The image and the reality

In its seven-year run, Star Trek: The Next Generation had some awe-inspiring and brilliantly creative moments.  "The Inner Light," "Remember Me," "Frames of Mind," "The Best of Both Worlds," "Family," "The Next Phase," "The Drumhead," "Darmok," "Tapestry," and "Time's Arrow" remain some of the best television I've ever seen in my life.

But like any show, it had its misses.  And in my opinion, they never whiffed quite so hard as they did with the episodes "Booby Trap" and "Galaxy's Child."

In "Booby Trap," Chief Engineer Geordi LaForge is faced with trying to find a way to get the Enterprise out of a snare designed millennia ago by a long-gone species, and decides to consult Leah Brahms -- well, a holographic representation of Dr. Brahms, anyway -- the engineering genius who had been one of the principal designers of the ship.  Brahms knows the systems inside and out, and LaForge works with her avatar to devise a way to escape the trap.  He'd always idolized her, and now he finds himself falling for the holodeck facsimile he'd created.  He and Brahms figure out a way out of the booby trap of the episode's title, and in the end, they kiss as he ends the program and returns to the real world.

If that weren't cringe-y enough, Brahms returns (for real) in "Galaxy's Child," where she is conducting an inspection to analyze changes LaForge had made to her design (and of which she clearly disapproves).  LaForge acts as if he already knows her, when in reality they'd never met, and Brahms very quickly senses that something's off.  For LaForge's part, he's startled by how prickly she is, and more than a little alarmed when he realizes she's not only not interested in him romantically -- she's (happily) married.

Brahms does some digging and discovers that LaForge had created a holographic avatar of her, and then uncovers the unsettling fact that he and the facsimile have been romantically involved.  She is understandably furious.  But here's where the writers of the show took a hard swing, and missed completely; LaForge reacts not with contrition and shame, but with anger.  We're clearly meant to side with him -- it's no coincidence that Brahms is depicted as cold, distant, and hypercritical, while LaForge of course is a long-standing and beloved character.

And Brahms backs down.  In what is supposed to be a heartwarming moment, they set aside their differences and address the problem at hand (an alien creature that is draining the Enterprise's energy) and end the episode as friends.

The writers of the show often took a hard look at good characters who make mistakes or are put into situations where they have to fight against their own faults to make the right choices.  (Look at Ensign Ro Laren's entire story arc, for example.)  They could have had LaForge admit that what he'd done was creepy, unethical, and a horrible invasion of Dr. Brahms's privacy, but instead they chose to have the victim back off in order to give the recurring character a win.

The reason this comes up is because once again, Star Trek has proven prescient, but not by giving us what we desperately want from it -- faster-than-light travel, replicators, transporters, and tricorders.

What we're getting is a company selling us an opportunity to do what Geordi LaForge did to Leah Brahms.

A few months ago, I did a piece here at Skeptophilia about advertisements on Instagram trying to get me to sign up for an "AI boyfriend."  Needless to say -- well, I hope it's needless to say -- I'm not interested.  For one thing, my wife would object.  For another, those sorts of parasocial relationships (one-sided relationships with fictional characters) are, to put it mildly, unhealthy.  Okay, I can watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and be attracted to Buffy and Angel in equal measures (ah, the perils of being bisexual), but I'm in no sense "in love with" either of them.

But an ad I saw on Instagram yesterday goes beyond just generating a drop-dead gorgeous AI creation who will (their words) "always be there waiting for you" and "never say no."  Because this one said that if you want to make your online lover look like someone you know -- "an ex, a crush, a colleague" -- they're happy to oblige.

What this company -- "Dialogue by Pheon" -- is offering doesn't just cross the line into unacceptable, it sprints across it and goes about a thousand miles farther.  I'll go so far as to say that in "Booby Trap," what LaForge did was at least motivated by good intentions, even if in the end it went way too far.  Here, a company is explicitly advertising something that is intended for nothing more than sexual gratification, and saying they're just thrilled to violate someone else's privacy in order to do it.

What will it take for lawmakers to step in and pull back the reins on AI, to say, "this has gone far enough"?  There's already AI simulation of the voices of famous singers; two years ago, the wonderful YouTuber Rick Beato sounded the alarm over the creation of "new songs" by Kurt Cobain and John Lennon, which sounded eerily convincing (and the technology has only improved since then).  It brings up questions we've never had to consider.  Who owns the rights to your voice?  Who owns your appearance?  So far, as long as something is labeled accurately -- a track is called "AI Taylor Swift," and not misrepresented as the real thing -- the law hasn't wanted to touch the "creators" (if I can dignify them by that name).

Will the same apply if some guy takes your image and uses it to create an online AI boy/girlfriend who will "do anything and never say no"?

The whole thing is so skeevy it makes me feel like I need to go take another shower.

These companies are, to put it bluntly, predatory.  They have zero regard for the mental health of their customers; they are taking advantage of people's loneliness and disconnection to sell them something that in the end will only bring the problem into sharper focus.  And now, they're saying they'll happily victimize not only their customers, but random people the customers happen to know.  Provide us with a photograph and a nice chunk of money, they say, and we'll create an AI lover who looks like anyone you want.

Of course, we don't have a prayer of a chance of getting any action from the current regime here in the United States.  Trump's attitude toward AI is the more and the faster, the better.  They've basically deregulated the industry entirely, looking toward creating "global AI dominance," damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.  If some people get hurt along the way, well, that's a sacrifice they're willing to make.

Corporate capitalism über alles, as usual.

It's why I personally have taken a "no AI, never, no way, no how" approach.  Yes, I know it has promising applications.  Yes, I know many of its uses are interesting or entertaining.  But until we have a way to put up some guard rails, and to keep unscrupulous companies from taking advantage of people's isolation and unfulfilled sex drive to turn a quick buck, and to keep them from profiting off the hard work of actual creative human beings, the AI techbros can fuck right off.

No, farther than that.

I wish I could end on some kind of hopeful note.  The whole thing leaves me feeling sick.  And as the technology continues to improve -- which it's currently doing at an exponential rate -- the whole situation is only going to get worse.

