finally had to agree to work together. Only the stomach could give them the strength they needed.”

She giggled at the end and touched my arm playfully. “I can’t believe you didn’t know that one, doctor.”

I hate it when a colleague calls me ‘doctor’, but I let it pass. “And I take it the fable is telling us that we all have to work together, no matter that we’re different? And that we can all have different opinions?”

Her expression changed and a puzzled look crept onto her face. “Never thought of that, actually… My daddy said it meant that we all have our jobs, but need someone –something- watching over us to give us strength and direction… Reminding us of what we should do. He said the Stomach was our Conscience… But I think he really meant the President… Or maybe the Lord…” She shook her head in apparent disbelief at my interpretation. I blinked, because it didn’t make sense to me. I wondered if she’d remembered it wrong.

“You must have similar fables even up there in Canada…” I could tell she was trying to understand my confusion. Transcend boundaries.

“Well,” I started, just like she had, “I do remember one about chopsticks…” She smiled at my multiracial example –so Canadian. “It was something one of my Chinese patients told me after giving me a little gift for delivering her baby. She said her father had told her this when she was a child.

“’There was an old man,’ she said, ‘who was close to death, and worried about what would happen after he died. He decided to ask the wise village elder if he knew what it would be like in Hell. The elder smiled and told him to imagine a large room filled with people. ‘They are all thin and hungry,’ he said ‘even though there is food everywhere.’

“’Then why are they so thin,’ the old man asked?

“’Because their chopsticks are each ten feet long,’ was the answer.

“The old man thought about it for a minute. ‘And Heaven,’ he asked, ‘What’s it like in Heaven, then?’

“The elder laughed. ‘Imagine another large room. There is food everywhere, but the people are fat and happy in spite of their ten foot long chopsticks…’

“The old man was puzzled. ‘But… I don’t understand.’

“The elder smiled and put his arm around the old man. ‘In Heaven, they feed each other…’”

Perhaps, I thought, after watching my colleague’s reaction, perhaps there is something more profoundly different about our two countries than simply the colour of our mailboxes…

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Biding the Pelting of this Pitiless Storm

Hubris –the extreme arrogance that was so offensive to the old Greek gods that they reacted with punishment and an exile from grace- is that what this is? I’m not sure anymore… It’s not, perhaps, so obvious as the vaulting ambitions of a Macbeth or the arrogance of a Caesar, nor even the overweening pride of an Oedipus in the Sophoclean plays, and yet… And yet, viewed from a distance, it’s hard not to notice the similarities that inhere in the attitude that End justifies Means, that intentions trump consequences, that methodology is the servant of results –however narrowly beneficent we define them. And it’s important that we not be so blinded by those touted benefits that we ignore other, perhaps less harmful routes, to achieve them.

And what, you may reasonably ask, prompted this jeremiad? It was a study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on the addition of a second and possibly more powerful prophylactic antibiotic during non-elective Caesarian Sections to reduce post-operative infection rates: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe1610010?query=gynecology-obstetrics -certainly a worthy aim, to be sure. Who could possibly take issue with that? Well, in this era of increasing antibiotic resistance, and the unfortunate dearth of replacement antibiotics in the wings, I think not only the study, but also the idea demands more than a cursory analysis. This is not to criticize the intent, so much as to explore alternative roads to the same destination.

Few would argue that antibiotics, when they are deemed necessary, should be used according to the infecting bacterial sensitivities if they are available –or considered expectations as to sensitivities if they are not. It’s why we can no longer use penicillin for everything –not all infections would respond. Surgical prophylaxis (where there is not yet an infection) is one of the few exceptions, and even there, the antibiotics are chosen in anticipation of the type of bacteria that might reasonably be expected in the surgical field (although there are some who believe that their effect is merely that of decreasing the total bacterial load in the area whether or not the expected ones have been targeted). But, nevertheless, we toy with resistance at our peril.

I’ve chosen to link the editorial rather than the study itself because of the insights it offers. The full-length study to which it refers can be accessed via a link in that editorial, however.

As I mentioned, the study by Tita and colleagues, in a randomized trial, attempted to reduce post-operative infections by adding another broad-spectrum antibiotic (Azithromycin) to the usual antibiotic (cefazolin) in non-elective Caesarian sections (i.e. there was some condition in mother or baby that required urgent delivery) where the current infection rate was 12% -and it worked! Compared to the usual group that just received the cefazolin alone, they dropped the infection rate to 6.1% -not zero, but at least an improvement. And, ‘Neonatal outcomes, which were tracked up to 3 months, were similar in the two trial groups.’

But on closer analysis, 73% of the population in the study was obese -and that, plus the fact that the Caesarians were unplanned, certainly added to their risk of infections. So far, so good.

But, as the editorialist wonders, could the fact that these women were obese have meant that the usual dose of cefazolin was inadequate: ‘[…] should the potential pharmacologic benefit of higher doses of cefazolin alone be evaluated further before the addition of a second agent?’

Another consideration leading to the study of adding azithromycin to the regimen, was that it may be useful for eliminating a potentially  infective organism in the vagina –ureaplasma– that cefazolin doesn’t touch. Unfortunately, there are no prospectively adequate data for the contention that the organism was even present in the studied women.

And finally, the azithromycin was more beneficial in those women whose incisions were closed with staples, and there seems to be evidence that staples, themselves, may increase the post-operative infection rate.

