Politics

Freedom: Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose?

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 2 Comments

I’ve been relatively quiet about the ‘freedom’ movement in Canada. The ‘freedom’ convoy in Ottawa earlier this year set off a fairly entrenched opposition to vaccine mandates and other freedoms purportedly lost according to the leaders of this movement, at least one of which is still in jail for an inability to respect bail conditions. It’s impossible to know how many adherents the ‘movement’ has, but it is definitely a small minority of Canadians at this time. Who knows, however, what the future holds. 

Hyperbole is rampant in recent pronouncements from the leaders of this movement, one even suggesting, according to an article by Sarah Richie in The Canadian Press, reporting on statements by a ‘leader’ of the movement, Canada is facing a civil war. If it were true that Canada is facing a civil war, I’m not sure what the fighting sides would look like. Maybe anti-vaccine types on one side and everybody else on the other? I don’t know. I can’t seem to wrap my head around the notion of a civil war over vaccine mandates. 

Now, if the ‘freedom convoy inspired protestors’ represented a real political movement that, for instance, rejected the overriding influence of public corporations (global ones, primarily) in politics, I might sit up and take notice. However, I don’t see anywhere in the press or on alt-right websites that anything like a coherent platform for revolution or civil war is extant. Right now, it just seems that the only policy they have is flailing arms, shouts of ‘freedom’, flag waving, and rank ignorance of history, politics, and common sense. 

The whole notion of freedom and the purported loss of such is singularly misguided. Where does the idea of freedom originate? The idea of personal liberty and ‘freedom’ (although I hesitate to even use the term) can be traced back to the beginnings of a capitalist mode of production in Europe as far back as the thirteenth century, but really taking off in the sixteenth century. By the nineteenth century, the transformation of the peasant class into the urbanized working class was solidified. Along with the real transformation of people’s lives from rural to urban came the idea that people were now free to move around, change employers if they so desired, giving the impression that individuals were now in charge of their destiny. Veblen’s book The Instinct of Workmanship (1918), although makes for ponderous readings to some extent, is probably the best analysis of the creation of the urbanized working class that I have read. It’s not possible to summarize Veblen’s argument here. It’s a complex analysis of the rise of the business class and the idea that although we, as humans, long to do things, to work, we are not particularly suited to employment. The distinction between work and employment is basic to his argument. 

It’s always been true that individual human beings have agency. We are not like billiard balls subject to movement only at the invitation of the cue, although strangely there is some truth to this view. In fact, as Thorstein Veblen points out in the early twentieth century, that idea is the foundation of modern classical economics.

At this point I invite you to read a blog post I wrote in early 2019. It’s about the hedonistic calculus and what Veblen does with it in his dissection of neoclassical economic theory. It’s not a post wherein I write about my experience with myeloma because I hadn’t been diagnosed yet. I would also invite you to read my blog page on critical thinking which is based on an earlier article I wrote for teachers. It addresses the fact that we generally lack awareness of our place in the world because the school system systematically, via its prescribed curriculum and in spite of the efforts of individual teachers, fails to systematically address our social responsibilities. 

This brings me back to our ‘convoy’ protestors. The ignorance expressed by the ‘leaders’ of this ‘movement is astounding. They insist that they want freedom without ever telling us what they mean by that except to suggest that they don’t want vaccine mandates. They feel that vaccine mandates infringe on their ‘rights’. They should consider that they live in societies that require some individual compromise to ensure the safety and security of its citizens. 

Don’t get me wrong. I have no love for the Federal government’s unfailing support of often dangerous and completely self-interested business corporations, sometimes not even Canadian ones. But, like I said before, if the convoy goofies had an even basic understanding of Canadian political economy I might be inclined to hear their arguments. But they have no analysis, just empty opposition to perceived grievances. 

Their anti-mandate grievance and calls for ‘freedom’ have no place in a social world. We drive cars, but we need licences to do so. We can’t simply get out on the road  without a licence or insurance and expect to be left alone to do that. A world without rules and regulations would be an impossible world. There are countries where ‘rules of the road’ are mostly non-existent, but there are unstated agreements among motorists and others sharing the road as to how to conduct themselves on the road. Those unstated agreements are social contracts nonetheless. We rely on social contracts every day of our lives and in everything that we do. We depend on other people always to provide us with services for our comfort and security. Yes, we are individuals, but we always act socially and, in fact, we couldn’t exist as individuals. 

To think about how dependent we are on others, just think about how often you interact with others every time you buy groceries or fill your car with gas. What of the roads we drive on? We don’t build those as individuals. We build them collectively through our taxes (although not always without complaining about it). We, most of us, have water piped to our homes, electricity to power our heating systems, to refrigerate our food, and sewage lines to take away our effluent. Without millions of people all over the world ensuring that we have what we need to live comfortable lives, we would be living cold, brutish lives in caves. Imagine if you were only allowed to wear clothes you made yourself from material you yourself gathered. That’s not possible in this day and age. 

