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Thursday, July 30, 2020

COVID19--Mask Rejection, Freud & -- THE DEATH DRIVE




"...If we may assume as an experience admitting of no exception that everything living dies from causes within itself, and returns to the inorganic, we can only say  'The goal of all life is death‘, and, casting back, 'The inanimate was there before the animate‘ " (Freud, S., Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920) 


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     (Lab107)---  Just before the beginning of summer, when it appeared the pandemic might break in the heat, the mayor of Los Angeles took a stand on the issue of facial coverings, as reported in Newsbreak;
    "Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) to CNN's Chris Cuomo: 'I appreciate what you said about masks. I don't know if it's a guy thing but real men wear masks and we shouldn't be afraid of being seen with masks.' " (Newsbreak)


     There are, in fact, two things going on in the mayor's statement; the first that "real men" exist, and the second, that what they do is known as a "guy thing." The 1994 Hartford Courant article that was supposed to explain what a "guy thing" is, doesn't. It does, however, give a description of, beyond what one might expect it is, something as a backlash to feminism and doesn't need an explanation. The original article was written by Bill Keveney and can be found in the Los Angeles Times;
     "...the difficulty of defining this throwaway line is that men haven’t given a whole lot of thought to their macho eccentricities, introspection not being at the top of the list of guy things....(and) At the heart of the phrase is the notion that certain activities, by nature or nurture, are particular to one sex, and perhaps not very well understood by the other..." (Keveney, LA Times, 1994)
     The article itself expects the reader to bond with the macho, "stereotypical male" in a "post-feminist world," the reader is supposed to understand without any real explanation what a real man does, and why he does it. The author fails to make his point, just as Garcetti did back in May; the nation is at a total standoff over the facial protective covering mandate.
     Documenting all the reports of mask-rejection, commercial flight turnarounds and vids-gone-viral over the face mask issue is futile since there are currently hundreds in the news and perhaps thousands unreported. A gender reveal of the expression first emerged in a Brattleboro Reformer article dated from 1990 by Joyce Marcel in relation to Warren Zevon;


     "Warren Zevon turned out to be a guy thing. Out of the approximately 700 people at Pearl Street in Northhampton, Mass., last Thursday easily 600 were guys.  They were fixated on Warren, eyes glassy, waving their fists in the air, singing the words to every song along with Warren....those guys might have marched out there and retaken Kuwait."  (Marcel, Reformer, 1990)
     The tiny nation of Kuwait was invaded by Iraq a few months earlier that year and wasn't liberated until the following February in Operation Desert Storm. 



     On the same day in 1990 when Joyce Marcel gave her negative review of Zevon, another columnist, Stu Bykofsky wrote an article titled "When Nature Calls on New Year's Day," published in The Philadelphia Daily News on the topic of "public urination;"


     "Which brings up this question: Why are guys the usual offenders? Answer: It's probably anatomy.  Anyway, it's a fact that the Festival of Wall Wetting is entirely a male operation.  OK, it's a guy thing, but how come there are so few women offenders?  I have two ideas:  Women drink less therefore need to relieve themselves less. Or, women are genetically superior to men."
The columnist relates the second explanation to sexism. (Bykofsky, Daily News, 1990) The phrase came out of the closet and was initially used to describe militants jacked up on Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner and the whiz brigade in the City of Brotherly Love.  But a deeper, more meaningful explanation is in order, perhaps from the  "Founder of Psychoanalysis," Sigmund Freud (1856-1939).
     Oxford reference defines a controversial theory of the famed psychoanalyst's "death drive" as;
     " the death-drive manifests in the psyche as a tendency toward self-destruction, or more precisely the elimination of tension, which can also be turned outwards, whereby it becomes aggression." (Oxford)
 Daniel T. O'Hara, in "On Freud's Femininity," noted in the boundary 2 journal, that;
     "Freud concludes this rather startling section of the essay by returning to his initial point: that all resistances to a cure, and especially any resistance to any streamlining of analysis, reveal the death drive." (O'Hara, boundary 2, 1999)
     "All resistances to a cure," including wearing facial protective coverings, are considered automatic. First of all, then, we have to draw in conclusion that mask-rejection isn't just a guy thing, as witnessed in news stories of women being viral videoed going berserk in department and grocery stores for refusal to wear masks.  (ABC News) Second, it may be an indication of the death drive in action.

