Leadership and The Shadow King: A Jungian Perspective on the American Election

Posted on October 8, 2020October 8, 2020 by Peter Scott Cameron

It will surprise no one to say that the United States faces a stark choice this November in its choice of President, and that the nation is in a precarious state, with an election season and process that is quite unlike any in memory. There is no need to name the protagonists; we know who they are.

There have been many challenging times since the American Civil War, but not many in which there was so little political stability, and in which the population was so cloven apart as it is now.

Carl Jung, the great psychoanalyst, would comprehend what has happened. He would tell us that we, the people, have fallen under the power of the shadow, that dark part of our unconscious – the collective unconscious in this case – as the Germans once did, in the 1930’s. Hitler’s power was not political, Jung claimed; rather it was magic. It was magic because its power derives from the unconscious and the shadow. (i)

In Jungian psychology, among the archetypes – those primordial images or psychic energies hard-wired into the unconscious of human beings – there is the powerful archetype of the “King.” It could just as well be the “Queen”; (ii) in either case it is the Leader who provides order and stability for the nation. The good King embodies reasonability, responsibility, rational patterns of action, integrity and honest purpose – not just demonstrating these on behalf of the people, but, rather, integrating these, so that he lives them in his own life and persona. With both firmness and kindness, he affirms deserving others, and in doing so creates a “fertilizing” calm and centeredness within which the people can flourish and become their best selves. The King serves – not himself – but the people and the earth. He mirrors and embodies the best intentions of people, and thereby fosters harmony and creative opportunity for the folk to grow and develop. (iii) Because of his service, there is mostly peace in the land as people go about the business of providing for families, prospering, and developing their best selves.

But there are times, when the conditions are right, wherein the “Shadow King” emerges. The conditions that allow the him to emerge are times in which the shadow itself – a dark part of character that has potential for destructiveness, the hiding place of repressed and often enough, negative energies (iv) – has emerged from the collective unconscious of the people. (v) The Shadow King is both a reflection of dark forces, and an instigator of those same forces in the population.

The Shadow King is bipolar; he exhibits characteristics of both the tyrant and the weakling. Far from calm and generative, he embodies hatred and fear, and will actively incite those feelings in others. His “degradation of others knows no bounds,” because he “hates all beauty, all innocence, all strength, all talent, all life energy.” This happens because he has no “inner structure” of an assured and serene self, and is terrified of “his own hidden weakness and his underlying lack of potency.” (vi)

The land and the people cannot flourish under the Shadow King. His unrelenting assaults on people’s hopes, interests and talents, his constant deprecation of others, his promulgation of falsehoods, and the relentless self-promotion of his own interests will ensure confusion. Disorder will prevail. The people will become divided and fall into open conflict with one another. The quality of public discourse will degrade. Winning, rather than compromise and accommodation for all, will become the goal. Everyday problems will fail to be addressed. Feelings and actions will become more aggressive toward one another. Paranoid ideas of conspiracy will spread among the population. The Shadow King will draw out previously hidden fears and hatreds in the populace; he will provide legitimacy and a forum for these violent impulses. And because the Shadow King is extremely sensitive to criticism, when challenged, he will become threatening; at the slightest provocation, what the people will see is rage – the rage of a toddler, in fact.

And that latter is the most revealing of the underlying problem: the psychological problem of arrested development, the rage of the immature self, the inherent inadequacy of the personality frozen in childhood narcissism, ultimately lacking the development of a normal human conscience.

This is where we are, in America. For reasons that are deep in the collective psyche and history of the nation, we have elected the Shadow King, and mired in a projection of our own unconscious, are considering whether to elect him once more. Most frightening, it is not entirely clear what choice we will make.

It is not such a surprise that the Shadow King has been elevated to leadership in America at this time. America, that sunny, Enlightenment-founded and forward-seeking society, drags behind it a very long bag of shadow material, dating back to its origins in patriarchy and plutocracy, along with the ownership of African human beings as property, and the attempted genocide of the Indigenous People. As well-meaning as the country has been, there have been no true efforts at public national reconciliation of these things, so of course, it all remains in the collective unconscious, and stays as a toxin within an otherwise noble experiment. (More on that another time.)

But also, it is no coincidence that the election of the Shadow King directly followed the presidency of a man of colour, a person of partial African descent. Though he was not the descendent of American slaves, in the collective psyche he represented that, and he had a foreign-sounding name, and these were intolerable for much of the population. Then followed the near election of a woman as President, a person who, although not without flaws, was strong, experienced, and forceful. She won most of the votes of the people – but was prevented from assuming the role of Queen by that remnant of the patriarchal, plutocratic system, the Electoral College.