And now I think I need to get off the computer and go do something real for a while.

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The silent battle

Today, from the "Who Could Have Predicted This Besides Everybody?" department, we have: a study by psychologist David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College et al. that found that in the United States, the mental health of young people has shown enough of a decline that it has eliminated the "unhappiness hump" -- the former pattern that younger and older people were overall the happiest, with dissatisfaction ratings peaking in middle age.

Now, the lowest levels of happiness are in those between ages thirteen and twenty-five, and show a slow but steady increase with increasing age thereafter.

I don't know about you, but this came as no surprise to me.  I've often thought that I would not want to be a teenager today.  Some things have improved markedly -- opportunities for women and acceptance of minorities and LGBTQ+ people, for example -- but so many new factors have cropped up making life riskier and more difficult that it's hardly to be wondered at that young people are anxious.  

Let's start with the fact that the current regime (1) is doing its level best to strip rights from anyone who isn't a straight white Christian male, (2) shows little regard for protecting what's left of the environment, and (3) is in the process of wrecking the economy with the ongoing tariff craziness.  (About the latter, Trump and his cronies have taken the toddler-ish approach of "I'll just lie about it and everyone will believe me!" by declaring that the deficit is gone, jobs are surging, and the economy is booming.  And don't believe the cash register; the prices of groceries and gasoline are down across the nation.  Oh, and these are not the droids you're looking for.)

I mean, I'm retired, and I find it all depressing.  A college student today facing the current job market would have to be willfully blind not to be anxious about their future.

What gets me, though, is how much you still hear the "suck it up and deal" response from the adults.  To take just one example -- why should recent graduates be asking for student loan forgiveness?  After all, we paid our student loans when we were that age, right?

Yep, we did.  There's a reason for that.  Between 1978 and 1982, my tuition to the University of Louisiana, along with all my textbooks, came to a total of about a thousand dollars a semester.  Now, the average for tuition alone is around twelve thousand dollars a semester -- four times that if you go to a private school.  Housing prices have gone up drastically as well -- in 1980, the average house sale price was seventy-five thousand dollars; now it's four hundred thousand dollars.  The truth is that purchasing a house shortly after entering the job market was a realistic goal for someone in my generation, but for the current generation, it simply isn't.  In fact, owning a home in the foreseeable future is out of reach for the majority of today's college graduates.

It's no wonder there's a "looming mental health crisis" -- to quote Blanchflower et al. -- amongst today's young people.

This crisis is exacerbated by people who seem bound and determined to paint this entire generation as "lazy" or "entitled," when in fact they are reacting the way just about any of us would when faced with impossible odds.  Just yesterday I saw someone post on social media how infuriating it was that the emergency room was "clogged" with teenagers having emotional breakdowns now that the fall semester of college has started, and that they were sick of these needy kids expecting everyone to drop everything and minister to their whims.  The truth is grimmer than that, and I can say this with some authority, as a person who has struggled with crippling anxiety and depression my entire life.  Depressed people don't fake being mentally ill to get attention; we fake being okay to avoid it.  When you see someone actually having a crisis, it is almost always because they have spent hours or days or weeks trying to suppress it, and eventually simply couldn't any more.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Sander van der Wel from Netherlands, Depressed (4649749639), CC BY-SA 2.0]

Might there be people who fake an episode in order to get care they don't really need?  Sure.  It's called Munchausen syndrome.  But it's really uncommon.  And in any case, isn't it better to give unnecessary care to one person who is pretending to be ill than to deny care to a hundred who do need it because you've decided they're all malingerers?

Maybe try having a scrap of fucking compassion.

Most of us mentally ill people are struggling along, trying to find a way to cope with a world that seems increasingly engineered to drag us down, while relying on a mental health care system that is drastically inadequate -- understaffed, overworked, and in general spread far too thin for the need.  For myself, I manage most days.  Some days I don't.  On those days I lean hard into something a therapist told me -- "the biggest lie depression tells you is that the lows are permanent."

But as far as the way we treat others goes, that we can fix.  We can work toward changing our society to lower the stressors on the upcoming generation.  We can support our mental health care professionals, who are trying the best they can under extreme difficulties.  And -- most of all -- we can recall what a family friend told me when I was six years old.  I'd come home from school with my knickers in a twist over some perceived wrong by a classmate, and our wise friend blindsided me by saying, "Don't be so hard on your friend.  You should always be kinder than you think you need to be, because everyone you meet is fighting a terrible battle that you know nothing about."

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All the lonely people

I'm a big fan of the band OneRepublic, but I don't think any of their songs has struck me like their 2018 hit "Connection."

"There's so many people here to be so damn lonely."  Yeah, brother, I feel that hard.  This whole culture has fostered disconnection -- or, more accurately, bogus connections.  Social media gives you the appearance of authentic interaction, but the truth is what you see is chosen for you by an algorithm that often has little to do with what (or whom) you're actually interested in.  A host of studies has documented the correlation between frequent social media use and poor mental health, anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem -- but as usual, the causation could run either way.  Rather than social media causing the decline in emotional wellness, it could be that people who are already experiencing depression gravitate toward social media because they lack meaningful real-life connections -- and at least the interactions on Facebook and TikTok and Instagram and whatnot are better than nothing.

Whichever way it goes, it appears that social media, which has long billed itself as being the new way to make friends, has left a great many people feeling more isolated than ever.

I know that's true for me.  I'm pretty shy, and don't get out much.  I volunteer sorting books for our local Friends of the Library book sale once a week; I see my athletic trainer once a week; I have a friend with whom I go for walks on Saturday mornings.  That's about it.  My social calendar is more or less non-existent.  And despite my natural tendency toward introversion, it's not a good thing.  I've had the sense -- undoubtedly inaccurate, but that doesn't make it feel any less real -- that if I were to vanish from the face of the Earth, maybe a dozen people would notice, and half that would care.

It's a hell of a way to live.

