Friday, February 10, 2023

On A Multiplicity Of Deaths

 Three disparate points:

1)  The Russian-Ukrainian conflict entered its first anniversary this week.  Neither side is giving much in the way of accurate casualties (no surprise, given that it is a war) but estimates run anywhere from 150,000 to 220,000 killed.

2)  Last Sunday, a series of severe earthquakes happened in Southwest Turkey and Northern Syria.  The death toll is continuing to mount; I suspect they will easily and tragically be in the tens of thousands.

3)  In 2021 (per an article this week at The American Conservative), 107,600 Americans died of drug overdoses.

One death, Stalin is reported to have said, is a tragedy.  A million is a statistic.

Is that what death has become in the modern world, a statistic?

I point the finger and the examination mostly at myself here.  When I look at these three listings and death tolls, the one that "moves" me the most are the victims of the earthquakes. I have seen the pictures and the videos.  The collapses are terrifying; the work that will have to be undertaken to rebuild, if such a thing is even possible, will take years.  And the numbers will continue to rise and the horror continue to play itself out as time goes on and less and less survivors are found.

The war?  It has been going on for a year now and both sides only seem more and more intent on seeing how many of the other they can kill.  Apart from the political aspects, there is the human aspect as well:  they (and we) fool ourselves if we think that if the war ended tomorrow, things would go back to the status quo.  Like the earthquake issue above, so much destruction has taken place that it will take years to rebuild - again, if at all.

Overdose death?  Here, perhaps, I find myself most damned.  Drug abuse has been in my larger family; thankfully in that case, the way out was through Narcotics Anonymous.  But that requires a strength of character not everyone has.  And so hundreds of thousands engage in it.  I have seen them - here in New Home, even in Old Home now, in major urban centers that I travel to. It is easily to feel sympathy in the abstract when reading about the deaths and about their stories; it is difficult when one is confronted directly by their appearance and the culture that the live in and the knowledge that directly or indirectly - as with the war - my tax dollars are essentially continuing to fund such things.

These are real issues.  These are difficult issues. And these are issues that I can safely just bury beneath my comfortable lifestyle, if I choose to.

No, I cannot be responsible for anyone else. My ability to change international politics, building codes that survive earthquakes, natural forces, physiological addictions, or even simple personal character in others is essentially nil.  And those that burden themselves with such ineffective responsibilities only become clanging single issue voices that never change anything, other than invoking a perpetual feeling of guilt in everyone else.

But what I can do and should do is never lose sight of the fact that when we discuss each of these things - whether man made, natural forces, or simply physiological addiction - we are discussing people.  People, individuals, with life histories and stories and potential contributions that will never be made.

It is, all of it, a tragedy.  But even tragedy on that scale becomes, it seems, a statistic.

12 comments:

  1. Anonymous2:45 AM

    What frustrates me about drug abuse is that after all this time, people have not learned that using drugs will eventually hurt you, your family and your life. So many stories of people dying, incarcerated with damaged future job prospects. And people will still decide they are the exception - they are in control.

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    1. Humans often overestimate their ability to handle the situation - likely this has always been true, but especially now, with the "we can do anything with consequences" age, it is more prevalent than ever.

      I wish - I really do - that videos of what has become the downtowns of major cities and minor towns could somehow be enforced watching of some kind. To many (including myself), it is a problem that does not happen "around here" and if I see it, I can just go somewhere else. To those that have to live in it every day, it must be a peculiar sort of purgatory without end.

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  2. All we can do is pray. (And maybe donate some money.)
    You all be safe and God bless.

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    1. Fair, Linda. And if we are fair, sometimes that is all God asks of us, given the situation.

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  3. Nylon125:35 AM

    Drug deaths, unlike those caused by alcohol ever since Man learned to ferment and distill, happen for the most part because of the deadliness of the drugs. The addiction is so strong and instant. I fear that incarceration alone won't stop this spiral down.

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    1. Nylon12 - It is a nuanced issue far beyond my limited scope of resolving. The deadliness of the drugs do not help at all, nor do the fact that they can be so incredibly addictive.