This all follows a principle of a certain kind of “social physics,” we might call it, where for every social action, there is an opposing, equal reaction. Progressive social steps will stimulate their opposites. Thus, the good King of partial African descent and the near election of a strong Queen was followed by a rejection of all that and by the ascension of a hyper-masculine, misogynistic, supremacist Shadow King.

Of course, not all people accepted this – particularly women did not. For the most part, they knew exactly what they saw before them. They precisely knew who had been elected. They took to the streets, in millions, all over the country, wearing their pink “pussy-hats,” warning the rest of us of what was to come.

And so now: the election of 2020 is upon us. One option is to affirm the leadership of the Shadow King.

The other option is choosing a good, if humanly imperfect King. He is a person with compassion for others, one who eaten more than one full meal of the ashes of his own grief, and therefore is sensitive to the grief and longings of others. He is one who has known failure along with success; one who knows that it is human to stumble, and human again to pick oneself up. He is one who admits and understands his mistakes, and so not only learns from them, but also is willing to help others adjust themselves and move toward integrity and growth.

There are days that I think we are at the point of no return as a nation. I admit that I am afraid of what we will do. Our election choice not mysterious, not cloudy. On the one hand, on the ballot is the Shadow King. We have the experience of him and know what that is and what the future will be if we allow his leadership to continue.

On the other hand, on the ballot is the ordinary, the human, the good King. We do not yet have the experience of this person as King; but we do know very well who he is, and we know his long service to the nation.

The choice is as stark, and as telling, as it could be.

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(i) Knickerbocker, Hubert R. Is Tomorrow Hitler’s? (Omnibook Magazine, February 1942). Retrieved from “Old Magazine Articles,” http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/carl_jung_studied_hitler#.Wfi00hNSy-U.

(ii) I will use the “King” here, but it could just as well be “Queen.” For our purposes, gender, although it plays out powerfully in American public life, is not the issue in the present discussion. I use “King” simply because both candidates currently are male, and America has not yet found itself willing to elect a “Queen.”

(iii) Moore, Robert, and Douglas Gillette. King Warrior Magician Lover (HarperOne, 1990), 49 – 74.

(iv) Johnson, Robert A. Owning Your Own Shadow (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 4.

(v) The Shadow is not made entirely of destructive energy; it can also include more positive energies, such as exuberant and creative impulses that are put away – stuffed into the “long bag” – as a result of social conditioning, particularly in childhood. See Bly, Robert. A Little Book on the Human Shadow (HarperOne, 1988), 17 – 26.

(vi) Moore and Gillette, King Warrior Magician Lover. 64.

An Open Letter to Climate Change Deniers

Posted on September 27, 2020September 28, 2020 by Peter Scott Cameron

I have known some otherwise reasonable people who have fallen prey to think-tank propaganda, funded by the oil interests, that denies the reality of climate change, or its impact, or its origin – or in most cases, all three.

Let me state what the scientific consensus, and the reality is:

Climate change is occurring, including global warming, along with increasing catastrophic weather changes.
Its effects are substantial and accelerating.
Mainly this devastation is due to the release of excessive carbon into the atmosphere because of human activity, including the burning of fossil fuel and cattle husbandry.
Left unchecked, this will render life miserable, if not unsustainable, for most creatures, including human beings.
The only true area of remaining scientific debate concerns how fast and how severe the effects will be.
We can ameliorate this, if not stop and even reverse it, by concerted wise human effort and intelligent technological change.

Period. End of story. Finum suum.

We have been aware of the problem for at least forty years, although the scientific picture has gotten clearer over the decades. At the same time, we have had forty years of climate-change-denial propaganda that has muddied things and derailed action. The propaganda has been constructed and disseminated by so-called “think tanks” and their minions on television and talk-radio, mainly funded by oil interests such as Exxon and extreme right societal and political manipulators such as the Koch brothers. It is unconscionable, criminal.

Concerning the scientific consensus, consider this thought experiment, with thanks to Tom Friedman.[i] Suppose your doctor says to you that your child has a deadly condition, but that it can be remedied by a careful course of treatment. However, your child appears to be pretty much okay, and you are not sure you want to have your child take the medication, so you ask for a second opinion. You go to ninety-eight other family physicians and pediatricians, and despite some slight differences concerning the potential severity of the condition and the strength of the remedy required, they all give you essentially the same diagnosis and treatment plan.

However, you find one doctor who says that your child’s apparent disease is a part of a completely normal cycle of nature, and adds that even there were a problem, it will disappear causing no harm. All you must do is to make sure your child continues life as before.