Sadly, I'm far from the only person who feels this way.  Disconnection and isolation are endemic in our society, and the scary part is the toll it takes.  Not only are there the obvious connections to mental health issues like depression and anxiety, a study out of Oregon State University published this week in the Journal of Psychology found that chronic loneliness is connected to a slew of other problems -- including poor sleep, nightmares, heart disease, stroke, dementia, and premature death.  The study, which involved 1,600 adults between the ages of eighteen and eighty, was absolutely unequivocal.

"Interpersonal relationships are very much a core human need," said psychologist Colin Hesse, director of the School of Communication in OSU’s College of Liberal Arts, who led the study.  "When people’s need for strong relationships goes unmet, they suffer physically, mentally and socially.  Just like hunger or fatigue means you haven’t gotten enough calories or sleep, loneliness has evolved to alert individuals when their needs for interpersonal connection are going unfulfilled...  Quality restorative sleep is a linchpin for cognitive functioning, mood regulation, metabolism and many other aspects of well-being.  That’s why it’s so critical to investigate the psychological states that disrupt sleep, loneliness being key among them."

The open question is what to do about it.  Social media clearly isn't the answer.  I don't want to paint it all as negative; I have good interactions on social media, and it allows me to keep in touch with friends who live too far away to see regularly, which is why I'm willing to participate in it at all.  But to have those interactions requires wading through all of the other stuff the algorithm desperately wants me to see (including what appear to be eighteen gazillion "sponsored posts," i.e., advertisements).  The bottom line is that people like Mark Zuckerberg and the other CEOs of large social media organizations don't give a flying rat's ass about my feelings; it's all about making money.  If it makes MZ money, you can bet you'll see it lots.  If it doesn't?

Meh.  Maybe.  Probably not.  Certainly you shouldn't count on it.

So the alternative is to try to get out there more and form some authentic connections, which is much easier said than done.  All I know is that it's important.  There may be people in this world who are natural loners, but I suspect they're few and far between.  The majority of us need deep connection with friends, and suffer if we don't have it.

And the Hesse et al. study has shown that there's more at risk than just your mood if you don't.

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The passport

When I was a kid, the high point of school was when we got the monthly Scholastic Book Club listings.

The opportunity to pick out a handful of books to buy -- at that point, back in the early 1970s, they cost an astonishing one or two dollars each -- turned me into the proverbial kid in the candy store.  I dutifully filled out my order form, submitted it and my money to the teacher -- and a few weeks later, there'd be a delivery of a box full of books to dole out to the students.

Pure magic.

It was in a SBC sale, when I was maybe twelve, that I got a copy of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.

Afterwards, my world would never be the same again.

I completely lost myself in the adventures of Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace, along with their guides, the cheerful, shapeshifting Mrs. Whatsit, the classics-quoting Mrs. Who, and the mysterious and slightly intimidating Mrs. Which.  It was a glimpse into a universe the likes of which I'd never experienced before.

I was launched into a love of magical realism that is still with me today, fifty years later.  Along the way I discovered such masters as Edgar Allen Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Guy de Maupassant, George MacDonald, and C. S. Lewis -- and later, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Christopher Moore, and Haruki Murakami.  What I learned from them informed my imagination and writing style, inspiring my own career as an author.

My latest -- coming out September 1!

I'm not alone in the sense that reading fiction was a lifeline when I was a child.

Research out of the University of Cambridge, published this week in the journal Psychological Medicine, has found that young people who are encouraged to read for pleasure score better on cognitive tests and have overall better mental health during their teenage years than children who don't.  The study looked at over ten thousand children, and the results were unequivocal.

"Reading isn’t just a pleasurable experience," said study co-author Barbara Sahakian.  "It’s widely accepted that it inspires thinking and creativity, increases empathy and reduces stress.  But on top of this, we found significant evidence that it’s linked to important developmental factors in children, improving their cognition, mental health, and brain structure, which are cornerstones for future learning and well-being."

I can also say that in my case, it was a welcome escape from a home situation that was -- to put it mildly -- non-ideal.  Knowing I could leave behind the unpleasantness I was immersed in daily, and tesser to the stars with Meg Murry and her friends, was a gateway to a world where I could forget my troubles, at least for a little while.

I shudder to think what my mental health would have been like if I hadn't had that magic door to escape through.

It's why I think equal emphasis should be given in schools to reading for comprehension and analysis, and reading for pure enjoyment.  Too much focus on the former, and the risk is convincing students that reading is a boring chore.  Yes, there's value in sharpening skills, and getting kids to think more deeply about what they read; but what we ideally want is getting them hooked -- and that only happens if they have an opportunity to explore what they want to read, whatever the genre or subject matter.

"We encourage parents to do their best to awaken the joy of reading in their children at an early age," said study co-author Jianfeng Feng.  "Done right, this will not only give them pleasure and enjoyment, but will also help their development and encourage long-term reading habits, which may also prove beneficial into adult life."

For some of them -- like myself -- it is not just beneficial, it was vital.  I still remember the thrill of getting my books from SBC, and even today I experience that same feeling when I walk into a bookstore or used book sale.  And it's what turned me into an author, now with twenty-two published books to my name.  My hope is that those books will be an inspiration to others -- perhaps providing them with a passport to other places and times, allowing them for a little while to glimpse the magic of worlds and characters beyond their own everyday experience.

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The cost of personal courage

I have been following, from some distance, the hue-and-cry over Simone Biles's removing herself from competition on the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team.  Biles was completely up-front about why.  "You have to be there 100%," she told reporters.  "If not, you get hurt.  Today has been really stressful.  I was shaking.  I couldn't nap.  I have never felt like this going into a competition, and I tried to go out and have fun.  But once I came out, I was like, 'No.  My mental is not there.'  It's been a long year, and I think we are too stressed out.  We should be out here having fun.  Sometimes that's not the case."

