Tag Archives: Distraction

Dark Cover: A Plea for Greater Policy Vigilance, Dr. Robert Zuber

5 Apr

From:  University of Oregon

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. Carl Jung

So many distractions, when all she wanted was silence, so she could understand what was going on. Rehan Khan

I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me; all day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. Sylvia Plath

Father McKenzie, writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear. No one comes near. The Beatles

The people dreamed and fought and slept as much as ever. And by habit they shortened their thoughts so that they would not wander out into the darkness beyond tomorrow. Carson McCullers

So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak to one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Yes, we may be in the midst of some great existential crisis, but we’re simply too busy to notice. Douglas Rushkoff

God’s creatures who cried themselves to sleep stirred to cry again. Thomas Harris

This was another of those weeks where the profundity of the quotations above is likely to overwhelm the wisdom of the prose below.

There were indeed some items of hopeful policy significance this week beyond the medical madness.  At the UN, the General Assembly a resolution was tabled that affirmed the critical importance of multilateral cooperation necessary (in the words of Mexico) to ensure global access to medicines, vaccines and medical equipment to fight COVID-19. The announcement of the resolution was followed by pleas (from ourselves and others) that this resolution be swiftly actionable within and between member states.

Also this week, the Security Council presidency turned over to the Dominican Republic for April, a move which not only signaled a month of kind and competent leadership, but which virtually guaranteed that the Council would take up the peace and security implications of COVID-19, which to our mind and those of many others, are implications overdue for consideration.  Indeed, a briefing by the Secretary-General provisionally scheduled for this coming week will likely touch both on COVID-19 response and his related call for a global cease fire to ensure response effectiveness.

That said, there are still grave dangers lurking amidst the “corona darkness” that threaten many millions.   As we noted two weeks ago, and despite the SGs call for a global cease fire, conflict still ranges in Libya, killings still persist in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon, bombs keep falling on Yemen, homes continue to be demolished in the Occupied Territories, weapons access spreads unabated.  And while the current lull in human activity seems to have brought about a brief, welcome respite for parts of the natural world, too many of us seem poised to produce and consume with a vengeance once the “all clear” signal can be heard across the globe.

And the current danger runs deeper than merely taking our eyes off global situations that still require our active vigilance.   For the virus has inadvertently provided cover for political leaders to assume powers they shouldn’t, and make decisions they shouldn’t, on the assumption that our attention is fully distracted by mask making  and hand washing, by figuring out how to pay our bills and providing plausible explanations to our children for why their playgrounds have been closed, why their schools and daycare have been shut down, why they must now keep at least six feet distant from the people they have routinely run to hug.

Such distractions are legitimate and understandable. But they are also allowing our political leadership — swaths of which have proven themselves to be far more ambitious than competent – to make decisions “under cover” of the current viral darkness, often with implications which we are too distracted now to follow but that serve to double down on policies that are as likely to punish political adversaries as heal division; that are as likely to strip besieged families of their full complement of economic and health options as to help restore their dignity and ability to care for elders and children.

Historically speaking, it is not unusual for unscrupulous leadership to use crises (of which this is surely a major one) as an excuse to consolidate power, punish opposition, strip citizens of human rights and otherwise centralize authority. In the current virus crisis we see elements of all of these in societies as far-flung as Hungary, Brazil, the Philippines and the US. The power grabs; the misuses of funds; the consolidation of resources which are then parceled out based on loyalty rather than need; the daily attempts to manipulate information flows, putting out narratives which are almost completely self-serving rather than public-serving.

I am obviously more familiar with what is happening in the US though my eyes remain as attentive as I can keep them to stories from other regions written by journalists and others with contacts and perspective, often taking risks with their ears pinned to the ground.   And the pattern in my country is one that is steadily being mimicked in other parts of the world: the endless self-congratulations; the equally endless lying, or at least speaking without knowing; rhetorical “explanations” that scramble media outlets and sow public confusion; the shrinking of options for medical care and for exercising the right to vote; the repeated implication that the interests of leadership and their friends take precedence over the common interests.

One common thread in all of this is the assumption of these erstwhile leaders that we are simply too busy to notice – too distracted by the logistical and emotional burdens of coping with a crisis that (as one of my friends noted) we can’t see, can’t smell, can’t track its own stealth. It is enough just being ourselves now, tending to anxious children, navigating grocery stores and pharmacies, writing sermons (and other opinions) that “no one will hear,”caring for sick loved ones and, in the worst of scenarios, watching them die at a distance and then being buried with none coming near. God’s children (if you will) are too often crying themselves to sleep and then stirring to cry again.

