BY JAMES D. ZIRIN | JANUARY 8, 2021 (billmoyers.com)

The rioters who assaulted the Capitol on January 6 were better organized than the police who were charged with protecting the imposing building, which Biden called the “citadel of liberty.”

These were not just a group of people who happened to be in Washington that day to protest Biden’s victory. There was the woman named Elizabeth from Knoxville, her eyes smarting from mace, who said she came as part of the “revolution.” There was Jake Angeli of Arizona, an actor and singer, both a QAnon and Trump supporter, carrying a bullhorn and an American flag, who, in 39-degree weather, appeared inside the building shirtless and tattooed, wearing a horned helmet and red, white and blue face paint. There was the other bearded rioter wearing a hoodie emblazoned with the chilling rubric, “Camp Auschwitz, Work Brings Freedom,” the nazi slogan that greeted arrivals at the death camp.  There was a fair share of white supremacists and racists. Someone erected a gallows with a noose in front of the Capitol Building. 

This was not a demonstration; it was a desecration of our sacred democracy, a violent insurrection, aided and abetted by Trump and certain of his enablers.  Five people died as a result of the assault. 

This was a well-planned enterprise. Who financed these people? Was it Trump’s “Stop the Steal” PAC? Who paid their travel expenses, their hotel expense, their sustenance? Who were the organizers? Who assembled the small group that would storm the building, scale its hallowed walls and invade its chambers where the laws that rule us are made? Who instructed the trespassers on how to do it, and where to go? Many carried or wore Trump or QAnon paraphernalia. “Trump 2020” banners  or MAGA hats, the uniforms of their seditious enterprise. Few of the male rioters were clean shaven. Was this planned also to make identification more difficult? 

There is more to this than Trump’s incendiary innuendo in front of the White House exhorting the mob: “You will never take our country with weakness.” There is more to it than Trump saying to the mob of criminals, “We love you, you’re very special.”

Or Donald Trump, Jr. warning Republican members of Congress who were deserting the ship, “We’re coming for you.” Or Rudy Giuliani demanding of the same crowd “trial by combat” to settle the election. 

True, Trump Jr., Giuliani, and Ivanka Trump, who had previously tweeted that the  mob were  “patriots,” denounced the violence. But all that was too little too late. It was moving a log after they had poured gasoline on the fire. 

Who put up the crusty Congressman from Texas, Louie Gohmert, to start the frivolous and almost unimaginable lawsuit against Mike Pence seeking to empower him to throw the election Trump’s way? Who crafted the wild Ted Cruz scenario to advocate a special commission to investigate an election where countless lawsuits, recounts and challenges had unearthed no evidence of the “massive fraud” Trump falsely claimed had vitiated the election? The enablers like Cruz and Josh Hawley, the pallid senator from Missouri who wants to be president, know it is not true. Joe Biden won in a fair election. The American people rejected Donald Trump. How long do they intend to perpetuate this falsehood?

And what of our security forces? Why was the National Guard so late to the party? The DC and Capitol police were no match for the rioters. One of their number posed for a selfie with the mob; another escorted an intruder down the steps of the Capitol; a third ran from them, not even ordering them to leave the building. And these are but a few egregious examples. Thugs bearing flagpoles, and undoubtedly concealed weapons, breached the security of the building without serious challenge. The officers involved from the top down who were derelict in their duty must be held fully accountable. 

Someone must investigate the riots and find out who was behind it, who organized and financed it and who plotted to launch this shameful attack on the institutions of our democracy—perhaps more fragile than anyone ever thought.

Is this the end? Are we to assume that the buffoons and domestic terrorists looking more like Visigoths than civilized human beings have had their fun and will now go home from their all-expense paid trip to Washington? Or will they be back? 

Something like this happened not too long ago, in 1923 in Munich. It was called the “Beer Hall Putsch,” an attempted coup d’état by Hitler and his followers, which was calculated to seize the power of the Bavarian state government (and thereby launch a larger “national revolution” against the democratically elected Weimar Republic). The attempted coup failed after four police officers and 16 nazis were killed. Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison for “high treason,” but was out with a pardon after less than a year. In jail, he wrote Mein Kampf. The next time round, Hitler sought election to the chancellorship. He lost, but became chancellor anyway, and the rest is history.