There are people who want to live off the grid. That’s fine, but even that means buying arrays of solar panels, having vehicles to transport goods, seeds, livestock, and the means to access health services if necessary. We may try to live as socially distanced as possible but we still need to acknowledge how dependent we are on others and why we should have some consideration for their health and security because in the end our health and security depends on theirs. 

It seems to me that the ‘freedom convoy’ folks don’t have a coherent platform, nor do they have even a basic plan. What they seem to have is a diffuse and incoherent opposition, maybe a sense that their lives are meaningless, but that they would be filled with meaning if only the government would be removed or there were fewer rules and regulations. The fact is that rules and regulations arise often out of a need to live in society with others and to resolve conflicts between them. To be moderately safe we all need to drive on the right side of the road. If even a small minority of people refused to accept this rule and started driving wherever they wanted to we would all be in serious trouble. If someone does drive on the left in Canada, and insisting they have a right to do that, they could have their license revoked, just as anti-vaxxers can lose their jobs if they refuse to be vaccinated. Nobody says you must be vaccinated unless there is, like in the military or in health care, a need for absolute safety (or as close as we can get to it). So, get over it. Play by the rules or play another game somewhere else.

Myeloma and Pernicious Anemia: My Constant Companions

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 4 Comments

Pernicious Anemia

In January of this year I published a post about the connections between myeloma and pernicious anemia. In that post I misidentified pernicious anemia as a B12 deficiency. It’s not. Pernicious anemia is actually an autoimmune disease that produces antibodies to a protein called intrinsic factor that is produced in the gut and that is required to ‘extract’ B12 from food. It’s a devilishly difficult condition to diagnose. Low levels of B12 are obviously an important indicator, but there are other reasons that a person might have low B12 levels. Probably the best accessible article on pernicious anemia can be found on the Pernicious Anaemia Society’s website. It’s well worth reading.

Now, I have assumed for some time that I have pernicious anemia but I’m no longer certain. It turns out that 50% to 70% of people who have a B12 deficiency, which I definitely have, will have that deficiency caused by pernicious anemia. I have not been tested for intrinsic factor antibody, a test that would definitively confirm a diagnosis of pernicious anemia, so I don’t really know if I have it or not.

Whatever, I know for a fact that I have a B12 deficiency. In order to treat that deficiency I inject B12 (cobalamin) into my thigh every two weeks. However, because of my mixed record of injecting B12 over the past twenty-five years I may have what’s called  Autoimmune Metaplastic Atrophic Gastritis (AMAG). That just means that my B12 symptoms may never go away, even after my regular injections. Then again they may dissipate, but I have no confidence that that will happen.

An International study is now underway initiated by the Pernicious Anemia Society to try to understand the extent of the disease and to track the problems people have had with getting a proper diagnosis. It may be that we will get some answers, but I’m not holding my breath. At seventy-five years of age, I have a limited amount of breath left in me in any case so maybe I should hold on to some of my breath!

Myeloma

Yeah, well, myeloma. As I noted in my January post, the symptoms of myeloma and pernicious anemia overlap considerably. So, I have no idea what’s driving me nuts with peripheral neuropathy, numbness and tingling in my hands and feet, fuzzy brain, poor balance, weakness, especially in my legs, and bone pain, to name just a few of the symptoms I’m experiencing. It could be both the B12 issues and the myeloma that are teaming up to keep me in my place, and the chemotherapy is also no doubt contributing to my now radically re-assessed quality of life.

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So, that’s it. I’m old, I have a severe B12 deficiency that could be the result of pernicious anemia, and I have multiple myeloma, with its attendant chemotherapy.

As I lay in bed last night I harkened back to times in my life when I was still able to do things easily and effortlessly, things like canoeing, woodworking, building decks, garden structures, and a number of other physical things. I can still paint and draw, but with some difficulty. Writing is even getting to be an issue because I can barely feel the tips of my fingers on my left hand, my dominant hand.

It’s been difficult at times, not because of my physical abilities, but because of my attitude towards them. I’ve had challenges keeping the dark side away, the feeling that I can’t do things anymore like I used to, making me a lesser human being, somehow.

Carolyn and I both read the news and despair at the state of the world, but Carolyn seems to have a greater capacity than I do for keeping the dark side away and for maintaining a sense of perspective about the world. It’s true that the world is in a mess, but it’s always been in a mess if the press is to be believed. I have to keep reminding myself that the press, all of it, has a vested interest in propagating the dark side. That’s where the money is. Outrage and fear sells the goods. The bright side doesn’t.

