(s.o.m.e.t.h.i.n.g) Against The Machine

Everyone is touched in some way by this pandemic and the resulting Safer at Home orders. Everything is cancelled or interrupted. Almost everything that used to be distributed across many parts of our local communities has been crammed into our homes.

Homes have become satellite schools, outposts of work, tiny church worship sites, centers for entertainment as well as the local restaurant, ice cream shop, and coffee shop. Some homes have become hair salons and those that haven't are looking more and more like something out of the 1970's, but with internet. And oh yes, I almost forgot, homes are for families too.

And for some people, while everything is happening at home, it is happening at home - alone. Home is the center of all activity while also being the fortress of solitude. Home alone can feel lonely when everything but relationships can happen there.

So much of everyday life has been compressed into the tiny boxes of our homes. And all of this because of a virus we cannot see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. Living such a compressed life in such a confined space leaves more scarce the resources of home for doing what home does best - being a home. It seems everything wants a piece of home these days.

Compression such as this can lead to elevated stress for individuals and for relationships. As the pressure mounts, people tend to get uncomfortable. Sustain discomfort or perhaps even suffering for too long and people start looking to resolve the problem. In general, there are three ways to respond to the mounting stress people experience. Two of these three ways are easy to do, but end up making things worse. One of these responses is much more difficult, but results in good for self and for others.

Act out.

One of the ways people try to resolve their chronic stress is by acting out. Rage Against the Machine. Vent. Look for someone, anyone to blame. Find a whipping boy and whip away. This response to stress is to take out the discomfort on another. It is an attempt to resolve one's own discomfort by transferring it to someone else. The problem is that the transfer never really happens. What happens instead is the discomfort meant to go from one person to another stays with the one person while grows and spreads to others. It is stress contagion not stress transfer.

Act in.

Another way people try to resolve their chronic stress is to swallow it whole and hope to digest it slowly. Denial. Repression. Dismissal. Throw it into the iron box in the corner of the mind and hope it doesn't crawl out. This kind of acting in often results in problems. Anxiety. Insomnia. Depression. Eating Disorders. Throw that discomfort into the iron box and it can crawl out as a monster. Acting in doesn't work any better than acting out. Paradoxically, the end result of acting in is increased stress to self and others.

Grow up.

A third way to respond that is neither acting out nor acting in is growing up. Now, this is not me shouting out how immature everyone is who feels discomfort. Not at all. Instead it is humble recognition that we all have some growing up to do.

Growing up involves being emotionally honest while not being emotionally owned. Being honest with your emotions means acknowledging all the feelings while also being honest enough to recognize that these feelings are information with varying degrees of accuracy. We are honest enough not to rely on emotions as the sole source of truth.

Growing up also means acceptance. There are some things in life that can be changed and some things that can't. For example, no one can change a pandemic no matter how they try. Coming to acceptance about the situation we find ourselves in, after attending to emotions, is part of growing up.

Growing up also means being creative, inventive, and maybe even a little subversive. It means surveying that which cannot be changed and make some new or creative use of it. So, we cannot end the pandemic by force of will, but we can create humor, new patterns of living, new traditions, new memories, new goals. In light of the thing we can't do anything about we can do things we would have never thought of - by growing up.

Growing up does not act out and rage against the machine, but reaches out to connect. Growing up does not act in, but searches within reflecting on purpose and meaning. Growing up creates something new that is good for self and others.

Couples in Quarantine

Work, school, church, entertainment, food prep and clean up. More of these things are happening at home during this pandemic, and they are happening all the time. But there is no more space in the home for these things. Just about every function of life now has to happen from home.

For couples who are trying to make this all happen, scrambling to make sure they are accomplishing their work, uncertain about whether their job will even continue, trying to appear professional in a Zoom call in their staged Zoomroom in a home that might look like a disaster area just outside of camera view, negotiating work space and technology with their partner - couples feel the added pressure of carving out space for work that only a few weeks ago was intended specifically for not working.

Couples with children are trying accomplish this work scenario while managing their children's education, feeding their children meals, while managing and attending to their children's presence emotionally while feeling the grind of a collection of additional responsibilities.

