I am thankful for the beginning of astronomical spring.

THE PHOTO: A SQUIRREL

This Douglas squirrel munched on (what else?) a Douglas fir cone in Seward Park on Sunday. Other nature sightings included blossoming currant bushes, a spotted towhee, a Steller’s jay defending a nest, and chestnut-sided chickadees.

Someone told me that the little papery protrusions on a Douglas fir cone represent, in indigenous lore, the tails of the forest mice who fled the wildfires by burrowing under the cone’s scales.

IRAQ WAR INVASION ANNIVERSARY

I reflect today with sadness on a pointless and destructive war that cast a shadow over my young adulthood even as I, like most Americans, were mostly unaffected.

On March 20, 2003 and in the days after, I watched the cable news coverage of the US-led invasion of this distant country with some excitement at the night vision footage, dynamic maps of troop movements, and Dan Rather’s anchoring, feeling vague antiwar sentiment but with some trust that we must be doing it for a reason.

Read this article about the perplexing and perhaps unknowable reasons why the US started a war in Iraq. It points to towering hubris, failed policymaking, and failure to learn from mistakes. The author wrote the excellent “To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq.”

I look on from the fiasco in Iraq to 20 years wasted fighting in Afghanistan. And now the US is sending billions of dollars and flooding the eastern European region with unknown quantities of weapons for a territorial dispute between a Vladimir and a Volodymyr.

I find myself fully agreeing with Republican Ron DeSantis on this point: Ukraine is NOT a vital US national security interest. Neither is Taiwan.

The weapons sent there will fuel conflict for decades. Next will come US-led wars in Africa or perhaps Taiwan. Oh, and then there are all the nukes. The extreme and growing size of US military spending, which both parties have repeatedly voted to increase, means we have more conflict ahead.

RECENT CAR CARNAGE IN THE SEATTLE AREA

On another downbeat note, I have noted recent human carnage on the streets of Seattle, all due to our car culture:

• Man killed in hit-and-run on Aurora Avenue in Seattle. The scum drivers sped off after killing a person.
• Driver killed after car goes off overpass in Georgetown. This one is fairly ridiculous. The fucking idiot was speeding, of course, when he drove off an obvious ledge to his death.
• A driver kills two men and then flees.
• A driver kills a woman in a hit-and-run in SODO.
• Drunk driver kills him or herself and two others in Puyallup.

I think hit-and-run drivers are the scum of the earth. But when you watch the news coverage, it turns out that every driver is potentially a hit-and-run driver. They are everywhere. The only way to reduce this carnage is to reduce the number of cars on the streets, slow them down, and separate them from moving people.

If you pay attention to car crash stories in the news, you realize the carnage is relentless. There is a recent safety initiative in Washington State with lots of good ideas, but we have a long way to go to reduce the destruction wrought by drivers and the design of our streets.

One person who is tweeting every incident of traffic violence on Seattle streets is Ryan Packer. Many of these serious incidents don’t even make the news, so these tweets are their only online mention.

CURRENT READING: THE EVOLUTION OF MINDS

Reading about the evolutionary origins of the conscious mind in “The Deep History of Ourselves” by LeDoux led me to “From Bacteria to Bach and Back” by Dennett. An example passage, following a discussion of complex acts of deception in predator-prey interactions, goes like this:

“The time has come to reconsider the slogan ‘competence without comprehension.’ Since cognitive competence is often assumed to be an effect of comprehension, I went out of my way to establish that this familiar assumption is pretty much backward: competence comes first. Comprehension is not the source of competence or the active ingredient in competence; comprehension is composed of competences. We have already considered the possibility of granting a smidgen or two of comprehension to systems that are particularly clever in the ways they marshal their competences but that may play into the misleading image of comprehension as a separable element or phenomenon kindled somehow by mounting competence.”

I would recommend “Deep History” for the clear writing, the art, the “single idea” nature of each chapter, and the narrative journey from the cooling of the early earth to human emotions. I trust a scientist over a philosopher any day. The Dennett book is good too, and is based on biology, but I am reading it simply for its different perspective and approach.