That said, I don’t want to be captured by the dark side or the bright side. The world is a complex place. Life is finite and changes all the time. Mommy doesn’t have to change my diapers like she did seventy-three years ago, even if she were still alive. I don’t have to put a uniform on and go to elementary school. I never have to write a final exam or go on a job hunt ever again. Of course, I won’t experience the joy of the early days of fatherhood ever again either, of falling in love, nor of the thrill of discovering a wonderful, new camping spot.

I guess my point with all this rambling is that life is full of variety, both at the individual as well as at the socio-political level. Some things we call bad, some good. Those are judgment calls, which for us are adjudicated with reference to capitalist morality which itself is expressed in possessive individualism based on wealth and health. We look down on the poor and the unhealthy.

These judgments are not easy to counteract both at the individual and the political levels because they are so deeply rooted in our culture. They are so familiar to us that we consider them normal and reasonable. It’s easy to feel self-loathing for being poor or in ill-health. It’s almost expected of us. And those individual feelings are reinforced every day in a thousand ways by the vast majority of us as we compare ourselves to others, those with money or excellent health (mental and physical).

If I let myself I can easily be dragged onto the psychologically dark and barren landscape of blame and feelings of unworthiness. Enough of that now. I have a limited number of days, months, and years left to live. I cannot, I will not live them in fear and self-loathing.

Death is like a destination, one we have no choice in travelling towards. But, you know, some of the best trips I’ve taken have been at their finest and most exciting just before reaching our intended destination. Maybe that’s a good metaphor for the last bit of my life.

Civil War in the U.S.A.: an addendum with references.

~ Roger JG Albert

I don’t intend to comment here. All I want to do is post websites or news sources that are talking about the possibility of civil war in the States. Most of the news sources revolve around a new book by Dr. Barbara Walter, a political scientist from California. Wade Davis from UBC comments. The last link questions a number of the assumptions of the people claiming a civil war is coming.

Civil War in the U.S.A.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 5 Comments

Some people might argue that as a Canadian I should mind my own business and refrain from commentating on American politics. I don’t buy that, obviously. There are whole university departments dedicated to commenting on politics both national and International. It would be a sad day when we were restricted to commenting on our own national issues. In any case, what’s happening in U.S. politics now is liable to affect us all sooner or later.

Robert Reich in an opinion piece in The Guardian argues that the second American Civil War is happening now. He proposes some evidence for this in his piece. It’s not hard to find.

The structure of the American political system itself was constructed via a series of compromises between the federal and state powers, between conservatives and liberals. The federal government consists of Congress with the House of Representatives and the Senate. They are the legislative branches of the state while the executive branch is the presidency. The Supreme Court is the third branch in this triangle of power and it is the judicial branch. Now, these three branches of government are supposed to mind their own business with Congress passing laws, the president enacting them and the Supreme Court deciding on the legality of Congressional and other actions brought to it. It’s much more complicated than that, but that’s its essence. The compromises that were negotiated were always to be temporary, only to last as long as better arrangements were negotiated. They never were.

Sadly, the three branches of government rarely mind their own business. Instead, they often choose to carry forward the political agenda of whatever group to which they adhere. This is the basis of Reich’s argument. The red states (dominated by Republican ‘lawmakers’) and blue states (dominated by Democratic ‘lawmakers’) are keen to serve their respective political agenda. No issue more clearly defines the differences between the Republicans and the Democrats than the access to abortion issue.

As Reich points out, the current Supreme Court seems to favour the abolition of abortion rights but what it actually does is turn the issue over to the states knowing full well that bonkers state legislators in Florida, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, et cetera, will criminalize abortion in all instances including when pregnancies arise from incest, rape, or ectopic pregnancies.

Republicans generally side with states’ rights against those of the federal government. It’s not a mystery why this is so. Red states in the graphic below are dominated by Republicans while the Blue states are dominated by Democrats. The Senate is composed of one hundred members, two from each state, so Wyoming with a population of 576,851 has the same number of senators as California with a population of 39,237,836 as of July 2021. Wyoming, according to the map below is a red state, that is one controlled by Republicans. You’ll note that red states dominate a large swath of the country while the blue states hug the coasts in the west, northwest and eastern seaboard. There is a distinct geographical identification of blue and red states. There are clearly more red states although they don’t represent a majority of the population.

Reich seems to be tired and almost resigned. I’ve been following his work for years and it seems to me that there is a certain air of defeat in his words.

From: https://medium.com/reluctant-moderation/the-fundamental-difference-between-red-states-and-blue-states-8ad4820585cd.

Lawrence O’Donnell, the MSNBC host of The Last Word graphically represents what he sees as the breakup of the United States which he portrays by striking out United before States of America in the screen behind him as he argues that the electoral college is subverting the will of the people in the US. In fact, the Electoral College confirmed Trump in 2016 even though he had clearly lost the popular vote. He argues that a minority in the US is now in control of government. His argument is one that is hard to contest given the overwhelming evidence in support of it.

