Healing, addiction, and the third rock from the Sun

Healing and addiction - perspectives

Healing is one of those words with great emotive power, and so many different connotations. It can seem an old-fashioned word. To some it conjures up ancient tribal remedies, to some biblical stories, to others a recent trip to the doctor for a very real and uncomfortable ailment. To still others, images of crystals, hippies, and fringe “pseudoscience”. The sense of both a physical and spiritual dimension is common – that idea, rightly or wrongly, that there is often something underlying that forms a deeper cause of the physical manifestation.

Addiction another equally piercing word. Who of us don’t face it some time in our lives, tiny as those life-durations are on universe time scales? I’m not going to list the various culprits; we all already know what they are. They range from the seemingly minor and almost trivial to the terminally life threatening - but few of us have not faced that issue of resisting the dopamine drive. That trickier-than-we-imagine act of turning down the instant gratification and associated impacts, to return to habits that are healthier. The logic of resisting an addiction can be impeccable, yet somehow the action no easier for that. 

And then the Earth. For all our technical prowess we still have little idea from our own science how unique, or not, our particular situation is. If life like us – "civilisation" as we like to call it - is present elsewhere in the universe, the number of parameters that conspire to make it so may be vastly bigger than we have yet realised. Or perhaps not. The Drake equation famously tries to estimate this frequency, but in truth the number of sub-parameters that go into many of its key variables are impossible to know, and perhaps extremely easy to underestimate. 

To think of some examples of that, consider the possible importance of plate tectonics in facilitating evolution, a large moon stabilising our axis to allow continental climatic stability, and a peripheral galactic position far from the more intense gamma ray bursts at its centre. These instantly narrow things down considerably, if (a big if) water based intelligent life is to be anything like us. Whatever the life form, some kind of planetary stability over the time scales of organic evolution would feel a key prerequisite. That still leaves a vast pool of systems, but it illustrates things that might be important and that are not necessarily obvious. How many more parameters like this there are, we can’t know precisely. Not yet anyway.

If extra-terrestrial civilisations indeed exist, perhaps they are so far away that we may never know. It is impossible to rule out the possibility too that we are the only ones. Our personal views on the likelihood of that will vary enormously, but until someone knocks at the door electromagnetically, or we knock at theirs and get an answer, friendly or otherwise, we cannot know for sure. There may be real physical constraints that mean the doorbell can never be reached. Nevertheless let’s for the sake of a literary tool, begin to imagine there is one out there watching, and how they might consider us.

Why is this relevant in the context of healing and addiction? I suspect it is, when contemplating the health of Earth, a useful device to contemplate what our world looks like to an imagined intelligent outsider. Just as a very sick drug addict may not be best placed to judge their own situation, so we may not be best placed to judge ours. That mental exercise of what an extra-terrestrial civilisation might look to us and truly see, may be helpful.

The thing about healing – and something we very much recognise in this time familiar with HIV, Ebola, and COVID-19 (as well as the usual suspects of cancers, diabetes, etc.), is the desperate measures that will often be tried to get it. The resource, both personal and institutional that we are prepared to throw at it, to obtain healing, knows few limits. The funds that some governments have somehow managed to find, goodness knows where from, to fight COVID-19, has been startling. Whatever our view on the veracity of biblical accounts, that sense of crowds stampeding almost, to seek a miraculous cure – is something we can all still relate to in a modern age.

Fundamental to the concept of healing though, is the recognition of a sickness. Fortuitous spontaneous healing of some major ailment is not impossible, but rare. More often that most basic step in finding healing, is recognising a need for it, and seeking the medicines to heal.

How broken is the world?

This in many ways is the current issue. There is a wide divergence of view on just how sick the world is, and sometimes, regretfully, it is only progression of the sickness that finally forces the issue in the mind of the patient.

With the family yesterday, I watched the 2012 film featuring Denzel Washington, “Flight”. Though some elements are based on a real incident, sadly with no such miraculous recovery as depicted in the movie, the main and totally fictional aspect of the plot is how the pilot is both drunk and high on cocaine but still manages a heroic manoeuvre to avoid a total catastrophe. Still a disaster, but not total. If you are a stickler for aviation and scientific accuracy then the miraculous recovery in the movie might grate as implausible, but the wider theme is one of interest here.   