LAST WORD

I am grateful for the childfree lifestyle that allows me to sit down and read a goddamn book in the first place. My friend (bless his heart) had a recent sleepless night when his kid injured his other kid’s skull and they had to go the the emergency center. Then there was a another sleepless night over croup and another emergency center visit. Then he had to track down his crazy baby mama who had threatened to leave forever and then hitchhiked to the transit station in the dark.

Yet they say we need to procreate so that we’ll have workers to feed to the economy. Or perhaps to go fight in Europe, the Middle East, or Taiwan. Fuck that.

Birds, books and bikes > babies.

A father’s call to action in a recent article made me feel several feelings. 

The dad is a doctor and he was rushed into the intensive care unit to see his daughter, a surgical resident who had swallowed a bottleful of antidepressant pills and was now delirious with frightening writhing and contortions. 

He and his wife were spurred on to parental combat by what they saw, as in past episodes that were less dire. Then, they reflected on what they and others had done and failed to do. 

The daughter made this attempt at self-annihilation after previous bouts with depression and suicidality. What pushed her over the edge was her training program’s brutal hours and workload and unsupportive culture. 

Quotes from the dad 

The following passages stood out: 

“A general surgery residency, however, quickly unmoored her, making her vulnerable again to the undertow of depression. Work hours, often exceeding 90 per week, left no time to establish care in a new state. A 5:00 a.m.-to-7:30 p.m. schedule precluded online appointments. Prescriptions lapsed. The stressors of caring for the gravely ill during a pandemic turned an already-impossible job into one saturated in toxicity and hopelessness.” 

“Meanwhile, her residency program’s culture, like many, promoted dishonesty in duty-hour logs and unquestioning acquiescence to leaders and loyalty to coresidents. When her program lost four trainees, her workload increased.” 

“Once again, establishing care, medication, outpatient therapy, and the simple self-care of eating, sleeping, and stress management alleviated her symptoms. Feeling obligated to her coresidents, she resumed full-time duties after 6 weeks. Her program director assured her she could graduate on time if she limited her vacations during the next 3 years. Implicit in the bargain: no relapse. But without time for mental health care, her symptoms recurred.” 

“On day 5, her program director called me, asking when she planned to return: she hadn’t answered his calls or emails, and he had a schedule to finalize. His concern ended there.” 

“12,000 U.S. physicians, at a rate of one per day — twice the suicide rate of the general population.” 

“Though my daughter clearly had risk factors, the culture of the profession thwarted attempts to mitigate them. Practitioners in other fields pride themselves on protecting one another. Yet we purported healers tolerate stacks of body bags filled with our dead colleagues, after people like me have failed to understand the depth of their suffering.” 

The saddest detail is the lack of support from fellow trainees in the program 

The saddest detail for me was how basically no one supported the woman. One resident stopped by. One sent a text.  

“On day 2, a close friend from residency stopped by to check on her. “I’ll let the residency program director know,” she said. I saw no other physician friends during her stay.” 

“She was sent a link to a policy manual. No meeting occurred. But the most painful and telling response came from her coresidents, administrators, and educators: nothing. Beyond one text from one coresident, radio silence. The community abandoned her.” 

To put a finer point on it: suppose you are going through a difficult program with a group of people who have known you for months or years, and they find out you tried to kill yourself and were hospitalized, and none of them reached out? How would you feel? Where is the solidarity? 

Brutal work hours and a link to Cialdini’s findings on hazing and initiation 

Doctors in the US face a brutal training period that lasts over a decade. The training has elements of hazing and initiation. It promotes bullying and hypercompetition. And once they go through it, they tend to inflict hazing on the next generation of doctors, consistent with the psychology of commitment described by Robert Cialdini. The following example is from college fraternities but holds true for US medical training: 

“We see escalating commitment most clearly in the elaborate hazing rituals practiced by American college fraternities and sororities. Pledges are subjected to harrowing ordeals where they are beaten, exposed to extreme weather conditions, forced to drink to excess, deprived of food and water, and other elaborate forms of painful initiation. Hazing like this has resulted in severe injuries, psychological trauma, and even death for many college students. 

Why do these organizations continue subjecting their members to what can only be described as ritualized torture? It’s not that frat boys are uniquely sociopathic or deviant (as their detractors would like to believe).  