Well, immediately the pundits started weighing in.  Charlie Kirk called her a "selfish sociopath" and bemoaned the fact that "we are raising a generation of weak people like Simone Biles."  Clay Travis suggested she be removed from future competition because she couldn't be relied on.  Piers Morgan was perhaps the worst -- not surprising given his ugly commentary in the past.  "Are 'mental health issues' now the go-to excuse for any poor performance in elite sport?  What a joke...  Sorry Simone Biles, but there's nothing heroic or brave about quitting because you're not having 'fun' – you let down your team-mates, your fans and your country."

And so on.  The criticism came fast and furious.  There were voices who spoke up in support of her decision, but it seemed to me the nastiness was a lot louder.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Agência Brasil Fotografias, Simone Biles Rio 2016e, CC BY 2.0]

Or maybe I'm just sensitive.  Other writers have spoken with more authority about the rigors of Olympic training and gymnastics in particular, not only the physical aspects but the mental, topics which I am unqualified to discuss.  But whatever the context, there is one thing I'm dead certain about.

If someone says they're struggling mentally and/or emotionally, you fucking well believe them.

I have fought mental illness all my life.  I've been open about this here before; I have come to realize it is no more shameful than any other chronic condition.  I do know, however, first-hand how debilitating anxiety can be.  I've also suffered from moderate-to-severe depression, fortunately now ameliorated by medications and a family who is understanding and supportive.  So at present, I'm doing okay.

But it hasn't always been that way.  For much of my life, I was in a situation where "suck it up and deal" and "be tough, be a man" and "you should be thankful for what you have" were the consistent messages.  Therapy was for the weak; psychiatric care (and meds) were for people who were crazy.  There's nothing wrong with you, I was told.  You just spend too much time feeling sorry for yourself and worrying about things you can't control.

The result?  Twice I was suicidal, once at age seventeen and once at age twenty, to the point that I had a plan and a method and was ready to go for it.  That I didn't -- fortunately -- is really only due to one thing; I was scared.  I spent a good bit of my first marriage haunted by suicidal ideation, and there the only thing that kept me alive was my commitment to my students, and later, to my children.

But I thought about it.  Every.  Single.  Damn.  Day.

That a bunch of self-appointed arbiters of proper behavior have told this remarkable young woman "No, I don't care how you feel or what you're going through, get back in there and keep performing for us" is somewhere beyond reprehensible.  I don't even have a word strong enough for it.  If you haven't experienced the hell of anxiety, panic attacks, and depression, you have zero right to criticize someone else, especially when she's doing what people in a bad mental space should be doing -- advocating for herself, setting her limits, and admitting when she can't manage to do something.

I wish I had known how to do that when I was twenty-four (Simone Biles's age).  But I was still a good fifteen years from understanding the mental illness I have and seeking out help -- and unashamedly establishing my own personal boundaries.

So to all the critics out there who think they know what Simone Biles should do better than she does -- shut the fuck up.  I presume you wouldn't go up to a person with a serious physical illness and have the temerity to tell them what they can and can't do, and to pass judgment on them if they don't meet your standards.  This is no different.  We have a mental health crisis in this country; skyrocketing incidence of diagnosed mental illnesses and uncounted numbers who go undiagnosed and unaided, and a health care system that is unable (or unwilling) to address these problems effectively.  What Simone Biles did was an act of bravery, and she deserves unequivocal support for it.  The cost of personal courage shouldn't be nasty invective from a bunch of self-appointed authorities who have never set foot on the road she has walked.

And those who can't understand that should at least have the good grace to keep their damn opinions to themselves.

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One of the characteristics which is -- as far as we know -- unique to the human species is invention.

Given a problem, we will invent a tool to solve it.  We're not just tool users; lots of animal species, from crows to monkeys, do that.  We're tool innovators.  Not that all of these tools have been unequivocal successes -- the internal combustion engine comes to mind -- but our capacity for invention is still astonishing.

In The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another, author Ainissa Ramirez takes eight human inventions (clocks, steel rails, copper telegraph wires, photographic film, carbon filaments for light bulbs, hard disks, scientific labware, and silicon chips) and looks not only at how they were invented, but how those inventions changed the world.  (To take one example -- consider how clocks and artificial light changed our sleep and work schedules.)

Ramirez's book is a fascinating lens into how our capacity for innovation has reflected back and altered us in fundamental ways.  We are born inventors, and that ability has changed the world -- and, in the end, changed ourselves along with it.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

The power of relentless positivity

I have a friend whom I frequently take out for walks.  I'll call him Jim.  Jim doesn't have it easy; he's of normal intelligence but has a lot of serious developmental disabilities, and things that most of us don't even give much thought to -- brushing teeth, shaving, showering, changing clothes -- are time-consuming and arduous chores for him.  His only living relative is a five-hour drive away, so he is completely reliant on non-family members for his care.

Despite this, Jim is the single most positive person I've ever met.  Whoever coined the term "sunny disposition" must have known him.  Whenever we get together, he always tells me how much he appreciates my help and companionship.  At the end, he thanks me again, and says, "I had a lot of fun.  It was a good outing.  Thank you so much."

He also cares deeply about the people around him.  He always asks me how I'm doing, and unlike with some people -- for whom "how are you?" is a perfunctory and rather meaningless greeting -- Jim honestly seems delighted when I tell him what's going on in my life.  

He's like that about almost everything.  One Friday I told him I wouldn't see him till Monday, but I hoped he had a good weekend.

He gave me a big smile and said, "Gordon, I hope you have a great weekend more than you hope I have a great weekend."

Yesterday we went for a walk in Cass Park, a big, sprawling piece of parkland along the west shore of Cayuga Lake.  We'd only been out for a few minutes when Jim said, "It sure is a beautiful day.  Isn't it a beautiful day?"

For the record, at the time he said this it was about thirty degrees Fahrenheit, spitting snow, and there was a stiff breeze off the lake.  Here's a photo I took of Jim's beautiful day:

Okay, the Finger Lakes region of New York, where we both live, is pretty gorgeous even in midwinter, but I was immediately struck by the fact that no one I've ever met -- other than Jim -- would have characterized the day as "beautiful."  We were both well-wrapped with coats, scarves, and gloves, so we were comfortable enough, but it was still gray, chilly, and windy.