So what have we here? Another Beer Hall Putsch? To paraphrase Churchill, is this end of the beginning of the hooliganism and thuggery we saw in Washington, or are we in the twilight of our democracy — the beginning of the end?   

We have a rule of law in this country on which we pride ourselves. Serious crimes were committed here, and they merit vigorous investigation and prosecution. Title 18 United States Code §1752, among other things, makes criminal disorderly or disruptive conduct with intent to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business in any building where a person entitled top Secret Service protection is visiting…when or so that such conduct, in fact, impedes or disrupts the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions. The penalty is severe, up to 10 years imprisonment. There are other more draconian criminal statutes that may be applicable as well.

But so far, relatively few of the putschists have been arrested. The new Attorney General, the distinguished jurist Merrick Garland, has vast experience prosecuting domestic terrorism cases. When he was in the Justice Department years ago, he supervised the prosecution of Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing case.

There must be full accountability for all those responsible for this day, like another in American history, “which will live in infamy.”

JAMES D. ZIRIN

James D. Zirin, a lawyer, is the author of the recently published book, “Plaintiff in Chief, -A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3500 Lawsuits.”

01.15.21 (wired.com)

As the news keeps evolving, we’re here to bring you the most reliable coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. Subscribe to support our journalism.

Officials try to speed up vaccinations, scientists discover more mutations, and researchers chart the pandemic’s future. Here’s what you should know: Officials attempt to speed up vaccine rollout as Biden’s team prepares to tackle the pandemic Just about everyone watching the vaccine rollout process agrees: It needs to speed up. The question is, how? On Tuesday, the Trump administration told states to immediately begin vaccinating Americans 65 and older and others who are at high risk. The government will also begin releasing all available vaccines instead of holding back half for second doses. The announcement came amid reports, particularly from New York, of providers having to throw away doses to accord with stringent vaccination guidelines. But as guidance from the federal government refines distribution plans at the state level, confusion still reigns for many in need—notably people with disabilities—about when they’ll be able to get vaccinated.Experts also warn that there are likely to be more hurdles when Biden takes office, because his transition team has been given limited access to critical vaccine distribution information. Biden’s team was only allowed to attend Operation Warp Speed meetings starting this week, and it was not invited to the sessions where sweeping new distribution decisions were made. Still, the transition team continues to roll out proposals for tackling the pandemic. On Thursday, Biden unveiled a $1.9 trillion coronavirus plan that includes the goal of administering 100 million vaccines by the 100th day of his administration. The president-elect also announced that David Kessler, a former FDA head, will lead vaccination efforts in the new administration. Scientists discover more mutations, but they seem unlikely to seriously affect vaccine efficacy It’s normal for viruses to mutate, and most of these variations aren’t particularly noteworthy. But in the past few weeks, several more significant mutations have captured the world’s attention, first from the UK and South Africa, then Brazil and within the US. Some countries have responded by limiting or even banning travel from certain countries. But, experts say, the only real way to get ahead of this virus in all its forms is to inoculate as many people as possible as fast as possible, and continue wearing masks and maintaining social distance in the interim.There is, however, some good news: Research indicates that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is effective at protecting against new mutations. And even though some scientists are investigating the possibility that the South Africa and Brazil strains could impact the strength of vaccines, they add that the virus would have to pick up multiple significant mutations to seriously impact vaccine efficacy, which won’t happen overnight. Research on new versions of the virus is ongoing. In December, the CDC gave public health labs $15 million to conduct more genetic sequencing of virus samples. And computational biologists recently used an algorithm to model how viruses evolve to evade our immune defenses. Researchers learn more about how coronavirus will affect us in the long term As the pandemic enters its second year, researchers are learning more about how this virus has affected our world—and not all of it is bad. A new study of more than 20,000 health workers in the UK found that people with Covid-19 antibodies were as protected as those who’ve received approved vaccines for at least five months post-infection. And while we’ve all been washing our hands diligently, wearing masks, and limiting risk wherever possible, the measured levels of virtually every common respiratory and gastrointestinal virus are lower than ever before.Researchers anticipate that years from now, when everyone has either been exposed to the virus or received the vaccine, coronavirus will circulate at low levels but rarely develop into a serious case, like a childhood infection. Children fend off new pathogens all the time; it’s one reason why they are much less likely to get seriously ill with Covid-19 than adults. Hopefully one day SARS-CoV-2 will be just another one.