Arizona woman who destroyed Target mask display in viral video says she regrets behavior

Melissa Rein Lively's spiral in an Arizona Target was caught on video for all to see. She recorded herself destroying a mask display in early July - something she now says she regrets and is in treatment for mental illness.

References
Guy Thing, https://www.newsbreak.com/california/los-angeles/news/1557704992055/la-mayor-eric-garcetti-real-men-wear-masks
Marcel, J., Warren Zevon, Brattleboro Reformer, 20 Dec 1990, Page 9.
Desert Storm, https://www.defense.gov/Explore/Features/story/Article/1728715/desert-storm-a-look-back/
Bykofsky, S., Public Urination, Philadelphia Daily News, 20 Dec 1990, Page 43
Keveney, B., Hartford Courant via LA Times, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-11-21-ls-35-story.html
Death Drive, https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095704767
O'Hara, Daniel T. “On Freud's Femininity.” Boundary 2, vol. 26, no. 2, 1999, pp. 193–198. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/303799. Accessed 28 July 2020.
Mask refusal, https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/video-womans-tirade-refusing-wear-mask-trader-joes/story?id=71505060
Freud, S., Beyond the Pleasure Principle,
https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/assets/pdf/freud_beyond_the_pleasure_principle.pdf
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Wikipedia ref, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud

Freud Image, Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) in his office in Vienna, circa 1937. Photo taken by Princess Eugenie of Greece, daughter of Marie Bonaparte. (Photo by Bourgeron Collection/RDA/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) https://cdn.historycollection.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/s-13b8314699ad77b9aa12fe48f6db9192e0d6c2111-1024x666.jpg

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Thursday, July 16, 2020

COVID19-- Pandemic Semantics--A QUAGMIRE OF PHRASES & PHASES.

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     "...Obviously their linguistics backgrounds show a great deal to be desired..." 

     (ANTH281 Lab)--Shelter-in-place, lockdown, social distancing, surge, mitigation, and the worst one of them all, "reopening," have done nothing but add to the chaos surrounding the unique set of circumstances surrounding the pandemic. A linguist's nightmare, the barrage of terminology used to crowd-control the deadly outbreak has created a semantics throwback to the days of the Medieval Black Plague, topped with the fact that no one, or everybody,  is in charge.


     Beginning with the initial introduction of the disease from Asia by a variety of yet to be traced sources, Washington state was quick to respond by issuing orders for everyone to stay inside, wash hands often and don't touch face for any reason. Before anyone had a chance to defy the orders, California followed suit with similar orders out of the capital; it was the beginning of the phrase shelter in place. Early origins of the phrase seem to have come out of mid-19th century England as reported in the Morning Chronicle;
     "The same thing occurred upon the removal of the houses for the formation of St. Katharine's Docks, and it was understood at the present moment the London Dock Company were about to make arrangements for pulling down 500 houses. by which at least 5,000 persons would be driven on the streets or to find shelter in places which were already disgusting from their squalid wretchedness." (Morning Chronicle, 1853)


     Clearly, the phrase had a negative connotation when used in this context as those evicted faced a grim future of finding another place to live, preferably in the slums. No one could expect it might have an other than unfavorable meaning considering its origin on the squalid London docks. Again, a decade later, a similar use of the phrase was reported by the London Standard;
     "The rapid growth of railways in the metropolis is making fearful inroads upon those localities which are inhabited by the poor and destitute classes, who as a consequence are driven to find shelter in places more filthy and overcrowded than those from which they were ejected; hence it is that smallpox, scarlatina, typhus, &c., propagates so rapidly in infected districts." (Standard, 1866)
Culturally transliterated to the modern pandemic-paranoid public, shelter-in-place means go find a place along the waterfront and die a horrible death by disease, mugging and murder.  The term lockdown also has a strong negative connotation, usually associated with prison riots. In one particular report found in the Western Mail of the late 19th century, yet another meaning emerged;