The psychology of hazing is really all about group cohesion: the pledges will value their membership in the fraternity more if they’ve gone through excruciating lengths to earn it. Researchers believe that the roots of this lie in cognitive dissonance—the mental burden of carrying two contradictory beliefs at once. The worse the hazing is, the more your mind needs to convince you that joining the group will be a positive, fulfilling experience. Thus, hazing binds new recruits closer to the group through escalating commitments: you invest more into the group, because it’s impossible to stomach the idea that you went through all this hazing for something you don’t actually want. The escalation of commitment bias works in favor of group loyalty. 

The fraternities strongly resist any attempts to substitute their hazing rituals for some other, more socially acceptable activity, like community service work. Like the Chinese Communists, the fraternities don’t want to give their pledges a mental “out.” They don’t want new members to be able to tell themselves that they’re going through the ordeal for any reason other than their loyalty and commitment to the group. That’s what the psychology of hazing is built on. Fraternities want the pledges to own the commitment intrinsically.” 

Doctors are leaving the field. Difficult process of winnowing. AMA blocking solutions. 

“In my daughter, medicine lost a practitioner of unquestionable skill, commitment, and compassion.” 

The daughter was extremely smart and hard-working, and she treated patients and nurses well. She thrived with basic self-care, such as keeping therapy appointments, medication, eating and sleeping properly, and being with family. Her elemental powers of resistance were intact, but were weakened by the environment she was in. She would have made a great doctor, but now the field will lack her contributions forever. 

Doctors are leaving the field in greater numbers. The US medical system is ranked last in quality among industrialized countries. Medical educators see their job as winnowing candidates out through difficult trials. After all, for each person who fails, there are hundreds willing to make greater sacrifices to take their place. 

Yet others refuse to enter the field, viewing it as a way to sacrifice your 20s to hard work, only to receive a lifetime of hard work in exchange. 

And to make matters worse, the American Medical Association (which does not represent all US physicians) lobbies to keep the number of new trainees low and to restrict the scope of practice of midlevel practitioners. 

Side note: infant genital cutting and “unquestioning acquiescence to leaders” 

I can’t help but include my opinion on infant circumcision. 

I am totally opposed to non-therapeutic genital cutting of non-consenting persons, which includes infants. The practice is a violation of the rights to bodily autonomy and bodily integrity. 

The perspective article includes the phrase, “unquestioning acquiescence to leaders.” 

This unquestioning acquiescence to authority is one of many reasons why genital cutting of male infants is rampant in the US: a culture of medicine where residents venerate their “attendings” (as their mentors are called) and repeat what they were trained to do unquestioningly over their career, in a way that contradicts evidence, ethics, and common sense. 

The above note on brutal initiation rituals holds true with infant genital cutting. Parents also think that since the dad went through this blood ritual, the son must be subjected to it also, otherwise the cognitive dissonance remains unresolved: “Why would someone have inflicted harm on me by cutting my genitals needlessly? That makes no sense. If I don’t cut my son, then I have to grapple with the idea that something pointless was done that harmed me. So, we must continue the tradition by cutting our son.” 

Endless wisdom from The Magic Mountain 

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann treats very humanely of disease, suffering and the sometimes-questionable role of the doctor. The following passage is about a character who abided by a code, to both his honor and detriment, and later felt “shame and self-reproach” for faltering to a powerful affliction: 

“What or whom was he dodging when he hid his once so open gaze? How strange that a creature feels ashamed before life and slinks into its den to perish, convinced that it cannot hope to encounter any respect or reverence for its sufferings and death throes – and rightly so, for joyous birds on the wing show no honor to a sick comrade in their flock, but instead peck him angrily, disdainfully with their beaks. That is base nature’s way – but a very human, loving mercy swelled up in Hans Castorp’s breast when he saw that dark, instinctive shame in poor Joachim’s eyes.” 

Last word: “It’s time we started looking after our own” 

American doctors go through rigorous training to pursue a career healing the sick. I don’t mean to disparage them as indifferent bullies. But the culture, especially during training and residency, needs to change. 

The article ends with a call for doctors to do as members of other fields do and look after each other. 

About the photo 

Two women with the same outfit on the Seattle waterfront in Fall 2022. 

There is a lot to be thankful for.

My moviegoing buddy

My friend is a man of extraordinary verbal intelligence.