I’m not an American but I am a sociologist and over the past few decades (1976-2012) while I was still working as a college instructor I told my students every semester that they should mark my words: the American Empire will collapse. It will do so by imploding, not by an external threat. Nothing lasts forever. The question is not whether or not it will collapse, but how and when. Internal contradictions that are leading to the collapse of the US Empire can be found in the falling rate of profit which has led many American corporations to move production facilities offshore and seek markets all over the world. Cars may be assembled in the US, but their parts are manufactured all over the world and shipped to the assembly plants using just-in-time manufacturing. Supply chain issues involve a major strain on warehouse-less production requiring parts arrive for assembly as they are needed. It’s a ‘skinny’ system with little room for error.

It will also collapse as a result of the unresolved social divisions that exist based on race, economic inequality, and gender. The religious right has been able to seize the reins of power, and is flexing its muscles at all levels of state and federal government. Reich sees the second civil war as being relatively peaceful. I can’t imagine the knuckle-draggers are going to allow that to happen. They revel in violence. Given the licence to rape and pillage they are now getting from Congress and the Supreme Court, and they most certainly will take advantage of it. This summer will be one to watch.

As Reich and others have pointed out, the Republican led resurgence of state power using the Supreme Court and Congress as weapons in the struggle is already tearing the country apart. The abortion issue will serve to exacerbate divisions and heat up tempers. There is no sign of compromise or respectful dialogue anywhere to be seen. I hope I’m wrong about that.

I look to our neighbours to the south and despair. Will future generations look back on present day America and ask: Is that what you all wanted: the destruction of the country you all purport to love? Seems insane. It probably is, and it may be too late to do anything about it. History will take its course.

Dexamethasone, Tooth-aches, Pig Kidneys, and Life.

~ Roger JG Albert

So, dexamethasone strikes again! I went to the hospital this past Thursday for my monthly infusion of the monoclonal antibody, Daratumumab. Along with the Dara, I get a number of other chemo meds among them dexamethasone. I only get fifteen milligrams of dex these days once a month and that’s probably a good thing because any steroid can be trouble in the long run. Of course my long run is getting palpably shorter, or to put it another way, dex can’t really hurt me in the long run if I don’t have much of a long run. What I can say, though, is that no matter how long my long run is, I’ll make the best of it. I’ve decided that that’s my goal. I’m thinking of my life now as a one mile marathon race. Getting closer to the finish line is no reason to slow up. In fact, it’s all the more reason to step up the effort. Of course, the closer to the finish line we get, the more tired we get so it’s a trade-off. Still, pushing to the end is my goal. But I digress.

What is interesting about dex is it’s effect on my tooth-ache. I mentioned before that I had a nasty tooth-ache that a dex shot in my neck attenuated rapidly and almost eliminated entirely. Well, that tooth-ache has persisted in a low rumble since it returned after a few days following my neck shot. Again, the dex that I took orally on Thursday killed the pain in my tooth right dead. It’s back now because as I’ve become well aware, the relief from dex is very short lived. Oh, I appreciate the pain relief whichever way I can get it, but dex has other side effects that aren’t as welcome as the pain relief. Check out this list of side effects. I’ve experienced many of them over the past couple of years.

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[As an aside, I’m writing this sitting in my new La-Z-Boy recliner (thanks to my very generous daughters) in my cozy, warm living room. Carolyn, my love of forty-eight years, while I sit warm and cozy in the living room, is out there walking on the trails in Cumberland in rain as thick as soup. She is accompanied by Tilly, our Bernese Mountain Dog/German Shepherd mix who loves her mom and also most other living things, and swimming too. I hope she gets home soon so we can have a cup of tea together. She did!]

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So, what about pig kidneys? Well, lots. This article explains what the experiment was all about. And it was an experiment, of course. Serious ethical issues aside, the experiment was a success. Researchers in New York attached a kidney from a specially raised pig, one that was genetically modified to not produce a certain sugar that caused immediate rejection in humans, to a cadaver. Yes, a cadaver. The objective was to see whether or not the pig kidney could reproduce the function of a normal human kidney, and apparently it did, and splendidly so. The cadaver was special too, of course. I suggest you read the article to get the story from a reputable source.

What’s the big deal, I ask? Researchers genetically modify pigs so that we humans can use their organs. How does that make you feel? The truth is that pig heart valves have been successfully implanted in humans for some time now and researchers have been experimenting with xenotransplantation since the 17th Century. We eat pigs all the time. They are one of our major sources of food. They are also intelligent, rivalling some humans I surmise.

The reason pigs are such a good fit for xenotransplantation is that they are so closely related to us genetically. In fact, we are related to all other living things, animal and plant but with varying degrees of fit in terms of the quantity of genes that we share with them. We are very closely related to chimpanzees sharing something like 99% of DNA with them. (I think that the reason we don’t raise chimps to eat is that they look too much like us.) We share DNA with ducks and cedar trees, snails, and puppy dogs.