But for Jim, it really was a beautiful day.  For him, a beautiful day is a long walk with a friend out in the fresh air in a place he loves.  He's not impervious to discomfort; when we got back to the car, I turned the heater up, and he said, "That feels nice.  My hands are cold."  But what stands out to me is that Jim chooses to accept the discomfort because he appreciates what he has so deeply.

As we walked, it came to me that there was a descriptor for Jim: he's relentlessly positive.  There's nothing forced about it.  It's completely genuine.  He doesn't do it to be polite, or because it'll get me to come back and walk with him another day, or to make me feel good.

He's relentlessly positive because he chooses to focus on the beautiful things in his world rather than the (many) difficulties.

I wonder what it'd be like if more of us were like Jim.  Recognizing the problems we face and doing what we can about them, but first and foremost appreciating what we have.  As a lifelong sufferer of depression and anxiety, I know that telling a person "just be happy" is the opposite of helpful; and that's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is make the choice to look at the positive things first, and be grateful for them.  Make a practice of aiming for relentless positivity.

Jenny Lawson puts it differently in her amazing book Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things, which should be on everyone's reading list.  Lawson has struggled with serious, debilitating mental illness her whole life, and this memoir (and her first book, Let's Pretend This Never Happened) are the only books I can think of that made me ugly cry and howl with laughter, sometimes on the same page. 

Hell, sometimes in the same damn paragraph.

Lawson writes:

I’ve often thought that people with severe depression have developed such a well for experiencing extreme emotion that they might be able to experience extreme joy in a way that “normal” people also might never understand, and that’s what Furiously Happy is all about.  It’s about taking those moments when things are fine and making them amazing, because those moments are what make us who we are, and they’re the same moments we take into battle with us when our brains declare war on our very existence. It’s the difference between “surviving life” and “living it”... To all who walk the dark path, and to those who walk in the sunshine but hold out a hand in the darkness to those who travel beside them: Brighter days are coming.  Clearer sight will arrive.  And you will arrive too.  No, it might not be forever.  The bright moments might be for a few days at a time, but hold on for those days.  Those days are worth the dark.

It's like my walk yesterday with Jim.  There were probably people walking that same path in Cass Park yesterday who spent the entire time focusing on how miserable the cold is, how gray it all was, how a cold snap on the first day of April was a bummer.  Jim chose to look instead at the stark beauty of the lake under the gray clouds, the way the wind was making the fallen leaves tumble and rattle under our feet, how pretty the snowflakes looked swirling past our faces.

All of us were cold, out there in the park.  But some of us were cold and miserable; Jim was cold and relentlessly positive.  And I'm guessing that despite the continuous difficulties he lives with, he's the only one who got home and grinned and said, "Nice to be in a warm house again... but wasn't that fun?"

I'll end with one more quote from Jenny Lawson, that captures what I'm trying to say better than I ever could: "I see that there is dust in the air that will eventually settle onto the floor to be swept out the door as a nuisance, but before that, for one brilliant moment I see the dust motes catch sunlight and sparkle and dance like stardust.  I see the beginning and the end of all things.  I see my life.  It is beautifully ugly and tarnished in just the right way.  It sparkles with debris.  There is wonder and joy in the simplest of things."

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The sad truth of our history is that science and scientific research has until very recently been considered the exclusive province of men.  The exclusion of women committed the double injury of preventing curious, talented, brilliant women from pursuing their deepest interests, and robbing society of half of the gains of knowledge we might otherwise have seen.

To be sure, a small number of women made it past the obstacles men set in their way, and braved the scorn generated by their infiltration into what was then a masculine world.  A rare few -- Marie Curie, Barbara McClintock, Mary Anning, and Jocelyn Bell Burnell come to mind -- actually succeeded so well that they became widely known even outside of their fields.  But hundreds of others remained in obscurity, or were so discouraged by the difficulties that they gave up entirely.

It's both heartening and profoundly infuriating to read about the women scientists who worked against the bigoted, white-male-only mentality; heartening because it's always cheering to see someone achieve well-deserved success, and infuriating because the reason their accomplishments stand out is because of impediments put in their way by pure chauvinistic bigotry.  So if you want to experience both of these, and read a story of a group of women who in the early twentieth century revolutionized the field of astronomy despite having to fight for every opportunity they got, read Dava Sobel's amazing book The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars.

In it, we get to know such brilliant scientists as Willamina Fleming -- a Scottish woman originally hired as a maid, but who after watching the male astronomers at work commented that she could do what they did better and faster, and so... she did.  Cecilia Payne, the first ever female professor of astronomy at Harvard University.  Annie Jump Cannon, who not only had her gender as an unfair obstacle to her dreams, but had to overcome the difficulties of being profoundly deaf.

Their success story is a tribute to their perseverance, brainpower, and -- most importantly -- their loving support of each other in fighting a monolithic male edifice that back then was even more firmly entrenched than it is now.  Their names should be more widely known, as should their stories.  In Sobel's able hands, their characters leap off the page -- and tell you a tale you'll never forget.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

The necessity of safety

I suppose it's a good sign when what I write grabs me by the emotions and swings me around, and it bodes well for the story having the same effect on my readers.  There are a few scenes that make me choke up every time I read them -- one of which boils down to a single line of dialogue.

In the story, one of the main characters wakes up in the middle of the night to find that his partner, who has gone through some terrible emotional trauma, is crying silently, obviously trying not to wake him up.  He pulls his lover into a hug and whispers, "Go ahead and cry if you need to.  I've got you.  You're safe in my arms."

What got me thinking about this scene is a conversation I had with some online writer friends, one of whom asked the provocative and fascinating question, "How could you tell someone 'I love you' without using those words?"  My immediate response was "You are safe."  Those words resonate with me for a great many reasons, not least because I virtually never felt safe as a child or young adult.  Everything around me always seemed precarious -- I spent the first half of my life feeling like I was a tightrope walker, always a single misstep from utter ruin, and because of that needed to be constantly vigilant and wary.