As a concerned parent, what would you do? Whom would you believe: the ninety-nine reputable physicians, or the last one?

This is the situation. The consensus from objective scientific observation and data analysis communicated by reputable scientists is clear and decisive.

Even if you prefer to acquire your opinions second-hand from television, as many of us do, whom would you trust on the matter of climate change: say, David Attenborough, the honoured naturalist and renowned BBC broadcaster, a level-headed man of integrity? Or would you trust the likes of Tucker Carlson, highly paid to bloviate, make trouble and manufacture controversy on Fox “News,” funded by the nefarious Rupert Murdoch?

I know what my choice would be.

It is all rather simple. The basic news is bad of course. It is uncomfortable and calls for changes. Yet there is good news. The problem really is fixable and does not have to be all that painful. The medicine is good, and we are perfectly capable of both making it and taking it. It is as easy to swallow as that good old Canadian cough syrup, Buckley’s Mixture, notorious in my childhood for its dubious taste. It was a little challenging going down, but boy, did you feel good about it afterward. And you got better.

Addressing climate change is like that. It can be halted. If you are a denier and will not help us out on this, at least, please:

Get out of the way so that we can get on with the doable job of reclaiming a habitable planet for our grandchildren and the other remaining species on earth.

Graveyard Shift, 1976, North Bay, Ontario

Posted on September 7, 2020September 27, 2020 by Peter Scott Cameron

They drive through the town, the cold, the snow and the dark, through the still Sunday night of lights-out-early-to-bed, across railway tracks by the hard-rock lake-shore, to the old red machining plant, to the dulled shuffling under the “Employees Only” sign, grunted greetings and the punch clock chatter – 11:46 PM SUN – sips of coffee: the men on graveyard sit without words before working.

Fifty-seven men, singly, in twos and threes, move from the lunch room past the rows of faded green lockers, into the shop oddly quiet and cool; alone the oddness of Sunday night hanging, alone the tired freedom of the graveyard, with no bosses, hangs.

Past the milling machines: the Clevelands, the Cincinnaties, the Toms, the Indumas, already with stainless cutters rotating and white coolant pouring, all ready silent men with rubber aprons lean over tables by the rows of lathes: the Man-au-Cycles, the Herberts, the Harrisons, the Hindustans, with vicious turrets stocked with centers and small drill-chunks and bits, the Standard-Moderns, the Acmes, a Colchester, and the pair of Warner-Swasey boring machines; levers and buttons and handles jut and bend and turn, and turn.

The noise builds, the snapping of tool boxes and the clunking of switches, gears thumping, rolling, clutches let out, oil pumps pumping, the squawk of a dull carbide bit left on Friday’s shift, clutches tossed in, chucks rotating in splashing oil, air pressure tail-stocks thudding into place, the whir of the rod straightener, high speed steel on brass, carbide on mild steel, turrets crawling like green spiders, idler-shafts and worm-gears rolling: finally, the great presses crash and pound through the floors and walls and skulls, the hot millers and grinders scream high over growling gearboxes and clattering chuck brakes.

The night moves on: finished pieces lining up on smooth metal tables; at each machine a man standing, watching, one tool box open, faded pin-ups taped inside the lid; two other boxes – the shift-partners’ – closed; cigarettes pulled from red du Maurier packs or blue and white Players; and on heavy brown paper towels lie tools in rows: the micrometers, the Verniers, the calipers, straight steel rules, honing stones, brass hammers, box end wrenches and Allen keys, go and no-go bore and thread gauges, all slick with oil, boxes of carbide bits, and perched to one side, a pile of clean paper towels at the ready.

The minutes, the hours, the cold industrial night , the pushing of black-knobbed handles, the lifting of levers, beginning the cut, solitary beings stepping back, here laying out a perfect blue smoke ring; there thinking of wives and children at home asleep; some dreaming of truck-driving, no bosses, riding high in big Peterbilts, road kings, out of this place, no metal slivers under oily skin, no ringing in the ears; others imagining the worse- off bastards on graveyard at INCO, Texas-Gulf, the Sherman Mine in Temagami and Macassa in Kirkland Lake, using the stuff they make, burrowing on down into the earth, ever closer to hell itself, a mile and more of rock above their heads; some thinking of women with long legs all the way up to there; some recalling the sour smell of dingy beer parlors and the soothing trays of yellow draft ale, and some wondering if they can make it through without sleep. Hands move, disengaging, shutting off and lifting, fingers feeling for unseen flaws, measuring for tolerance, honing, caressing the metal as tenderly as the arched back of a lover, beginning the cycle again and again.