And under cover of this “corona darkness,” the very leaders who ignored the threat whose impacts they could well have minimized – certainly prepared for with more integrity and resolve – the very leaders who allow their closest supporters to exploit the rules that others are struggling to follow; these people are, in more than a few instances, using the crisis as a back-door opportunity to push their own interests and agendas beyond where they could push them through any other door. All of this scheming is taking place while the discouragement descends on more and more people; while the distractions multiply and intensify; while the bonds of human connection become further frayed; while people remain legitimately consumed by the immediate, including the immediacy of family protection.

What Sylvia Plath referred to as “malignity,” is appropriate in this context. We know that temptations are ever-present for people in power (at whatever level of power) to take advantage of “opportunities” provided by crises to see what they can get away with, to fill the airways with silence-busting nonsense such that people are severely challenged just to figure out what is going on around them. This is nefarious business under the best of circumstances. But when those who dismissed and even mocked the warnings of the coming darkness then turn around and attempt to exploit its cover, one is challenged to find the most appropriate condemnation. It hasn’t come to me yet.

In our own smaller policy context, we were among the groups these past weeks calling for “media distancing” from the counter-scientific half-truths, utter manipulations of timelines and prior pronouncements, and other often-misleading proclamations coming from some of our political leadership.   We know — if we had ever forgotten — that we need better now from our media, from our civil society, from organizations such as ours. As the political elite cleans house of anyone deemed “disloyal,” even highly-respected Naval Commanders and those tasked with federal oversight, we need more people in that space of discernment and analysis, and we need to better honor those who have already risked much to keep that work alive.

In some instances we are now seeing the positive benefits of that “distancing” taking the form of more geographically and ethnically inclusive interviewing, more compassionate reporting, and more soliciting of expert opinion from the medical and scientific communities. This includes more space for the unique experiences and expertise of the women and men who risk their lives in intensive care units and makeshift clinics trying to keep as many of us alive as possible. As the current darkness motivates more and more to “shorten their thoughts,” there are thankfully still numerous people of integrity out there in a crowded media universe who can help keep those thoughts less distracted, better informed and more alert. Indeed, the families we now strive so hard to protect may ultimately depend as well on maintaining higher levels of vigilance.

People will, as Jung noted, do almost anything to avoid facing their own souls, to avoid looking at themselves through the same mirror that they so gleefully hold up to others.   In this time of viral darkness, there are precious few leaders who have demonstrated that they can truly face their own souls, owning the errors that have occurred on their watch and that — deviously or not — have endangered many lives.  Before this time of darkness runs its course and the next one prepares to descend, we must find the words and the energy to insist that they do so.

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Night Vision:  An Advent Reflection, Dr. Robert Zuber

4 Dec

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Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.  Anne Frank

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.  Edgar Allan Poe

This reflection is dedicated to Robert Aspeslagh, perhaps my greatest mentor, who passed away this fall in Amsterdam.  Robert was a thoughtful student of humanity and our always messy and sometimes mean-spirited politics.  He was also a painter who, like great Dutch artists of the past, explored the wealth of human wisdom lodged in the metaphorical spaces between darkness and light.

There are many reasons why Advent is my favorite liturgical season, coming as it does near the end of what in many years is a dark, gloomy and wind-swept fall.

Advent conveys the seasonal obligation to prepare for a Christmas celebration that is hopefully about more than conspicuous consumption and strained family relations.  It also expresses a strong and pervasive longing – calling out to Emmanuel for relief from fear and despair; dreaming of that time when peace is finally welcome to permeate our hearts and define our politics; doubting and then overcoming doubt that we can right our collective ship before it becomes permanently disabled on rocks of our own making.

The image that I have always carried around with me during Advent is that of a young adult, female or male, sitting with some sense of urgency on the edge of a cliff on a crisp, clear night, moon and stars casting light both subtle and mesmerizing.   There is vast darkness in this image, but also spectacle; the spectacle of the “heavens” we rarely bother to seek out any longer, an awe-inspiring display that provides a soft but sufficient light once our eyes figure out how to adjust to its peculiar intensity.