      107,000 is as many people as either Russia or Ukraine lost in a year. We do not treat it on the same scale of tragedy, nor the surrounding degradation of the environments (urban and natural) that this occurs in. It is easy enough to say "give more money", but that does not seem to be doing anything except lining pockets of some people and enabling the continuing behavior of others.

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  4. That is one area of my personality that is a bit cold and callous. When they are in the throes of abuse, I don't have much compassion. I've seen the hordes in San Antonio and Houston. If there is eternal punishment for causing undue suffering, the ACLU will have a lot to answer for.

    Dad did an amazing job with me (as my study of ADHD shows more and more). One thing he helped me realize indirectly, is my hatred of pain. As a youngster I couldn't stand to hurt. I've found that some folks have a lower pain tolerance. Mine was tiny. I've worked to endure and tolerate it, by learning to relax during painful procedures and to avoid covering symptoms with pain relievers if at all possible.

    He scared the fire out of me when I was 10. During a field trip to the PD, he locked me in the juvenile cell. After he released me, he whispered to me, "If you ever manage to get yourself in here, you are on your own. I won't lift a finger to help you out. You know better." I believed him, because he rarely wasted a good threat. I knew if I got mixed up in anything, I was gonna have to figure it out on my own. And I'd rather not, thanks.

    Those two things, low pain tolerance and no help if I got twisted up with the law, kept me from trying anything. I found the easiest way to quit an addiction is to never start one.

    It is hard to know how to help someone in addiction without helping them stay addicted. I guess that is one of the big things I struggle with.

    As to the deaths in war and natural disasters, I hurt for those that are innocent. In my understanding, the fate of the citizens there isn't much concern of the government. And I figure that shows when things like this happen. Little earthquake planning and resilient construction in risk areas. Allowing factions to attack "undesirables". Sin writ large. So death comes calling.

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    1. "It is hard to know how to help someone in addiction without helping them stay addicted. I guess that is one of the big things I struggle with." - Me too STxAR, me too. The line between compassion and enablement is one that is often too fine for my eyes to make out.

      I do not know that I ever had quite the lesson you did from your Dad. I might have benefitted from it: there were things I did back then that I look back on now - not "wrong" things, just stupid things - that easily could have ended me up in places I did not want to be. There, but for the grace of God, go I.

      "In my understanding, the fate of the citizens there isn't much concern of the government." - I wish more citizens of every country remembered this. The government is ultimately there for the government, not us.

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  5. Ever since Saddam Hussein was an issue, I've realized that I can do nothing about the world at large, all I can do is see to it that my immediate environment is righteous and peaceful.
    Though I never had an issue with narcotics, the few NA meetings I've been to have impressed me with their open minded approach: "We don't care what your drug of choice was, how much you used, or who your connection was. All we care about is what are you doing about it TODAY." And that "One day at a time" thing really does work. I'll bust my (semi) anonymity and say that my one day at a time has tallied something over 11,000 of them. But as both NA and AA say upfront, they're not programs for those who need them. They're programs for those who want them. Every addict has to find a bottom to say "I need help." The trouble is that so many don't live through that bottom.

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    1. Greg, I have had to realize the same. Even then, I am still a little uncomfortable.

      Well done on your one day at a time! I have had several encounters with NA folks through my family member, and they are indeed very open minded and easy to talk to. But yes, it will only work when people are willing to admit they need to the help (true of lots of other things of course; just more pronounced here).

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  6. Well said and one that I am reminded of quite often in my genealogy endeavors. By necessity, my life has been the cause of so many correct coin flips. I often ponder how many branches have been pruned before they ever grew by something that has happened in my life. It is quite mind boggling.

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    1. Ed, we are accustomed in our modern Western world to the idea that we all live out our more or less maximal life span. That is actually a pretty recent development enablement by a modern civilization with all the amenities. As those systems crack and fracture, life spans will decline as well (in fact, they already are in the United States).

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