Now and then behind silent eyes a curse to the bosses, to the banty roosters in blue suits, strutting on the day-shift, stop-watches in hand, calculating, raising the count, demanding a perfect finish, who do not work at night; the cutting tool chatters and the piece is rough, a calculation scribbled on a scratch pad, then honing of the cutting tool’s trailing edge and the next nine are perfect, but the tenth is scratchy and tight and goes into the re-work box.

At the four o’clock break the talk is slow, half-eaten sandwiches lie by plaid thermoses of coffee, there is talk about the coming conversion to metric; Guillaume says it’s more scientific, Randy, was a cop, an OPP, quit after he got shot in the face on a domestic, says, yea, but it’s the goddamn people who measure in feet and inches who put a fuckin’ man on the moon, Jorma says never the fuck mind, the government is always fuckin’ with you. Some go out, the night air burning lungs, forty-two below, to start old brown cars that will not start if left all night, motor oil as thick a sludge; a few play cards and a few sleep on hard wooden benches, ahead on their count or too tired to care.

Then back to the machines, parts worn shiny from a million hand grips and thumb touches, the shift leader strolling around, checking a piece or two, hearing the complaints – damn bearing is goin’, listen to the bugger, won’t last the night, feel how hot that goddamn cover is, I need my count, I ain’t fixin’ it, not on gravefuckinyard, no fuckin’ way – waves of hot air fluttering the hanging blueprints as high above brand new drill rods are hoisted from the furnace, long drips of two thousand degree red-yellow light.

Somehow the night passes. At six, in town some people are rising, most are still sleeping, the machines are still turning,; the first-aid man shuts down as the loudspeakers belch his name, and runs to the first-aid room, where two men wait, one close to fainting, with three fingers crushed, bloody and oily, the forefinger missing – Fuckin’ counts too high, he says, I forgot what the hell I was doing – and he passes out; the first-aid man stops the blood, bandages him up, calls the ambulance, and then runs out to the shop floor to scoop up the finger, maybe they can sew it back on. Goddamn that fuckin’ small press, how many times, he says to nobody. And outside, down by the lake-shore, brown fluid seeps from the big jutting pipe, there’s a bad smell, and sometimes in summer people see dead perch and gulls on the rocks and wonder.

And somehow the night passes.

Now the punch clock crashes – 8:01 AM MON – ringing in ears, the dull, gray snow-laden sky too bright for graveyard eyes; the old Ford groans in the cold, it’s the last winter for this heap; the frozen rubber tires squeaking on dry snow; driving home smelling of heavy oil, some going to children and wives awake – Don’ kiss me hon, the oil, sorry, I gotta go to work, make sure Tommy eats she says, have a nice soaking bath later Sweetie, I got a special treat for ya after the kids go to bed if ya know what I mean, ha, ha – some go home and fry up some eggs easy-over, bacon smell turning the stomach slightly; some go to beds with wives groggy and tempting; some to beds with lonesome smell lingering of already-gone wives and girlfriends; some go home to the brown bottle, and some go home to nothing – nothing at all.

Next week it’s days, the week after that it’s evenings, then graveyard again and then it’s days.

And now and then there’s a curse to the bosses, the their natty checked ties and their stink of after-shave, the goddamned suits who wouldn’t give a man one more nickel for an hour of his life, who roll in at quarter to nine, whose black Buicks are new and shiny and always start, the bosses with their bottles of pricey whiskey in desk drawers, who leave at quarter to four in the afternoon, who do not work at night, who do not work at night.

Imagine: Covid-19, The Great Opportunity (Part II)

Posted on August 15, 2020September 7, 2020 by Peter Scott Cameron

There is nothing surprising in the declaration that the world has changed during the Covid-19 pandemic. There is the enormous human toll of it: the illness, suffering and death of individuals, the grief of families, and the wear and tear on health care providers, the economic fear and devastation, and the psychic toll for many.

However, there has been another side to all this (Imagine, Part I). With exceptions for the misguided (to put it kindly) and more antisocial parts of the U.S., the world has become quieter, even where there is some reopening. There are fewer cars on the road, fewer airplanes in the sky, and fewer people on the streets. The gigantic cruise ships are sitting idle. The streets of tourist cities that were once crammed with people are suddenly liveable. Museums that were once filled with hurried and harried people snapping selfies are passable and calm; a visitor now can see and contemplate a painting or artifact. We are staying home, spending more time with those amiable companions – ourselves – and with our loved ones (not all of them, of course, as there are those whom we cannot visit under present circumstances). We have calmed down and this is a good thing.