When you combine this with the ridiculous amount of time he spends on political Twitter and movie fan websites, the result is that I drink in high-level analysis and opinion of the films we see. On our walks back from the theater he peels away layers and motifs I hardly noticed and offers trivia about the actors, directors, and consistent or changing themes of their productions. He draws out overarching styles in the director’s films, visual symbolism, and the vibe of the music. He ought to run a critic’s podcast, but this would take away from his insane amount of pot smoking and YouTube browsing.

A couple of recent favorites were The Menu (hilarious and satisfying) and M3GAN (I love seeing a robot dance and murder people).

The other day we saw Infinity Pool and snacked on a piroshky or two. I was drawn in after the fateful handjob scene and then absorbed in the gory, nihilistic playground depicted in the film. I laughed and laughed, especially during a climactic scene where the main character whimpers while suckling at a breast smeared with the blood of the clone of him that he had just pulverized with his fist. But although I found it hilarious, my subconscious was affected, judging by the strange dreams I have had since.

Mass Effect

I am engrossed in this trilogy of video games.

The story has links to biological evolution, AI, and a political system of alien races, all in a context of hard sci fi (with some exceptions to make it interesting). The emotional impact of choices in the game is greater than with Fallout, another favorite.

I keep finding other fans. One acquaintance has sunk 25 DAYS into the game. Each person loves a different aspect of the series and is eager to talk about it.

I lost two cherished squadmates in the game recently and I realized I will be regretting their loss and dealing with the consequences of their absence for the next 30 hours of playtime. I wondered what I had done wrong to see my trusted and effective ally Garrus get dragged off and killed by brainless insectoid aliens under the control of an even worse enemy. The dread of space, the biological horror, the mysterious looming threats, the tensions between unity and separateness pervade the games and change the way I see the world.

It seems like this game was expressly designed to appeal to me and draw me in. I keep finding more things to like. I’m very glad it was remastered to make it accessible to another legion of gamers.

The world of thought and ideas at my fingertips

My hunger for knowledge and understanding is insatiable and I live in a world where I can learn about anything. I seek out specific domains of knowledge and sometimes I let myself get drawn in without being deliberate. I have learned so much about psychology, the evolution of conscious brains, the beauty of Chopin’s Nocturnes, Polonaises and Preludes and Satie’s Gnossiennes; speculation on human competition with AI, the rebounding of global cooperation in the face of covid, political repression and war; and the process of mastering another language. How, I wonder, did it devolve small, simple me to contemplate big things like that?

Part-time work helps me devote time to learning. After I graduated from college, I worked only part-time for five years and consumed books and media constantly. When I moved into full-time work, a lot of this learning went away and people I knew even commented on how they saw me less and missed me. The weeks, months, and years went by in a blur because my job (and most jobs) are usually the same, day in and day out, unlike the rest of life, which is rich and marked by significant events and ever changing. I now work only 80% of full time and I don’t think I will ever go back. In fact, I will steadily reduce my work hours until I am at zero. I don’t have to wait for legislation or society-wide change. Full-time work (or more) has the potential to deaden you and displace some of the best things in life.

Biking and walking everywhere even during Seattle’s mild winter

I love my bike, a white 90s Trek frame with refitted components, cruiser handlebars, and 650b size tires.

Food and drink

Like ideas and knowledge, all the food is at my fingertips (Indian, French, American, Japanese, Russian) and all the cocktails and beer (but not wine, which is gross) including negronis, sours, and the occasional lovingly poured and settled Guinness.

I like to sip a wet martini with a twist and a dash of orange bitters at the top of Smith Tower and watch the vast Puget Sound at sunset. I also love picking up hot and spicy Mumbai street food or sitting with an extra-hot cappuccino and a library book.

Meeting interesting people in unexpected places

I relax my defenses and become alive to the inner world of others as revealed through conversation and shared experience, including their slight discontent, their reason-giving and explanations for what they see, their strange assumptions and their peculiar desires. Some of them become confederates, some request for things, some all but ask to be friends (belying the idea of a “Seattle freeze”), some want to know all about me, some are restrained, and some are a bit predictable or “of a type.”

About the photo

This woman was luxuriating in Olympic Sculpture Park last week with “Echo” by Jaume Plensa in the background, echoing the color of her hair.