From what I can gather from casual observation, we tend to think of all species as distinct from each other and, of course, that’s partially true. Sadly, we are generally ignorant of our place in the scheme of life on this planet. We have been convinced over millennia that we are special under the sun and that all life on the planet is there to serve us. That attitude will ultimately lead to our demise as we Bolsonaro the Amazon rain forest, empty the seas of fish and other life, and generally bulldoze our way through all life on the planet. We take up more and more of the biosphere every year. We, as a species, have no respect for life and from what I can see, have very few mechanisms that would allow us to gain respect for life. Our culture is designed to deny death and thus to ignore life.

Our political systems are geared to produce maximal growth and compete in absurd ways for greater and greater shares of planetary resources. It’s disconcerting to see China and the US embroiled in a chest-thumping match over Taiwan. How stupid. How short-sighted. How ignorant. What are they going to do, lob nuclear weapons at each other? It’s especially ridiculous knowing how closely tied manufacturing in the US is tied to production in China. It’s hard to see how Americans destroying American production in China will help anyone, anywhere. I suspect that the Chinese leadership is in need of a diversion to keep its population’s collective mind off of serious domestic problems. Focussing attention outward is a tried and true method of avoiding domestic conflict.

I could argue that the way we are increasingly economically interdependent through production of commodities in networks that span the globe is encouraging as a basis for concerted action. However, I’m not sure that we have the time to wait for economic interdependence to lead to political interdependence. Finally, I’m not convinced that as a species we are capable of doing what needs to be done to enable us to live in harmony with the rest of life on the planet. It may be that cockroaches will inherit the earth and if that’s the case, so be it.

The questionable quality of longevity.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 2 Comments

Lately I’ve been reading books from the 90s. The books by Kim Stanley Robinson, especially the Mars Trilogy are, not surprisingly, set on Mars and span a period of several hundred years. It seems Robinson is not inclined to write about earthly events and characters, focussing his attention instead on Mars, her moons, and the asteroid belt that he has also transformed by technology to support human life. The book of his I’m currently reading is called Aurora and is about the travels of humankind outside the solar system for the first time. Their destination is the Tau Ceti e system some twelve light years from the Terran Solar System. It takes them many generations and 170 years to get there, a scenario packed with angst about life and death.

In an earlier work, Robinson confronts mortality straight on. He concludes about the characters in The Mars Trilogy that:

A long life is not necessarily a good life.

Their lives were long, very long indeed if they took “the treatment”. They could not yet know just how long they could live because few of them had died of causes relatable to an ordinary life, of ‘natural causes’ not that they were invincible. It’s true that most inhabitants of Mars were over two hundred years old. Two had died in an explosion, one had died by violence, another by being swept into a roaring river of ice into the depths of a swift moving glacier. In his Mars Trilogy Robinson has cleverly endowed his protagonists with very long lives. However longevity does not equal high quality and death will not be denied.

“There were all kinds of madness, evidently. Ann wandering the old world, off on her own; the rest of them staggering on in the new world like ghosts, struggling to construct one life or another. Maybe it was true what Michel said, that they could not come to grips with their longevity, that they did not know what to do with their time, did not know how to construct a life.”

from “Blue Mars (Mars Trilogy Book 3)” by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Mars colonists may not know what to do with their two hundred or more years of life. What about us? How do we decide what to do with our lives? How do we construct a life whether we have a month left to live or two hundred years?

This is really an unfair question given the vast range of possible answers along a plethora of trajectories. But it’s a question that can generate some critical thinking about our lives and how we live them. For that reason I feel justified in asking it. Still I think that narrowing the focus of the question could be valuable.

The questions that interest me the most concern our relationship with death and immortality. These are ‘intellectual’ questions that have nothing to do with the material requirements of life. Of course, no matter how we look at it, life means movement. Death implies stillness. That may be why so many of us are gripped with the need to do…something…anything. Doing justifies living. Stillness or inactivity reminds us of death.

Me at a very young age. Don’t know exactly how old.

This photo is of me at a very young age, not sure exactly how old. That said, I am not the person you see in the photo. In fact, although arguably I am the person depicted in this photo, I have very little in common with that person. I could say that in the photo you see an embryonic version of me and that may well be true. We, the little dude in the photo and I, are obviously related; we share a life trajectory. But there is not one molecule in my body now that existed in the little dude back then. And the little dude hadn’t read Marx or Darwin. According to Milan Kundera in Immortality little dude would be in the happy first stage of life. The second stage is the preeminently active stage when we realize that death is real and that it is hounding us. To fend it off we must do, build a career, a family, a community. The trajectory in this stage is characterized by growth and the morality of the time expects material production from us. I am in the third and final stage of life, or at least I can be found transitioning into the final stage, the WTF stage, I call it. It’s the stage when strength is fast being replaced by fatigue and exhaustion. Kundera writes:

“Fatigue: A silent bridge leading from the shore of life to the shore of death. At that stage death is so close that looking at it has already become boring.”1

I’m bored, but only to tears, not to death. I’m just now standing on the crest of the bridge but I can easily make out the shore of death on the horizon which is becoming clearer and more distinct every day. According to Kundera, this third stage is where freedom can be found. If I knew what freedom was I might be more eager to actively pursue it. The third stage will come or I will die in angst fussing over the quality of my life experiences and my immortality which, of course, can only exist after my death.2

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1 Kundera, Milan. 1990. Immortality. New York: Harper Perennial. page 71.