And as a bonus, temporarily at least, we have also reduced our fossil fuel burning, with resulting lower carbon emission levels. The clear skies over cities have provided us with a glimpse of what is possible, what we can do to save our planet. As terrible as this pandemic has been, it also provides us with a chance to take stock, and to modify how we live in a way that will benefit both ourselves and the rest of earth’s creation.

(For any climate change deniers in my vast reading audience, for now I will just say: cut the bullshit.[i] I will deal with you another time.)

And so, I (and many others[ii]) propose that we seize this crisis as an opportunity to make permanent modifications in how we live, modelled on what we are doing now: not to change everything, but just to adjust and adapt. Slow down and make the recovery greener.

First is simply, once the pandemic ebbs, to stay home more and do less in the world. We, in the wealthy West and North, have been living like it is an ongoing party in our personal amusement park, complete with all the candy, rides and entertainment we could ever want. But this is not sustainable, and the planet is showing us that. And really, we must ask: is that how we want to live?

And so, my proposal is to do less in the world:

Drive less: For many jobs, we simply do not have to drive every day to offices or other settings, including educational. The pandemic has shown this clearly. Of course, this is not true for all work – caps doffed to all those brave souls, from the grocery clerk to the nurse, who show up every day to serve and help the rest of us. But stating the obvious, technology enables many to work just as, or more, effectively from home. Perhaps one day a week in the office would satisfy social and schmoozing needs, as well as the usual managerial obsession with employee surveillance. Hybrid teaching and learning models could cut education-related travelling in half. Couple that with the sensible idea of reducing the work week to four days – which also has the advantage of spreading the work and money to more people – and bingo, we are the winners of a big door prize. Imagine less commuting, more comfortable working conditions, and more time for creative indolence.

Travel less (we Baby Boomers especially): The crowded planes, the crowded ships, and the crowded cities are not doing anything for us anyhow. The streets in famous cities like Prague have become choked with throngs of jostling people; the museums of, say, Paris or London, are impassable thickets, and the cafés in Venice are sinking with the collective weight of thousands of wine-guzzlers. We could relieve all this simply by doing less travel. Baby Boomers for example: take a trip every second year, instead of one or two every year. Business travellers: cut it in half, use Zoom and the like instead. Imagine fewer flights: a bit more expensive, but without the cattle-calls in the airports, room to stretch and move in our seats, actual food to eat, and the end of nickel-and-diming us for our luggage and such.

Dock the cruise ships: Park half the fleet of these floating colossi. The carbon impact of the ships is horrendous. The Oasis of the Seas, for example, uses a gallon of fuel every twelve feet, or to put it another way, gets 0.0023 mpg. Imagine ships moored and converted into mixed populace condos and rental apartments with built-in public-access community centres, party rooms, swimming pools, and playlands.

Limit the cars and roadways in the cities: restrict access for cars and open the streets mainly for delivery, public transport, walking, cycling, including electric cycles and scooters, and sitting. Imagine our cities as accessible urban parks and living spaces, rather than mere travel grids for self-propelled metal containers.

Of course, there are so many other things we could add to calm ourselves and save the planet: buy less junk (and thereby owe less money), build smaller houses, drive smaller vehicles, and so on. We know what the list is. And, of course, these are only a part of what we need to do to address climate change. We know very well the items on that more extensive list are too. More on that another time.

Naturally, there are serious economic implications to consider. We have been living addicted to expanding consumerism and growth. If we make these changes, the economy will slow, and we will have to figure out how to live sustainably and support people more broadly than we have been, and probably with less money streaking in and out of our individual chequing accounts.

To its credit, modern capitalism has generated more wealth, health and human well being than humanity has ever seen. It must be complimented for that. Thank you, industrial capitalism. However, the current economic model of perpetual growth is simply not sustainable. It is simple, really, when you look at biology and nature: “Exponential growth inside a finite system leads to collapse.”[iii] The planet is telling us clearly where we are headed, but we are living in a state of denial about it.[iv] In order to continue this growth, it is necessary to consume and dispose at ever higher levels, in order to keep the money machine going, so that, as Haruki Murakami, puts it, “waste [has become] the highest virtue one can achieve in advanced capitalist society.”[v] It is killing the planet, and seems to be driving us crazy as well.

The market fiction of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” will not save us from this. He was a smart fellow, to be sure, but the uncritical adoption of the metaphor constitutes magical thinking. It is a self-serving idea, that if we pursue our individual profit, that will result in the greatest good for all.[vi] It lets us off the hook of taking responsibility. It is not, in fact, the pursuit of our individual greed that will solve our problems, but rather it will be our capacity for a creative reimagining of the way we live. We are not without solid economic models of how to do this[vii], as I mentioned in Part I. But we have to change our vision of what constitutes a good life – keeping most of what we do but incorporating our experience during this pandemic.