     "La Lanterne gives a harrowing account of the scalding to death of a mad woman at the Salpetriere Hospital. She was a seamstress named Georges, 27 years old, and had to calm her nerves, been ordered hot baths. On Thursday she was placed in one having a lock-down lid, with an orifice through which her head and neck passed. When the hot water was on, the servant with the key of the tap went to fetch linen and remained to gossip. The screams of the lunatic, she being reputed violent, went unheeded and she was literally boiled to death before the negligence through which she had perished was discovered." (Western Mail, 1882)
     The White House task force, as well as the myriad of other agencies and task forces competing for authority,  apparently overlooked its choice of words and phrases when it came to the language used in briefings, where in one case it referred to indigents living in run down tenements or in another to crazy people in asylums. The Manchester Times reported in 1842 that "the system of entails adds field to field till an individual becomes the ruler of an entire county; and this operation is accelerated by the landlord's monopoly, which enriches him while it impoverishes the rest of the community, and thus widens the social distance between them." (Manchester Times, 1842)
Across the board, the status quo elitist semantics of the pandemic leaves a lot to be desired when it comes down to communicating effectively with the public. That very miscommunication is at the heart of the current quagmire.
     Task force graphing in the briefings indicated early on the see-saw effect in surge mitigation as outlined by the various directors at the podium. That phrase stems from more contemporary usage in seawall construction to halt the damaging effects of hurricanes. (Buckley, Manitowoc Herald-Times, 2012) Only recently, the pandemic has been referred as a tsunami. As recently as two weeks ago, Mary Beth Griggs reported in The Verge the more familiar word;


      "This is what it took for local and state governments across this country to hit the brakes on their reckless reopening plans: 2.6 million people in the US infected with the coronavirus. 128,064 dead. Thanks to inept leadership, miscommunication, and a deep sense of hubris, the first wave of this pandemic never ended. It just turned into a tsunami." (Griggs, The Verge, 2020)
    That brings it all around to the bottom line, reopening. The word should never have been used from the outset to describe the plan that would ultimately take place in, yet another misleading term, phases. It is clear that the "medicos" arrived at these terms without consideration of their semantic impact on the cultural environment where one invited copious disregard for the rules already in place and the other promised, falsely, a return to "normal." Obviously their linguistics background shows a great deal to be desired. Griggs correctly points out the inept leadership but that was a result of miscommunication based on linguistics ignorance stemming from that very over-confidence in their professionalism.
     Like the lunatic who died a horrible death in the hot bath, it all boils down to vocabulary, and the task force team, led by high government officials with a limited knowledge of English, just doesn't have it.

Late Entries (07/17/20/1900PDT)--
     Media now reports there are several states in what's called the "red zone" of the pandemic. (ABC News) According to a recent report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, dated 19 August 1844, that was defined as;
     "Her sylph like figure was enclosed in a pale green caftan; embroidered on the bosom and skirt in silver thread. This garment reached a little below her knees, and over it she wore an outer robe of light gauze, confined around the waist by a red zone of Fez silk."
The person described appeared to be a Moorish princess and the observer a "Mr. Hay." (Post-Gazette, 1844)

     Dr. Fauci has now suggested the states hit the "reset button" on the pandemic. (CNBC) The immunologist has apparently not given credit to its earlier use by Lee W. Campbell of the "Camel" Shoe Store;
     "...as well as having to wait less time themselves, if they will not ask us to change or reset buttons on Saturdays..." (Wellington Daily Standard, 1887)
 
References
Wretchedness, London Morning Chronicle, 19 March 1853, Page 2.
The London Standard, 12 Jan 1866, Page 7.
Lunatic, Cardiff, Wales Western Mail,  01 July 1882, Page 3.
Social-distance, Manchester Times, 30 April 1842, Page 2.
Buckley, G., Seawall, Manitowoc Herald-Times, 07 March 2012, Page 5.
Griggs, MB, This isn't a COVID-19 wave--it's a tsunami, https://www.theverge.com/21311326/covid-19-coronavirus-wave-tsunami-disaster-virus-deaths-cases-rise-pandemic
Alligator, https://www.123rf.com/photo_9706998_american-alligator-alligator-mississippiensis-in-its-natural-habitat-on-the-banks-of-the-suwannee-ri.html
Quagmire image, uncredited
Red Zone, https://abcnews.go.com/US/coronavirus-live-updates-illinois-gov-jb-pritzker-files/story?id=71836502
Red Zone, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 19 Aug 1844, Page 2.
Reset Button, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/17/dr-anthony-fauci-says-the-us-needs-to-hit-the-reset-button-on-covid-19.html
Reset Buttons, Wellington (KS) Daily Standard, 14 Dec 1887, Page 2.

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