2. Kundera considers immortality as that view that encompasses an entire lifetime but is also restricted to it. It is a fixed entity that has no place except in the memories of those left behind. It is not soul based unless you can think of the soul as the totality of what we leave behind. It is not eternal life but the memory of a whole life lived. Death completes my life.

#70 Fun With Meds.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 11 Comments

I’m finally able to write a few paragraphs. My neck has been such a problem lately that I haven’t been able to write much or draw and paint much either. It’s because my neck gets spasms easily if I look down at the computer screen for too long. Ten minutes at a time is about all I can handle. However, I remembered that acetaminophen works quite well for neck pain. I took a couple last night for my arthritis and degenerative disks in my neck and that seemed to help. I took a couple at around 8 AM this morning and now, although I still have neck pain, it’s manageable. We’ll see how long it works. I want to go outside and play.

Funny how I used to take acetaminophen regularly for some kinds of pain and it worked marginally well. Then I forgot about it when I got into stronger meds after my cancer diagnosis. Hydromorphone is my go to pain reliever now, but I’m also taking a low dose of gabapentin on the advice of my palliative care docs.

Palliative care docs are specialists in pain management. They often get linked with end-of-life care, but their mandate is much broader than that and is tied to pain management generally. We talk every week, usually on Wednesdays always working to fine tune my meds to balance pain with my need to be able to do some activity. Of course, as my pain doc told me this week they could easily make me pain free. I’d be pretty much catatonic though so we’ll probably save that for when I’m closer to dying. No, the objective with my pain docs is to balance pain management with quality of life.

I must say that lately it’s been a bit of an odd dance. We tried nortriptyline but it made me excessively sleepy without doing much to lessen my pain levels. We tried a really low dose of gabapentin. That hasn’t seemed to have worked very well so we’re now increasing my dose of gabapentin to a bit of a higher dose to see if that makes a difference. That’s always on top of my basic hydromorphone slow release tablets that I take morning and evening.

I suggested to my pain doc yesterday that I should just go off of all pain meds to just see what happens. She said that I probably shouldn’t do that because the pain would be unbearable without some intervention. I have to agree, but it’s frustrating. It’s hard to know which med is doing what when I take a cocktail of meds. It would be simple to back off to just one med, but that wouldn’t work either because as I noted before, neurological pain is different from muscle pain with is different from bone pain, arthritis and disk disease. I need different meds for the various kinds of pain I have so a cocktail is required. Simple would be nice, but it’s not practical.

So, I sit here now banging away on my computer keyboard. My neck pain is manageable but really annoying. I’m hoping the increased dose of gabapentin will deal with the neurological pain I have in my legs, but we’ll see. It takes a while to kick in. I’ve had two MRIs this week. The first one was on Monday and imaged my lower back. The one yesterday was for my upper back and neck. I’m not sure how they may help with diagnosis or with determining what drugs will work for me, but at least they will give us a good baseline for subsequent tests.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the time I have left. I have incurable cancer so it’s like I’m on death row waiting to see if my next appeal (chemo course) works or not. I’m technically in remission right now. We’ll know in January how that’s going. I’m scheduled for blood tests on January 5th, the day after my 74th birthday. That will mark seven months that I’ve been off of chemotherapy. I hope those little bastard myeloma proteins take a long vacation and I can stay off of chemo for a while longer.

Inevitably though, chemo won’t work anymore and that will be that. Bring on the morphine and call in hospice and MAID people at that point. When I get to the point that I can’t DO anything anymore, I will probably welcome my exit from this mortal coil. The thing I regret is putting my family through a long, prolonged, slow exit. Maybe it would be better to pull the plug sooner than later. But I’m not ready to make that decision. So, we carry on, balancing meds, counting on chemo to beat back the myeloma proteins when they get out of hand, and hoping for the best.

I haven’t written at all about politics lately. I’m tempted to, but my neck pain may decide how much I can write, draw and paint. Politics is fun, but it’s not at the top of my list of priorities at the moment. Cancer has a way of focussing my attention narrowly on my life and possibility. I’m still interested in BC politics, Trump, etcetera, but they just aren’t centre of mind like they used to be for me when I was teaching. The pandemic is close to mind too, of course. I’d love to see my family as much as I can. Covid makes that impossible. Cancer and Covid are dominating my life right now. Not the best of scenarios, but I do have Carolyn to commiserate with and to share my Covid isolation.