It was exhausting.

The pragmatists in the audience might point out that in reality none of us are safe, and technically they'd be right.  Bad stuff can happen any time, for any reason or no reason at all, and as the line from Fight Club says, "On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero."  But still, that feeling of safety and security, that there's someone looking out for you and that your friends have your back, is pretty critical for our emotional health.

These days, a sense of safety is hard to find.  We're still in the midst of a pandemic, trying to guard ourselves against an invisible enemy that can jump from one person to another with frightening speed.  Here in the United States almost a half a million people have died of COVID, and countless others have become desperately ill with complications lasting for months.  Everywhere people are losing their jobs, businesses closing down, schools going entirely virtual.  Health care workers are facing the awful double-whammy of dealing with incredible overwork and the fact that despite their best efforts, some of their patients aren't going to survive.  Add to all that the fact that in many parts of the world we've seen unprecedented social unrest, with deep-seated hatred and prejudice bubbling up nearly everywhere -- and its victims are often people who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Security is in very short supply lately.

Three separate studies conducted late last year track the outcome.  The United States Center for Disease Control, Boston University, and Johns Hopkins University independently found that the incidence of anxiety, severe depression, and serious psychological distress has tripled since the start of the pandemic.  Unsurprisingly, the effect was larger in vulnerable populations -- low-income individuals, minorities, people with prior mental health issues, people who have lost friends or family members to COVID.  Most alarming, young adults across the board showed skyrocketing incidence of emotional distress -- the CDC study found that almost two-thirds of the people from eighteen to twenty-four who participated in the study reported experiencing severe depression since the outbreak started, a quarter reported greater use of alcohol or drugs to cope with the stress, and a quarter said they'd seriously considered suicide in the last thirty days.

This is horrifying and alarming.  We already had a built-in mental health crisis ongoing because of the stigma of mental illness and our society's unwillingness to radically revamp the way it's monitored, treated, and covered by insurance.  COVID has taken a dreadful situation and made it much, much worse, and I fear the repercussions will far outlast the pandemic itself.

The worst part is that the nature of the pandemic has taken away the one thing that can make emotional distress bearable; comfort from our friends and loved ones.  I was talking with some friends (online, of course) a few days ago about what we miss most from the pre-pandemic days, and one that came up over and over was "long hugs from friends."  I'm terribly shy by nature, but that one was spot-on.  Even we introverts are struggling with the isolation.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Smellyavocado, Bromances, CC BY-SA 3.0]

Unfortunately, it looks like we are going to be going without long hugs from friends for quite some time, and that means we need to be especially assiduous about looking out for each other.  Check in with the people you care about, especially the ones who don't seem to need it, who are used to being the strong, secure, competent ones who put everyone else's needs in front their own.  Okay, we can't have the level of physical and emotional real-time contact we had before, but we can do things to compensate -- Zoom or Skype visits, phone calls, even something simple like a text message saying, "Hi, I was thinking about you.  How are you doing?"

In times like these we have to lean on our friends -- and let our friends lean on us.  Be honest about what you're feeling, and reassure yourself that right now we're pretty much all feeling that way.  If you're having a hard time coping, let the people you love know rather than suffering in silence.  If you are really at the end of your tether, get on the phone -- the suicide prevention hotline is 1-800-273-8255.  There's help to be had if you are willing to reach out for it.

We'll get through this, but if we're to come through as unscathed as possible, it will be because we've banded together and helped each other through.  Don't be afraid to show others you're hurting; it's how you'll get past this horrible low point.

And don't be afraid to tell your friends and loved ones, "Go ahead and cry if you need to.  I've got you."  It may be a while before we can back it up with a long hug, but for now, it's the best we can do.

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Science fiction enthusiasts will undoubtedly know the classic 1973 novel by Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama.  In this book, Earth astronomers pick up a rapidly approaching object entering the Solar System, and quickly figure out that it's not a natural object but an alien spacecraft.  They put together a team to fly out to meet it as it zooms past -- and it turns out to be like nothing they've ever experienced.

Clarke was a master at creating alien, but completely consistent and believable, worlds, and here he also creates a mystery -- because just as if we really were to find an alien spacecraft, and had only a limited amount of time to study it as it crosses our path, we'd be left with as many questions as answers.  Rendezvous with Rama reads like a documentary -- in the middle of it, you could easily believe that Clarke was recounting a real rendezvous, not telling a story he'd made up.

In an interesting example of life imitating art, in 2017 astronomers at an observatory in Hawaii discovered an object heading our way fast enough that it has to have originated outside of our Solar System.  Called 'Oumuamua -- Hawaiian for "scout" -- it had an uncanny, if probably only superficial, resemblance to Clarke's Rama.  It is long and cylindrical, left no gas or dust plume (as a comet would), and appeared to be solid rather than a collection of rubble.  The weirdest thing to me was that backtracking its trajectory, it seems to have originated near the star Vega in the constellation Lyra -- the home of the superintelligent race that sent us a message in the fantastic movie Contact.

The strangeness of the object led some to speculate that it was the product of an extraterrestrial intelligence -- although in fairness, a team in 2019 gave their considered opinion that it wasn't, mostly because there was no sign of any kind of internal energy source or radio transmission coming from it.  A noted dissenter, though, is Harvard University Avi Loeb, who has laid out his case for 'Oumuamua's alien technological origin in his new book Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth.

His credentials are certainly unimpeachable, but his book is sure to create more controversy surrounding this odd visitor to the Solar System.  I won't say he convinced me -- I still tend to side with the 2019 team's conclusions, if for no other reason Carl Sagan's "Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence" rule-of-thumb -- but he makes a fascinating case for the defense.  If you are interested in astronomy, and especially in the question of whether we're alone in the universe, check out Loeb's book -- and let me know what you think.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds go to support Skeptophilia!]

Content creation mania

While I don't want to excuse mental laziness, I think it's understandable sometimes if laypeople come to the conclusion that for every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert.