I doubt (naively perhaps) that pilots can really get as close to the controls of a real passenger aircraft today as strongly “under the influence” as in the movie. Whatever the case, it is the fact that the hero/anti-hero pilot managed such an admirable recovery despite the indefensible “betrayal of public trust” that drives the plot. Spoiler alert, eventually he comes to see for all this admirable ability and the lives saved by his instinctive piloting, that he is in a mess that requires a healing. It is only when faced with a choice between prison or betrayal of a dead colleague (and lover) that he finally admits to himself that his current path is untenable, unable to lie to himself and others any more. He chooses, at the cost of prison, to reject his ongoing denials and set a totally new path.

It strikes me how the world is sort of in a similar place. The problem is almost in our success to date in [seemingly] managing to control the problem. That makes it harder to perceive a need for healing. It is possible to squint, when reviewing the facts, and convince ourselves that despite an ongoing addiction to combustion & emissions releasing energy, and despite ongoing rich-world poor world divides, that we have been successful in averting total crisis.  Yes, there might be a casualty here and there, but the disaster is not total. The point is, I guess, those two little words, “so-far”. Inspection of the facts with 20-20 vision, spectacles on, eyes wide open, is far more ambiguous in any conclusions of safety.

How advanced the disease?

So how does our eavesdropping alien civilisation perceive humankind in 2020? I wonder if a helpful analogy here might be to think of an ancient Roman asking modern humanity the same question. 

One can imagine a proud Roman citizen pointing to the institutions of government, the sophisticated heating and water supply systems, the empire-wide road networks and trade, the works of art and literature, and the superiority of their military technologies. Yet our perspective looking back, is less to see the technological and artistic achievements, many of which by modern standards are unimpressive (though we can appreciate many were advanced for their time), and we find ourselves focusing more on how the Romans existed with each other, their "conquered" subjects, and the things they didn’t know. The economy built on slavery and subjugation, the slow self-poisoning with lead plumbing, the brutality occasionally exercised in their “games” and the eventual defeat from a train of events that arguably can be summarised as arrogance, denial and decay. 

I wonder if an alien civilisation looking at us will be similarly unimpressed with the technologies and the art works and likewise, will be looking harder for signs of civilisation in how we are with each other and our environment. 

If so, then the disparities in wealth, health care, and justice may be what they notice first. The routine pollution as well - to the extent that the planet’s life supporting systems are being compromised. To my mind, the perception of some imagined alien race looking at us would resemble that experience of ourselves looking back at the Romans.  That is to say, a “civilisation” undoubtedly advanced relative to what has preceded, but the blindness to circumstances that hold danger of downfall far more prominent. Just as the final days of Rome appear to us now, I suspect we might look far “sicker” to our alien observers than we currently do to ourselves – and that latter is already raising the bar high enough. 

So-what?

So-what indeed. What can be done? Over-reaction and panic are never the answer. Difficult situations take thought and not rash action. Perhaps the first step though is to realise the extent of the sickness and hence that “healing”, that old-fashioned word, is required.  

If this is acknowledged, it drives a deeper-seated introspection rather than reaching for another box of band-aids. Band-aids can be helpful of course for treating an immediate cut, but to realise when the sore is a manifestation of a deeper-seated problem - that is is the real core of progress. The changes in underlying behaviour that result in battling the addiction, rather than short term measures to address symptoms, being the thing that is ultimately required. That of course takes time and is far harder, but is a far greater expression of progress and “civilisation”. 

I leave it to readers to make their own assessment of how “sick” and “diseased” the world is right now, and which addictions are most dire. I would however suggest time is ripe for far-reaching, penetrating introspection, that asks of the need for, and reaches for, these fundamental changes in behaviour. That will never be easy, but they will be even harder if a need for them is not acknowledged. 

Without abandoning those “band-aids”, it requires a recognition that many of our reactions to problems facing the world are just that, i.e. superficial, and that much bigger habit changes are required. Any catastrophe so far has not been total – a testimony to our talents as a species perhaps - but gambling it will remain that way is a risky tack for any interstellar sailboat. 

Like Denzel Washington in the movie, there may well be a cost associated with that admission of sickness and need for healing. Costs of disruption and time, humility, and reduced income. The cost of not admitting the need though, a self-condemnation to ongoing addiction - and all the existential risks that entails.