Open Pandora's Box

In a fight between Gandhi and my dad, my dad would win. Just saying.

On my way into Starbucks today, I glanced at the headline of a newspaper. "H1N1 may become a regular seasonal flu." I realized, right then, that I was living in the future. The kind of future that predicts massive epidemics that wipe out 98% of the world.

Normally I don't care. Flu is flu, and I am healthy. I may get sick, but then I'll just be sick, and then I'll get healthy again. But a few months ago I had heart surgery. It still hurts when I cough. Sneezing is an event. A proper flu, whether by man or by swine, scares me. This year, I'm actually measuring whether or not I should get a vaccine.

And then I saw that headline. I am reminded of all of those philosophers, whose names I actively try to forget. The ones who tell us that life is merely suffering, and our inevitable end is our only saving grace. In our future, it certainly feels like that. If it's not a cold, it's the cold. If it's not the cold it's the heat. If it's not the heat, it's the drought. If it's not the drought, it's the famine. If it's not the famine, it's the flood. If it's not the flood, it's the fires. And if it's not the fires, then we can breath easy for the rest of the season.

As long as we're secure from the recession and our souls are saved.

But I'm not a doomsayer. Really. 9 days out of 10, I'm not. And the other day, I drink.

After a couple of drinks at a Christmas party last year, I told a friend that the world was just a million little small, simple things. The regalia was simply that - a few dozen lamps, and table clothes in a room built with simple wood and cement. But my point wasn't the theoretical simplicity of nature. It was the theoretical simplicity of ethics. I think she was confused about some politics between her and an old lover, or had made a comment about things being complicated between her friends.

I laughed a pleasantly inebriated laugh, and told her that it had a simple solution. I didn't know the particulars (people protect particulars), so I could only enlighten her as to the theory. Things that are complicated are all things that were once simple. Find the simple building blocks. Acknowledge the ones you can move and affect, and the ones that you can't. Move the ones you can. Untangle the web.

It doesn't quite work that way, she told me.

Sure it does. But here's the kicker, and why it doesn't seem like it does - everyone involved has to move the building blocks. If everyone's interested in doing it, then it is by definition - done.

Often it doesn't seem like that, of course. That's because, more and more, everyone always says they want it resolved. Both lovers in a fight will tell you in candid moments that they don't want to fight. Both lovers that earnestly care for one another will tell you in candid moments that they don't want to hurt one another. But both lovers that would rather protect themselves over their partner also say that they don't want to hurt one another. They've learned the script, the lover's lines.

The final twist from simple to complicated: often, people get so good at reciting these lines, they even think they believe them.

There's good news - there is a vaccine against this false belief. And while it is in very short supply, it is very easy to acquire, and very effective. But unfortunately, it can have side effects.

I've noticed, in my little life, that the vaccine is in highly disputed. Though its sole design is to increase our immune system to defend against self-deception and to increase self-awareness and group cohesion, many people claim that it will do more harm than good. They claim that, in trying to make community stronger, it will only complicate things further. It is folly to think that things can be simplified for they are by their very nature complicated, claim the disputers.

My friend left the issue simply at "you don't understand." The response, of course, was ironic.

What I shout to myself, at the top of my lungs, is how easy living is. Not the fires, or the floods, or any of those nasty things that we don't have control over. I mean, the things we are in control of: the simple building blocks.

The problem of ethics was solved a long time ago. But people still prefer not to take the medicine, thinking not doing so is the more natural route. Thinking it's the easier route. Sometimes even thinking it's the less painful route. It baffles me.

We may get over it this season, and the sick may get well again. But if things don't get simpler, they will get more complicated. The epidemics will only get worse.

My father, in his infinite wisdom, offers an alternative, more effective method than the vaccine in a recent email to me:

"All a problem is, is two opposing forces (remove one side and bingo no more problem)"

Kill the patient.

God I love him.

- Z