I ran into a good example of this over at Science Daily yesterday, when I read an article about the modern penchant for "creating content" wherever we go -- by which they mean things like taking photos and posting them on social media, tweeting or Facebook posting during experiences like concerts, sports events, and political rallies, and just in general never doing anything without letting the world know about it.

I'm not a social media addict by any stretch of the imagination, but I know I have that tendency sometimes myself.  I've tried to avoid Twitter ever since the presidential race really heated up, because I very quickly got sick of all the posturing and snarling and TWEETS IN ALL CAPS from people who should know better but apparently have the decorum and propriety of Attila the Hun.  I find Instagram a lot more fun because it's all photographs, and there's less opportunity for vitriol.  Even so, I still post on both pretty regularly, even if I don't reach the level of Continuous Live-Stream Commentary some people do.  (For what it's worth, I'm on Twitter @TalesOfWhoa and Instagram @skygazer227.  You're welcome to follow me on either or both.  Be forewarned if you follow me on Instagram, however, you'll mostly see pics of my dogs, gardens, pottery projects, and various running-related stuff.)

[Image is in the Public Domain]

The content-creation study, which appeared in the Journal of Marketing and was a team effort between researchers at Rutgers and New York Universities, found that contrary to the usual conventional wisdom that if you want to really enjoy something you should put away your phone, enjoyment and appreciation of experience increases when people are allowed to do things like tweet, Facebook post, or take and post photographs.  "In contrast to popular press advice," said study co-author Gabriela Tonietto, "this research uncovers an important benefit of technology's role in our daily lives... by generating content relevant to ongoing experiences, people can use technology in a way that complements, rather than interferes with, their experiences."

The problem is, this runs afoul of other studies that have shown social media engagement to be directly proportional to depression, anxiety, and disconnection from face-to-face contact with others.  A quick search will give you as many links as you like, to peer-reviewed research -- not just quick-takes in popular magazines -- warning of the dangers of spending time on social media.  Pick any one of these and you'll come away with the impression that whatever facet of social media the study looked at was the root of all modern psychiatric disorders.

Humans, though, are complex.  We don't categorize easily.  Social media might well create a sense of isolation in some and foster connectedness in others.  One person might derive real enjoyment from posting her vacation photos on Instagram; another might berate himself for how few "likes" he'd gotten.  There's also the problem of mistaking correlation for causation in all of these studies.  The people who report social media boosting their enjoyment might well be those who were well-adjusted to start with, for whom social media was simply another fun way to connect with friends and acquaintances; the people for whom it generates depression, anxiety, or addictive behavior could have had those tendencies beforehand, and the all-too-common desperation for "likes" simply made it all worse.  A paper in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking back in 2014 admitted this up front:

During the past decade, online social networking has caused profound changes in the way people communicate and interact.  It is unclear, however, whether some of these changes may affect certain normal aspects of human behavior and cause psychiatric disorders.  Several studies have indicated that the prolonged use of social networking sites (SNS), such as Facebook, may be related to signs and symptoms of depression.  In addition, some authors have indicated that certain SNS activities might be associated with low self-esteem, especially in children and adolescents.  Other studies have presented opposite results in terms of positive impact of social networking on self-esteem.  The relationship between SNS use and mental problems to this day remains controversial, and research on this issue is faced with numerous challenges.

So I'm always inclined to view research on social and psychological trends with a bit of a weather eye.  Well-conducted research into the workings of our own psychology and sociology can be fascinating, but humans are complicated beasts and confounding factors are legion.  The upshot of the social media studies for me can be summarized in a Marie Kondo-ism: "does it spark joy?"  If posting photos of your pets' latest antics on Instagram boosts your enjoyment, have at it.  If you like pretending to be a color commentator on Twitter while watching your favorite team play, go for it.  If it all makes you feel depressed, anxious, or alone, maybe it is time to put away the phone.

In any case, I'm going to wind this up, because I need to share the link to today's post on Facebook and Twitter.  My public awaits.  And if I don't post on time, my like-total for the day will be low, and we can't have that.

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This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week is about our much maligned and poorly-understood cousins, the Neanderthals.

In Rebecca Wragg Sykes's new book Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death, and Art we learn that our comic-book picture of these prehistoric relatives of Homo sapiens were far from the primitive, leopard-skin-wearing brutes depicted in movies and fiction.  They had culture -- they made amazingly evocative and sophisticated art, buried their dead with rituals we can still see traces of, and most likely had both music and language.  Interestingly, they interbred with more modern Homo sapiens over a long period of time -- DNA analysis of humans today show that a great many of us (myself included) carry around significant numbers of Neanderthal genetic markers.

It's a revealing look at our nearest recent relatives, who were the dominant primate species in the northern parts of Eurasia for a hundred thousand years.  If you want to find out more about these mysterious hominins -- some of whom were our direct ancestors -- you need to read Sykes's book.  It's brilliant.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Fear itself

Following hard on the heels of yesterday's post about the horrifying suicide rate in the United States, and that overhauling mental health care needs to be a priority, last night I ran into a study showing that such debilitating conditions as anxiety and paranoia can be ameliorated significantly by using virtual reality therapy.

I can vouch for the difficulty of going through traditional therapy for depression and anxiety.  I have (at the time of this writing) been at one time on another on four different antidepressants and three different anxiolytics.  There was a merry carousel of nasty side effects, including thermonuclear-level acid reflux, a drop in libido to nearly zero, overwhelming fatigue, a loopy, disembodied sensation, and nausea.  One of the antidepressants had the effect of amplifying my anxiety to the point that I felt like I was in a mental lightning storm, and had nearly constant suicidal ideation.  (They took me off that one pronto.)  Another one worked, at least to some extent, but evidently my body habituated to it and the positive effects didn't last.

So the idea that there are other options is a real godsend to people like me, who fight mental illness every single day.  And the initial trials with virtual reality therapy show that it is at least as good as conventional therapy -- and doesn't come with side effects.