So why, you may ask, have I chosen to comment on this rather obscure study –especially since it seems to have demonstrated the benefits it expected? First of all, I think we have to be careful that we don’t lose sight of the forest as we wend our way through the undergrowth. There do seem to be other options that could be explored before the addition of yet another antibiotic –and indeed should be anyway, given the non-zero infection rate even with the addition of azithromycin. Such things as more ‘stringent adherence to infection-control protocols’, avoiding the use of staples in this high-risk population, or even re-calculating the dose of the standard prophylaxis (cefazolin) to account for differing patient weights before deciding to add the new antibiotic.

I don’t mean to be the new Cassandra, issuing thundering prophesies of doom that will not be heeded anyway, or aspersing well-intentioned attempts to improve our lot… And yet we must not forget that consequences follow actions, not precede them. To be fair, we do try our best to anticipate and thereby avoid, or at least minimize them, but history is riddled with examples of unintended outcomes. The road to disaster is paved with should’ves –only seen with clarity, after arrival.

It seems to me that, wherever possible, we should be exploring options that reduce the likelihood of incurring bacterial resistance. And the answer may not lie in the reliance on new antibiotics -new guns for our on-going war with the microscopic world. It’s a battle in which we cannot hope for more than a temporary truce while we search for peace. Without that, as the map makers of old were said to write on unexplored regions, Here be dragons.

 

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Aphantasia?

We are a culture of categorists. Slotists. Namists. It is a society of Nomino, ergo sum. It’s as if we can sleep more securely knowing we have named and categorized everything we have seen that day –no matter how bizarre, no matter how unimportant. No matter, even, how mistaken the belief that by so doing, we have added something of substance to the world at large. I suppose what concerns me, though, is when to stop the naming? How finely do we divide the gradations before asking if we are really labelling something different?

And, does the act of naming something reify it –make it a real thing, in other words? Or does it merely select it from an otherwise amorphous background where it existed all along? Or, to identify yet another permutation, is it more like taking a shape, say, from a Rorschach ink blot and privileging one interpretation as gospel?

We are all different in many ways –some, interestingly so, others not as noticeably until pointed out by otherwise underemployed taxonomists. I accept this, but still question whether each variation from a norm is deserving of a separate name. Might we put ourselves in greater danger of muddying the water the more we stir it? Losing what we could previously identify in its depths? And for what? Are there really ‘more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’? as Hamlet might have asked – More things requiring unique and quirky names?

So, what provoked this mini Jeremiad? Well, I suppose I am as much to blame as the taxonomists in my relentless search for novelty. As I poked and prodded my way through –what else?- the BBC News app, I came across an article on Aphantasia. http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34039054 At first, I wondered if it was a reminiscence about that Disney film which was set to classical music. I was about to scroll past it, but the ‘Ph’ spelling aroused my etymological curiosity.

It turns out that Aphantasia is a neologism that borrows from both Greek and Latin roots: a –meaning ‘without’, and phantasia –meaning ‘image’, or even ‘a making visible’. It refers to the inability to produce a voluntary mental image of something when it is not actually present. So remembering a mental picture of a face might be a problem for someone with aphantasia, although they would still be able to remember non-visible facts about the face –things that stood out, perhaps, like a large nose or a patch over an eye… Attributes, not images.

It may well be a spectrum of loss, however, as Professor Zeman, at the University of Exeter, points out in his study: ‘..the majority of participants described involuntary imagery. This could occur during wakefulness, usually in the form of ‘flashes’ (10/21) and/or during dreams.’ http://medicine.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/medicalschool/research/neuroscience/docs/theeyesmind/Lives_without_imagery.pdf  I find this interesting; their capacity to form the internal visual memories is not lost apparently –more the ability to retrieve them at will.

But the very acknowledgement –and naming– of this edge of the normative Bell curve set the neuroscientists scurrying to find its other perimeter and they found it: hyperphantasia –perhaps more easily described as hyper-imagination. I have less faith in this category as a distinct entity, though –I would suspect it wanders terribly close to the edge of more classically defined psychopathology, as in the outer border of bipolar disease, for example, or the imaginative excesses often found in schizophrenia.

So, what has this study purported to identify? Boundaries. After all, up to a certain point, we classify difference as merely a variation from the mean –a quirk of behaviour. A nuance, not an epiphany. And yet boundaries are slippery and once determined, are heavily scented with unintended consequences. As the BBC article pointed out, ‘One person who took part in a study into aphantasia said he had started to feel “isolated” and “alone” after discovering that other people could see images in their heads.’ After all, a boundary had obviously not existed until it had been defined, and then, sadly, the person found that he was on the wrong side of it. What is normal and unremarkable to one, is alien, or at least unexpected for another.

But all of us are on one side or another of some line, aren’t we? Our very uniqueness requires it. It is something to celebrate, something to admire. And yet, not to appear unduly Cassandroid, there are dangers in names –in difference– unless Society learns to honour the mosaic. Cherish it for the montage it weaves into our cultural fabric. Accept the ever changing clothes despite any unwanted flesh it may expose.

I may sound like I’m against the free and unexpurgated pursuit of scientific curiosity -I’m not. Against the inductive method of interrogating nature -again, I’m not. Nor am I content to drift with the tide, happy to land wherever wind and water direct. But curiosity is a watchful cat that lurks in our shadows with hungry eyes and eager claws. It needs to be fed and nurtured constantly, but sometimes carefully. Respectfully.