Of course, there are many fall nights — even in biblical lands — that are crisp but not clear; when clouds hover, blocking out the spectacle and leaving the cliff sitters in a veil of darkness that, even in those times, must have been highly uncomfortable.   A darkness that most of us “modern” folk can barely relate to, an enveloping presence for which there is no candle, no flashlight, no outlet for devices: for us a bit reminiscent perhaps of a long walk down a dark and lonely path with little to guide your steps or protect you from the unexpected.

This is the darkness that suspends all of light’s gifts  – the ability to navigate space, to pinpoint danger before it seizes us, to orient ourselves in a world of constant stress that trades off satisfaction for the (not always cheap) thrills of modern complexity.  To be in an enveloping darkness is akin to being lost in a deep swamp (or the deep woods) where potential dangers lurk but where there are no signposts of safety.   We cannot “see” threats that might be lurking, dangers both real and imaginary, those that might attack our person and, much like the monsters allegedly hiding under our first childhood beds, those that stoke fantasy-driven fear and helplessness.

But there are dangers with the light as well.  Where there is light there is also distraction, an almost relentless seduction by everything in range of our senses, an exposure to the world made uncomfortable through its ability to behold you as well as you beholding it.   Our lives are now so “bright,” our world so fully (and artificially) illuminated.  Sunlight may indeed be the best disinfectant, as noted last century by US Supreme Court Justice Brandeis, but the light we manufacture, the clutches of which we can barely escape, is as likely to cause sickness as alleviate it.

As many of you recognize, “light pollution” is a term now used to describe the consequences of what for many of us (especially in cities) are our excessively indoor lives, dominated by artificial illumination for which even copious amounts of Vitamin D cannot compensate.  Especially this time of year, our encounters with natural light are often reduced to fleeting glimpses of sun or moon. Indeed, even if we wanted to, there is so much artificial illumination in our world (before and after sunset) that most of us can no longer find a seat at the cliff to behold the galactic encounter that inspired and absorbed the first Advent longings.  Our obsession with masking the powers of darkness robs us of exposure to the greatest spectacles and deepest wisdom that darkness is best suited to reveal.

Sometime before the dawn of the computer age, I used to run a program at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York known as “Nightwatch,” named in part after that famous and expansive Rembrandt canvas which, along with other Dutch masters of the light in the Rijksmuseum, I was privileged to see with my dear friend Robert on several occasions.  The idea of the Cathedral program was to give groups of teenagers an opportunity to abandon at least some of their distractions for a weekend, to experience this grand sacred space in a manner unlike what they would likely be exposed to elsewhere.

As I recall, the pre-Christmas programs were the most popular, despite the relative lack of seasonal warmth and sunlight. But the “darkness” they experienced at the Cathedral was mostly safe, even in that (at the time) mostly unsafe neighborhood.   The Cathedral’s walls mostly though not completely rebuffed the noisy, illuminated chaos coming from the outside.  The lighting inside the Cathedral itself was carefully modulated (by me) to accentuate the shadows in that great space, but the subtle volume and intended object of that light (an altar) seemed to bring a comfort and even calm to many.  There was just enough light in that vast, dark space to inspire awe in those youth and create opportunity for reflection, but not enough to allow them to be distracted by those many objects that a stronger, more intrusive light would have revealed.

As our current group of UN interns has shared with me, there is much emotional content that can be attached to darkness, or at least regarding degrees of darkness that they have experienced in their lives.  On the positive side, darkness is associated with solitude and reflection, a break from the relentlessness of our excessively illuminated lives and the “flaws” and distractions such illumination exposes.  In that sense, darkness is rightly associated by them with both relief and focus, offering judgement-free opportunities to sit with themselves and examine their life trajectory, concentrating and comforting the senses in ways that daylight hours in UN conference rooms and their artificial illumination can make so very challenging.

We “all look better after dark” one recent television commercial proclaims.  We “look better” in part because the light surrounding us then is softer, more forgiving of the physical flaws and behavioral quirks we otherwise try so hard to conceal, the flaws that make us more interesting to others (also I suspect to God) but often – and so sadly I think — less interesting to ourselves.

Finding space to cultivate that ever-more elusive night vision is a key aspect of our Advent preparation.  Beholding light that can soften the darkness without robbing it of its powerful messages; light that focuses our attention while minimizing temptations to distraction; this is central to tapping the emotional content of this season.

In some metaphorical sense, and in part due to longstanding addictions to our overly (and artificially) illuminated world, many of us still prefer to “sleep with the lights on.”  This is the season to turn those lights off or, at the very least, lower the dimmer switch.

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