One patient in the study, a young man with paranoid schizophrenia, practiced for three months using a headset that brought him into the VR world of a coffee shop filled with people.  The patient and the researcher could adjust the controls to change the number, proximity, and friendliness of the people in the shop.  When an anxiety-producing situation is encountered, the patient is asked questions like, "What other explanation could there be for why the man in the red shirt is frowning at you?"

After the duration of the therapy, the young man's anxiety and paranoia had decreased significantly -- to the point that he was able to perform in a poetry slam in front of five hundred people.

[Image available through the Open Government License Photo: Sergeant Rupert Frere RLC/MOD]

The study, which appeared in the journal Lancet earlier this year, was a joint effort between researchers from several universities in the Netherlands.  "The key ingredient to an effective treatment for anxiety disorders is … you need to face your fears," says Stéphane Bouchard, a clinical cyberpsychologist at the University of Quebec in Outaouais, Canada.  But instead of throwing patients out into a real world with real triggers -- social situations, spiders, heights, confined spaces, whatever -- mental health professionals (or the patients themselves) can control their exposure and dial up the intensity only when they feel like they're ready.

The reason it works is that it allows people to encounter the sources of their anxiety, and experience the emotions they elicit, in a completely safe environment.

That doesn't mean it's easy.  A VR program to ease arachnophobia caused one woman to draw her legs up onto her chair and sit like that for fifteen minutes.  "I’m not sure if anyone ripped the headset off," said Philip Lindner, a clinical psychologist at Stockholm University, "but a lot of people definitely started crying."

The technique has shown promise in treating PTSD, and there is now a program at Emory University in Atlanta to use it in treating Iraq War veterans who were left with lingering mental scars from the trauma they endured.

So I'd gladly volunteer to try this.  Given the relatively poor track record -- with me, at least -- of conventional therapy and medications, I'm certainly game to try something different.  So if VR headsets to treat anxiety become available, sign me up.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a wonderful read -- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.  Henrietta Lacks was the wife of a poor farmer who was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951, and underwent an operation to remove the tumor.  The operation was unsuccessful, and Lacks died later that year.

Her tumor cells are still alive.

The doctor who removed the tumor realized their potential for cancer research, and patented them, calling them HeLa cells.  It is no exaggeration to say they've been used in every medical research lab in the world.  The book not only puts a face on the woman whose cells were taken and used without her permission, but considers difficult questions about patient privacy and rights -- and it makes for a fascinating, sometimes disturbing, read.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Mental health priorities

What do you hear about more on the news, homicides in the United States, or suicides in the United States?

Unless you're watching drastically different news media than I do, you answered "homicide."  The media, and many people in the government, harp continuously on how dangerous our cities are, how we're all terribly vulnerable, and how you need to protect yourself.  This, of course, plays right into the narrative of groups like the NRA, whose bread and butter is convincing people they're unsafe.

Now, don't get me wrong; there are dangerous places in the United States and elsewhere.  And I'm not arguing against -- hell, I'm not even addressing -- the whole issue of gun ownership and a person's right to defend him or herself.  But the sense in this country that homicide is a huge problem and suicide is largely invisible reflects a fundamental untruth.

Because in the United States, suicide is almost three times more common than homicide.  The most recent statistics on homicide is that there are 5.3 homicides per 100,000 people.  Not only is this lower than the global average (which in 2016 was 7.3 violent deaths per 100,000 people), it has been declining steadily since 1990.

Suicide, on the other hand?  The current rate is 13.0 suicides per 100,000 people, and unlike homicide, the rate has been steadily increasing.  Between 1999 and 2014, the suicide rate in the United States went up by 24%.

It's appalling that most Americans don't know this.  A study released this week by researchers at the University of Washington, Northeastern University, and Harvard University showed that the vast majority of United States citizens rank homicide as a far higher risk than suicide.

"This research indicates that in the scope of violent death, the majority of U.S. adults don't know how people are dying," said Erin Morgan, lead author and doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington School of Public Health.  "Knowing that the presence of a firearm increases the risk for suicide, and that firearm suicide is substantially more common than firearm homicide, may lead people to think twice about whether or not firearm ownership and their storage practices are really the safest options for them and their household...  The relative frequencies that respondents reported didn't match up with the state's data when we compared them to vital statistics.  The inconsistency between the true causes and what the public perceives to be frequent causes of death indicates a gap in knowledge."

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Wildengamuld, Free Depression Stock Image, CC BY-SA 4.0]

This further highlights the absurdity of our abysmal track record for mental health care.  Political careers are made over stances on crime reduction.  How many politicians even mention mental health policy as part of their platform?

The result is that even a lot of people who have health insurance have lousy coverage for mental health services.  Medications like antipsychotics and anxiolytics are expensive and often not covered, or only are partially covered.  I have a friend who has delayed getting on (much-needed) antidepressants for years -- mostly because of the difficulty of finding a qualified psychiatrist who can prescribe them, the fact that his health insurance has piss-poor mental health coverage, and the high co-pay on the medication itself.

No wonder the suicide rate is climbing.  Dealing with mental health is simply not a national priority.

It's time to turn this around.  Phone your local, state, and federal representatives.  My guess is that at least some part of the inaction is not deliberate; I'll bet that just as few of them know the statistics on suicide and homicide as the rest of the populace.

But once we know, it's time to act.  As study co-author Erin Morgan put it, "We know that this is a mixture of mass and individual communication, but what really leads people to draw the conclusions that they do?  If people think that the rate of homicide is really high because that's what is shown on the news and on fictional TV shows, then these are opportunities to start to portray a more realistic picture of what's happening."

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a wonderful read -- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.  Henrietta Lacks was the wife of a poor farmer who was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951, and underwent an operation to remove the tumor.  The operation was unsuccessful, and Lacks died later that year.

Her tumor cells are still alive.

The doctor who removed the tumor realized their potential for cancer research, and patented them, calling them HeLa cells.  It is no exaggeration to say they've been used in every medical research lab in the world.  The book not only puts a face on the woman whose cells were taken and used without her permission, but considers difficult questions about patient privacy and rights -- and it makes for a fascinating, sometimes disturbing, read.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]