I’m not sure how we can talk about happiness in the circumstances we are in. I’m not happy about any of this shit but that doesn’t help much either. It’s just that how in hell can anybody be happy right now?

#69 World Kindness Day – Yes, it is!

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 2 Comments

Yes, today is World Kindness Day, a holiday celebrated in many countries since 1998. It’s also Friday the 13th, but let’s ignore that for the moment. You’ll be pleased to know that there’s a World Kindness Movement too. It’s front and centre in the kindness celebrations that are held in many places around the globe today.

I promised one of my blog readers that I would write about kindness sometime. This is an opportune time to do so. She also wanted me to write about recognizing others, a gesture that gives their feelings a boost and their existence added social value. To be snubbed is to be humiliated, as is being chosen the last player for the pick-up soccer team on the neighbourhood pitch after school. We yearn to be recognized and not ignored. There is an element of kindness to acknowledging others in social situations or at any time for that matter.

But what is kindness? Miriam-Webster defines kindness thusly: “the quality or state of being kind”. Well, that helps a lot. So what is the definition of kind? Miriam-Webster replies: “a group united by common traits or interests.” But wait, this is the definition of kind as a noun as in ‘what kind of car do you drive?’ So, what is the definition of kind as an adjective? Miriam-Webster helps us out again: to be kind is to be of a sympathetic or helpful nature.

Well, okay then: to be kind is to be sympathetic or helpful. That’s generally how I would use the word. However we still have to reckon with the noun variation of the word. The image below is of Marvin Harris’ Our Kind, a book he published in 1989 as a project designed to help educate college students (among others) who, at the time, were unable to recognize the boundaries of the United States or know who’s side the Soviet Union was on during World War II. Our Kind is a compendium of what makes us human, of “the evolution of human life and culture” according to the cover.

Humans are of one kind in essential terms, we are one species after all, but we are still divided in a myriad of ways. We are one with our kin (a word akin to kind) but the further away we get from our kin (our sibs), the less we feel bound to be kind to people. Who are the people we can expect kindness from? People who are kin to begin with, then anyone we can define as part of a kin-like group, a group that can be defined socially, politically, geographically, or in whatever way we decide qualifies as a membership pass.

The reader who suggested this topic to me is genuinely concerned with the divisiveness and viciousness of much of what passes for social and political discourse these days. The lack of civility is glaring in some quarters to the point where conversation is impossible. Shouting replaces discourse.

Harris, in the 1980s, was dismayed at the low level of civility and kindness exhibited by a large percentage of the population. He doesn’t say it, but I will. There will be no possibility of kindness, sympathy, and civility enduring as basic human values until we break down our current social and political boundaries and accept each and every human being on this planet as one of ‘our kind.’

It’s as simple as that, but as complicated as that too. The reasons we divide ourselves so earnestly into political and social groups according to Ernest Becker is partly as the basis for competition, competition designed to separate the winners from the losers in the eyes of the gods.

At the moment we are witnessing massive cleavages in the fabric of American society, cleavages that seem to be politically defined around political parties, but which are essentially about who qualifies for assent into the realm of the few divinely chosen. The religious has infiltrated the political in American society to the point where ‘opponents’ are seen as evil incarnate and where anything less than total victory is unacceptable and will not be tolerated because the alternative is death.

I am not particularly optimistic about American politics or about global politics for that matter. I don’t know if there is the will necessary to unite people and to set aside divisions of politics, class, race and sex so as to see everyone qualify to be included in our kind.

There seems to be plenty of will for division with the vast majority of social institutions organized to divide. Are things as dire as I portray them here? No, they aren’t. After all there are strong unifying forces in the world too.

Maybe more on this later. I’ve written about this before if you care to peruse my archives you’ll see what I mean, but I’m also willing to explore more fully some of the themes introduced here, particularly those around competition and division. These have an ‘animal’ dimension as well as socio-religious ones.

46 I’m sick, but I’m well.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 11 Comments

I’m writing today to let you know what’s up with me. I still don’t intend to embark on a regular program of blog posting, but things have changed for me over the past while and I thought I’d let you in on the changes to my situation. But first, a bit of a re-cap.

When I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in early October of last year, I was in pretty rough shape. It became clear to us then that I had had myeloma for some time before, probably for years. Over the past few years I’d had to back away from a number of volunteering gigs because I was too exhausted most of the time to be of much help to anyone. I was not much help around the house and property either. I stopped painting and drawing, and sculpture was out of the question. It was no fun at all. I felt rather useless. And because there was no diagnosis for years, I questioned my own sanity and vitality. The cancer diagnosis was patently not what I had hoped for, but it was an explanation for how I felt and for the pain and exhaustion I had experienced for years before. In some ways, I felt a sense of relief.