And so, we can say that there has been a positive side to the changes we have made to cope with Covid-19. The reduction in climate-change gases is notable. But so are other modifications: buying and spending less, less rushing around, more time developing interests and talents, more time reading and thinking, more cultivating of home life overall – even literally, more gardening.

Imagine incorporating these things into our post-pandemic lives and enjoying ourselves in a quieter, less frenetic and less anxiety-riddled way. Imagine, at the same time, doing our planet, its creatures, and Gaia, a great favour.

Imagine greater freedom. Imagine less worry about the state of our planet – for ourselves, for our children and grandchildren, or as the North American Aboriginals put it, the Seven Generations to follow. Imagine more serenity in our lives. Imagine more time to be our still human selves.

“You can say I’m a dreamer…”

______________________________________________________________________________________

[i] Frankfurt, Harry G. On Bullshit. Princeton University Press. 2005. Pages 16-17.

[ii] Proctor, Kate. Just 6% of UK Public Want a Return to Pre-pandemic Economy. The Guardian. June 28, 2020.

[iii] Powers, Richard. The Overstory. W.W. Norton & Company. 2018. Page 321.

[iv] Kolbert, Elizabeth. Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2006. And Friedman, Thomas L. Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. 2008.

[v] Nurakami, Harruki. Dance Dance Dance. Vintage Books. 1994. Page 19.

[vi] This is partly a distortion of Smith’s ideas in any case. He thought that governments should intervene sensibly as needed in order to optimize free markets.

[vii] “By simulating a variety of scenarios, we have seen that ‘no growth’ can be disastrous if implemented carelessly…we have also seen that slower growth, leading to stability around 2030, can be consistent with attractive economic, social and environmental outcomes: full employment, virtual elimination of poverty, more leisure, considerable reduction in GHG emissions and fiscal balance.” Victor, Peter A. Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster. 1^st ed., Edward Elgar Publishers, 2009. Page 183.

Developing a Hobby in the Time of the Coronavirus

Posted on August 2, 2020September 7, 2020 by Peter Scott Cameron

Pastinaca Sativa

Max Ehrmann (of Desiderata fame) had it wrong. Deep-down, we all know we are not good enough, and so self-improvement is required, and despite what the poet claimed, we should not be gentle about it. The good news is that Covid-19 provides the perfect opportunity to focus our self-improvement efforts. The pandemic has forced people, sensible and otherwise, to stay home if they can do so: no visits to unpopular relatives, no frying in a traffic jam on the Jersey Turnpike, no bagpipe concerts, no heaping plates of fries followed by hot fudge sundaes in diners, no heavy drinking at the curling rink – no nothing. It can be very trying, certainly.

Mental health experts have come on television to advise that it is important that people fill their time positively, in order to avoid a bad case of ennui during this pandemic. They get money for this advice. One of the best ways to both fend off ennui and to improve our inadequate selves is to develop interests and hobbies that heretofore have lain dormant. Seize the day and move up the Maslovian pyramid! Take steps toward blissful self-actualization, as personified by these mental health experts on the evening news.

And so, what is this period of Covid-19, but a time finally to learn the Cantonese that you have put off for so long? Perhaps you can renew your high school Latin, and finally translate those racy bits about Caligula. It could be cooking: time to actualize your inner gourmet and turn those family frowns upside down! Imagine the family’s excitement when you serve up Canard à la Rouennaise – Duck in Blood Sauce? Or if more intellectually inclined, you could discover a third form of indefinitesimal calculus to rival the two invented by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz in the late seventeenth century. If otherwise deficient, but kinaesthetically intelligent, you could take up limbo dancing, and thereby not only become fitter, but also amuse your mate during endless hours in the living room. Is it to be music? You could pick up the contrabassoon, or if you live alone, the bongo drums. There is no end to possibilities.

I am doing no less, and in my case, my new hobby benefits both me and the larger world.

Wild parsnip (Pastinaca Sativa), an invasive species of plant originally from Eurasia, now grows in Upstate New York and other parts of the U.S. and southern Canada. The original plants appear to have escaped captivity, like that celebrity fugitive capybara did a couple of years back in High Park in Toronto. It grows along roadsides or other areas where the soil has been disturbed. Normally it will not invade established meadows and fields; however, it can do so from areas that have been troubled, usually by men riding machines that they recently acquired at the John Deere store on the payment plan, and which they use to inflict insults on Mother Nature.