All of the normal routines of presence and sound are limited and changed with work and school boundaries dictating the patterns and rhythms of home. Where you can be. What you can wear. Sounds you can and cannot make. Tasks you can and cannot perform.

It's no longer safe to walk around in your pajamas or less in your own home because someone else might be on a Zoom call.

It's no longer safe to yell something into the other room because all of your partner's co-workers might hear it.

Who gets the good space to their videoconferencing? Who gets the good computer? Who gets the...?

More communication is required in order to arrive at shared expectations of limited time and space. While each is trying to persist in continuity of work and school, couples are having to do all of that in space that was supposed to be a sanctuary from all of that.

Here is some "couples in quarantine" advice:

1. Have a couple meeting for the purpose of getting all of the needs on the table. Your work and school is asking for access to your time and your space. Get a sense for how much is being asked of each of you and you as a couple. It will surprise you just how much is being asked of you when you get it all on the table.

Take a breath.

2. Have empathy for what your partner is going through. You know the adjustments you are having to make, but you might not have considered how challenging it is for your partner. Giving the empathy your partner needs can go a long way toward getting the empathy you hope you could get.

3. Acknowledge what you've lost. You've lost considerable structure, rhythm, and space. Couples both working from home have lost a lot of freedoms they have enjoyed in their homes. Even though this loss is temporary, it is still a loss. Acknowledge it. It is ok to feel sad, angry, pressured, imposed upon. Every unexpressed feeling will assert itself in some other way if neglected for too long.

4. Encourage one another that this is temporary and you're committed to doing what it takes to get through this. Your partner is your most important relational asset right now. Nurture that relationship with empathy and encouragement.

5. Set up regular check-ins to assess how you're doing in managing this new way of using home space. What is working and what needs adjustment. Keep blame out of this meeting, but make sure to acknowledge everything your partner does that is working well.

The added pressure this pandemic is adding to couples is significant. It can feel like a grind. It is. The opportunity for couples is that they can sharpen their efforts at mutuality, empathy, encouragement, support, and communication.

Nostalgia is the Opiate of the People

Nostalgia is terrible way to heal from trauma. Nostalgia is a poor source of information for identity formation. Nostalgia is a picture pretending to be a mirror. Nostalgia is a novel pretending to be an autobiography. Nostalgia is a drug posing as a cure. Whether on a personal and private level of trauma or identity crisis or on a cultural level of mass trauma of cultural identity crisis, nostalgia is not good treatment for suffering or identity formation.

But we’re already doing it.

“Remember places?” “Remember sports?” “Remember…” We are already anticipating the return to normalcy during this pandemic, and of course we will go to places and we will play and watch sports and we will eat a restaurants again. We are longing for the good ole days that happened generations ago? Decades ago? Year ago? No. We are longing for the good ole days we enjoyed early last month.

Were Americans to reduce our dependence on nostalgia as treatment for trauma, as a coping mechanism, as a distraction, as identity formation, as a way to preserve the comforting obliviousness we all secretly long to protect by 50%, our economy would collapse, our political parties would lose their leverage, our religions would suffer (mainly the religious charlatans), and our government would be shaken if not destroyed.

America runs on nostalgia. The problem is that nostalgia is the opiate of the people.

After World War I, also called the War to End all Wars (which occurred at the same time as the Spanish Flu), the roaring 20’s was the expression of American nostalgia. We partied and danced because we would never have a war like this again. We got back to normal, whatever that was prior to 1914. However, our American addiction to nostalgia and the presumed wealth that comes along with it resulted in the worst economic catastrophe in American history, The Great Depression. To survive The Great Depression in the 1930’s people did everything they could do just to make ends meet. Coming out of The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, we presumed were immune to war because we had ended all wars in The War to end all Wars. We were immune to economic collapse because we just survived that. Now, we can get back to normal.

World War II destroyed the normalcy assumption again. Americans resisted entering into WWII because it was not our problem. We were enjoying our nostalgia as we were finally normal once again. Pearl Harbor broke Americans of our trance and there was no way to ignore the catastrophic evil happening in the world because now it was happening to us. Nostalgia persists until it is threatened. Then we find something better than nostalgia to pay attention to.