Then, in November, 2019, I became a full-time cancer patient. Myeloma became the main focus of our lives. We read everything we could about it online. We went to Victoria for a consultation with the oncologist I was assigned to at the BC Cancer Centre. That trip turned out to be a disaster. Aside from the myeloma that was causing me a lot of pain and distress, during that trip to Victoria I had to deal with a flare-up of a chronic degenerative disk problem, and of the arthritis in my neck I’ve had for years. I can’t tell you how discouraging that was. I was practically an invalid to the point that we asked around to see if anyone had a wheelchair we could use because we figured I’d need one.

The chemo regime I was initially put on caused me to get a huge rash all around my midsection, so my oncologists decided on a different cocktail of meds. This was quite discouraging because I wondered if there was any cocktail of chemo drugs that would work for me. Finally, my oncology team settled on the set of chemo drugs I’m on now. I’ve just started my fifth five week cycle of chemotherapy. I’m scheduled to continue on this program at least until late summer.

At first the chemo drugs kicked the shit out of me. By that time, I was also taking a low dose of hydromorphone, a synthetic opioid, to deal with the pain, and I had to take Dulcolax to deal with the inevitable constipation brought on by hydromorphone. My peripheral neuropathy was extremely annoying in that my hands and feet would constantly go numb and tingly. My whole pelvic area seemed to be on fire at times.

The first three cycles of chemotherapy had me questioning whether or not I should just shut it down and deal with the consequences. I couldn’t see myself living for any length of time in this state of pain and exhaustion.

Then, something changed. I don’t know if it’s because my body has been getting used to the chemotherapy or that the meds have been very effective in dealing with the myeloma. Over the past while, my bloodwork has gradually indicated a complete attenuation of myeloma symptoms. My blood seems to be back to normal and the signs of myeloma have all but disappeared. That doesn’t mean I’m cured, by any means. It just means that I may be going into remission. How long that might last is anybody’s guess. When the myeloma comes back, my oncologist will put me on another course of therapy. That could carry on for years to come.

So, lately I’ve had a surge of energy and I’m now able to do things! Oh, I still have pain and I still get tired, but I can do stuff! For instance, I’ve been able to help Carolyn build boxes for her garden beds and yesterday we rebuilt part of the structure that holds up the massive wisteria we have that surrounds our deck. I even used my chainsaw! If you had told me in January that I would be using a chainsaw in April I would have laughed in your face.

So, yes, I’m still sick with myeloma, but I’m now without major symptoms of the disease, and the hydromorphone is dealing with the pain I still have and will continue to have for the rest of my life. I can live with that. Basically, I’m feeling well. My body seems to be tolerating the chemo drugs much better than over the past few weeks. Some of the side effects of the chemo drugs are quite nasty, but I know how to deal with them now. I’ve become a proficient cancer patient.

Now, if we could only get rid of MARS-Cov-2, I could, we all could, get back to some proper socializing and I could hug my grandchildren again. The truth is, however, that my life hasn’t changed much because of the pandemic. I’m highly susceptible to infection because of the chemo and I can’t be around sick people for that reason. Covid-19 has just made it so that we have to be extra careful.

So, I’m cleaning up my studio and my shop. I’m looking forward to doing some painting, printmaking, drawing, and sculpture. I’m working towards restoring our canoe. The fact that I can even contemplate these things has changed my life yet again. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the way things are going.

The situation in the world is another thing entirely. The irrationality of modern neo-liberalism in the face of climate change and the pandemic continues to cause me consternation and worry. I hope we, as humans, can collectively get our shit together and build a more modest future, one in which we are in tune with each other and the natural world of which we are a part. I know so many good, caring people, but the structures of global capital run deep and are highly entrenched. Ignorance and denial still characterize large segments of the population. Even with the majority of the population consisting of good, caring people, I have no idea how to fight these massive reactionary forces. Covid-19 has shown us that massive changes is possible and desirable for our quality of life, although it’s probably not a good idea to leave desired social change to the recurrence of deadly pandemics.

45 A hiatus and a recommendation.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 1 Comment

I’m going to take a break from writing here for a while. I’m not sure for how long, but probably for as long as the pandemic has a chokehold on our attention. My life with myeloma seems to me pretty insignificant in the light of Covid-19. So sayonara. I may still pass along recommendations for your reading pleasure occasionally. The link below will take you to Charles Eisenstein’s website. The article highlighted here is called Coronation and is all about the Covid-19 pandemic and its ramifications. I could have written it myself but he beat me to it. If you’ve been reading my blog you’ll quickly see how closely many of his arguments are to mine. It’s a long piece, but you can handle it.

https://charleseisenstein.org/essays/the-coronation/