Mature wild parsnips have a yellowish-green stalk with vertical grooves. Leaves are in pairs and reach a length of about six inches. Each plant produces hundreds of small yellow flowers arranged in compound umbels (an upside-down umbrella shape). The plants are big, often standing five feet in height. The evil parsnips tower menacingly over the beautiful daylilies. For my new self-improvement hobby, I have taken to hand-cutting these alongside our gravel road, which stretches about a mile between two paved county roads.

I must be careful while doing my hobby. Contact with the sap from the wild parsnip will produce an intense burning rash, with severe blistering and skin discoloration. It is called phytophotodermatitis; you look like you have leprosy, only unlike that disease, it is painful. As a result of this experience, you will come to remember your days of childhood poison ivy contamination as “the good times.” It is a burn, there is no cure, and it can last two years.

And so, twice a week, I suit up: long-sleeved shirt, long pants, leather gloves, and work boots with tall white socks up over my pants. Eye and head coverings are important too, for sun and the mobs of horseflies. At first, I used sunglasses and a baseball cap, but these were inadequate and so now I’ve settled on tinted aviator goggles complemented by a rather stylish Panama hat.

Perhaps you wonder: why white socks? Answer: to be able to see the tiny deer ticks of course! The ticks pounce on you as you lumber along in the roadside weeds, while the horse flies are attempting to eat your face. The ticks burrow into your skin to suck your blood, and while at it, they give you Lyme disease and anaplasmosis. City people especially, say nature is wonderful, but it is not quite true. That is why I do not watch those dreadful nature shows on PBS. Too much poisoning and exuberant gnawing on the limbs of fellow creatures, as far as I am concerned. Show me that stuff, PBS, and you can forget about asking for money!

And so, I suit up and spray my boots, socks, and pant-legs with cancer-causing deet, with a lighter bug repellent for my face as a first coating, and sunscreen as a second. Then off I go with my clippers and a sickle, making my way up and down the sides of the road while singing inspirational songs, such as La Marseillaise. I sever the plants as low as I can, but no matter how low or high, there is great joy in watching the umbels tumble.

There are moments of embarrassment, naturally, when neighbours drive by. Fortunately, this is rare, as there are only three other neighbours on the road and one of them, Lloyd, doesn’t come out since his goat died. You have to go see him and take soup and beer with you. The worst is when Charley, who is a dairy farmer, goes by in his yellow tractor. He is a nice guy, but for some reason he is always laughing and shaking his head. I try to be casual about it, drenched in sweat while lopping the heads off the devils. I give a jaunty wave and continue working in a casual fashion. People naturally view casualness as a sign of normalcy.

Speaking of: one must be careful not to let this develop into an obsession. Like many hobbies, such as eBay-bidding, Facebook-checking, coupon-clipping, socializing in adult-only chat rooms, or marijuana-smoking, one must keep things under control. I limit myself to twice a week. That works – it means that only half the time do I have to restrain myself and wait the full four days before cutting again. Ah, yes, it is true: this is not a one-time thing – the parsnips grow right back.

I know what you are thinking: Sisyphus! However, this is not so different from other things that moral people do in life. There will always be good and evil, but what we do is to stand for the good, knowing we will never totally defeat Beelzebub, whether the demon himself or his minion, Pastinaca Sativa. We keep the lights on in the tool-shed of the virtuous. In the face of Covid-19, we shrink not away. We do not allow it to push us into ennui. We declare: “no, never!” We stand tall and at the same time, improve our hapless selves with a beneficial hobby.

And so, if you drive along a gravel road in Upstate New York, near the Vermont border, and see an old, very hot man alongside the road with clippers in one leather-gloved hand and a sickle in the other, wearing long sleeves, with white socks over his pants, sporting aviator goggles and a dashing Panama hat, do not be baffled or perturbed.

It is just me.

I am practicing a useful hobby. I am defeating that old Coronavirus ennui. I am improving myself and saving the world.

Imagine: Covid-19, the Great Opportunity (Part I)

Posted on July 14, 2020September 7, 2020 by Peter Scott Cameron

It is a strange situation when a trip to a plastic surgeon for a basal cell removal feels like a big day out. So it is in the time of Coronavirus. For many people, this is a time of terror and tragedy: mainly for those who have gotten sick and those who have lost loved ones. But it has also been a nightmare for others: people who have lost their livelihood and their businesses, and the brave people who risk themselves by choosing to help, such as health care workers. And there are all those deemed to be “essential” workers, who have to go out in a dangerous world to work in order to pay their bills, and so that the rest of us can buy our groceries and get our prescriptions filled. It is shameful, indeed, despicable, that we pay most of them the minimum wage.