After WWII, we tried it again. The return to normalcy when men returned from war was palpable. We can finally get back to being Americans again. We lost hundreds of thousands of people in the war. More than that were wounded physically and psychologically. We tried once again in the 1950’s to return to normalcy. We began once again to take hits of nostalgia to feel better. We would finally feel good and return to our true identity, even though there was no clear identity to return to. We simply recycled our nostalgia.

And then the 1960’s happened. Another jolt to take us out of the nostalgic trance. Social unrest broke out. Rebellion against the relentless nostalgic gaslighting that papered over the social consciousness trying to form fit all Americans into a singular kind of American and when someone didn’t fit, then they weren’t truly American. The 1950’s brought us the message that if you did not conform to the one way to be American, you were not American at all – a threat to America. The 1960’s was a robust, unignorable, and relentless rebuke of the singular American nostalgic effort of the 1950’s which was a cultural effort to feel better after the worst war ever (in America) and figure out once and for all who we are. The backlash against American nostalgia became violent as prominent leaders of those who challenged the nostalgia were killed off.

We tried nostalgia again in the 1980’s and leveraged the winning of the Cold War as evidence that the American nostalgia is correct.

We tried nostalgia again after 9/11.

We heard the call for American nostalgia in “Make American Great Again” and we bought it.

We Americans have been trying to heal our individual, cultural, economic, and geo-political wounds with the singularity of American nostalgia for over a century. We Americans are so eager to know with certainty who we are that the quick answer nostalgia gives relieves the angst of not knowing without actually having to know.  

Here’s the problem: Nostalgia doesn’t heal. Nostalgia doesn’t tell you who you are.

Nostalgia is the opiate of the people. Nostalgia is a reach for identity for a people who still don’t know who they are. It is a short cut to the relief of having a certain identity without having to do the hard work of developing an identity. It is lipstick, it is paint, it is plastic surgery, it is paper mache. Nostalgia is a narrative that seems good enough such that it relieves the legitimate author that we all are of our lives from actually having to write our own stories. It relieves creators from having to create. It is pain relief for hurting people that bypasses actually having to heal. Feeling no pain is not the same healing. We are too eager to relieve the pain and call it a cure.

Nostalgia is the ultimate in seductive gaslighting. It is the lie we really hope to be told and really hope to be true. Nostalgia is the process of culture-wide objectification of people to help them feel no pain and believe they know who they are in exchange for profit and power.

Now we are in the throes of a Pandemic that has threatened the lives of people we love, threatened our economy, threatened our education system, threatened our health care system, and threatened – wait for it – our way of life. These threats are real. However, the cures we are about to be offered are not.

Nostalgia is awaiting its triumphant return. Major corporations will feed us nostalgia to get back to normal. They are prepared to sell us all the answers to all of the disruptions – of our nostalgia. Political parties are eager to answer these questions with nostalgia. We long to know who we are and how to feel good. The now century (or more) old American nostalgia machine is prepared to crank up once again. And most of us probably won’t even notice.

I make no claims to be immune to such forces. I probably have no idea how deeply these forces of nostalgia have invaded my own desire to heal and my own search for myself.

My own little subversive efforts to disrupt the powers of nostalgia is an effort to actually heal by doing the hard work of healing, even if it hurts. I trust that all healing is God’s healing, not corporate answers or political promises. My own subversion of nostalgia is the keep my own existential questions ever before me: “Who am I now?” “What does it mean to be made in God’s image right here and right now?”

Perhaps I am just partaking in another opiate. I don’t know for certain. What I do believe is that I do not want to be seduced by nostalgia and lose everything I stand to lose in doing so. Jesus asked, “What does it profit a person to gain the world and lose the soul?”

What does it profit a person to gain pain relief and continue to be injured?

What does it profit a person to adopt an identity while never knowing themselves?

I’d prefer to take my nostalgia is small doses, a sip of wine at dinner and not expect it to solve for all of my appetites, longings, and beliefs.