Me? I am doing fine. I am out in the country. It is easy to isolate here. Aside from my partner, there is nobody to interact with other than the ancient dog, the two cats, the deer in the fields, and the wild turkeys. We have a big yard to sit in and watch the Green Mountains of Vermont do their thing. I have nowhere that I really need to go. My monthly Social Security continues to show up in the bank account. I may lose my job as an online adjunct professor this fall because of low enrollments due to the Coronavirus, but I will be alright. I shop for groceries at 6 a.m., during the seniors’ hour at the local Price Chopper in the village. It is pleasant: uncrowded and there are no pudding-brained libertarians swaggering the wrong way down the aisles without masks. (They come out later in the day.) Occasionally I go to the drug store or the boozer’s, both deemed essential businesses. That is it. It is all easy and I admit: I am so very lucky. Of course, I miss seeing friends, my sisters, my daughter, and the grandkids, and I miss hearing live music a couple of times a month. I miss a good walk on the gritty streets of one large city or another, and once in a while I yearn for a turkey club with a big load of fries at the old silver-sided diner on Western Avenue. But the rest? I don’t miss much of it at all.

I am helped in this in that I have the gift of an introverted temperament. (More on this asset another time.) I do feel sympathy for the extraverts and their pain due to their compulsion of proximity and unmet needs for talking. Although, as compensation, they do have Zoom, and appear to enjoy it. I have seen some quite fun representations of it on television, such as Irish harp concerts conducted with people thousands of miles away from each other. But I feel no urges there. By contrast, my video camera on the laptop has had a cookie fortune taped over it for years now. I was invited to a Zoom meeting once, but I just said no, and that was that.

I am pretty happy to read, think, garden, talk with my mate, write a note to or call up a friend or family member, take a walk, play “hassle your cat” with Dudley, who loves the game, and then watch streaming shows when the shadows grow long. I do miss seeing my dear friends and family very much, but I trust circumstances will change. The car sits in the driveway: no gas to buy, no oil changes, no fumes spewing out the tailpipe. I don’t spend much money. After basic expenses, the bit I have left sits in the account and accumulates.

I repeat: I know that I am so lucky. The people of Yemen or Syria have it hard. The migrant workers of India both in this time and any time, have it hard. The poor people of Columbia, or of Brazil, with their runaway infection rates and their lunatic president, have it hard. I do not.

The relative easiness of this quiet life, along with certain news articles in The Guardian and such, have gotten me thinking. We have seen pictures of the streets of our cities blessedly free of automobiles. Beautiful: we see just a few pedestrians, a handful of bicyclists, the cities clear of smog, and sometimes there is a family of ducks or a deer crossing over. There is no maddening, gnarled tangle of streets filled beyond capacity, with all that roiling humanity on the move. The skies above are clear and there are not even any jet vapour trails marring the pristine blue. The pictures and articles, coupled with the serenity of sitting at home without much feeling of need, beg a question:

Once this is over, do we have to resume living entirely the way we have been living?

Must we return to being so busy, roaming around, fighting each other for space, sitting, frustrated and stressed in gridlocked cars, flying all over the place in jam-packed airplanes, packing ourselves on monstrous cruise ships, travelling to foreign places to trudge around with millions of other tourists on choked sidewalks, gawking at artifacts for a few seconds between line-ups at yet another café?

Do we have to burn so much carbon? Do we have to cast off so much plastic detritus and other effluent, just because of the way we live?

Imagine: what if we used this Corona-virus-imposed pause to take stock of who we are and how we live. Can we imagine a way to live that is quieter, less busy, one that draws more lightly from the planet’s core, one that touches more lightly on the planet’s surface, and one that, in the end, allows us more serenity? It would take a different view of economics, to be sure: a move from our pathological growth fixation, to a sustainability model.[i]

I am not talking about absolutes here. I am not saying that we should stop everything. Rather I am saying that we should moderate and do much less than we have been doing. We could take this dip in fossil burning as an opportunity to shift toward green energy and a green economy.

Imagine not having to go in every day of the week for those whose work allows it, fewer commutes and commuters, streets that are for walking and cycling and enjoyment, and fewer airplanes and room to stretch out on them when we do fly. Imagine our great cities – Barcelona, Venice, Prague – free from the mobs of sightseers. Imagine the Queen Victoria parked at a wharf, and instead of wandering around burning its usual 293 gallons of fuel per mile, it becomes floating housing replete with recreational facilities for an entire community’s use.

Imagine a planet that is no longer burning up. Imagine sitting at home, with plenty of time to be with our sweet, unfettered selves.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

PSC, July 13, 2020