Leah Garchik Jan. 15, 2021 (SFChronicle.com)Photo illustration for Leah Garchik column about being threatened while walking her dog. In the illustration, a threatening presence looms in the foreground; in the background an onlooker offers succor.Photo: Alex K. Fong / The Chronicle photo illustration

When I got home that night, after the adrenaline stopped pumping, the fright seemed to me a metaphor for how we’ve dealt with COVID-19. Raised on fairy tales, I have never given up looking for happy endings. Raised on fables, I have never given up looking for lessons.

The virus was all around us, threatening on every street corner, at every deli counter. But once attacked, every victim was alone. Those who were taken to hospitals died in isolation, cut off from their loved ones.

Then experts and everyday people joined forces. Scientists took to their laboratories to create vaccines; volunteers risked their lives to serve as guinea pigs. Heroes provided us with hope for rescue.

But on Jan. 6, another peril knocked us off our feet. This time, the monster pounding on the gate was not disease but terror, an angry crowd spreading vitriol as marauders invaded the U.S. Capitol building. It was a scare of a wholly different nature, sharing with the pandemic only two things: its ability to shock and threaten.

We’d been mesmerized by daily death counts on the newspaper’s front page, and now we were glued to our TVs watching enraged supporters of President Trump attempt to tear apart the foundations of our government. Switching from station to station, we fruitlessly sought words of reassurance among the platitudes of politicians trying to sound distinguished while protecting their own electability prospects.

We witnessed these things together, but at the moment of infection, the moment of riot, we were alone, individuals. Where would it stop?

---

Just before Christmas, I bundle up for the last dog walk of the day around 10 p.m. Often, to make the walk go faster, I play games with myself. The night before, my losing bet had been on counting 50 houses with Christmas trees or holiday decorations in the windows. There had actually been 60 along my eight-block route.

Arriving at the corner of Broderick and Haight this night, I turn to walk west up the incline on Haight Street. The nights are particularly quiet these days, thanks to the COVID-related curfew, starting at 10 p.m.

Behind me I hear some rustling. I turn to glimpse the shadowy outline of someone lurching up the street about a quarter block behind me. I’m on alert, although the man has posed no particular danger.

But Greenberg always seems to sense my anxiety. Usually, when we pass people walking toward us, he bounds over and presses himself against their legs, looking to be petted. Always, though, when I am the least bit wary, he barks. Tonight is the same. I haven’t said anything, I haven’t done anything, but somehow he knows that I am uneasy, and he starts making a shrill racket.

This is often embarrassing, and I usually try to hush him while apologizing to the target of his barks. In this case, it is the man behind us, who seems to be walking faster than we are and gaining on us. With Greenberg yipping and yowling, I apologize to the stranger and tell the dog, as sternly as I can, to be quiet. The man is alongside us now, and leans in to ask for some money.

“Sorry,” I tell him, perceiving that him asking for something and me turning him down has raised the stakes of the conversation. I look up and down the street. No one else is around.

Greenberg, more into shrill shrieks than polite chitchat, continues his coloratura expressions of outrage.

At this, the man starts screaming, “dog, dog, DOG!” over and over. His face is distorted, and his neck muscles bulge as he yells as loud as he can. He is not violent, but the force of his voice feels dangerous, that he, a grown man of average size, is as out of control as my 12-pound dog.

Terrified at the timbre of the man’s shouts, Greenberg goes into an even greater frenzy, barking, alternately lunging and cowering, and trying to drag me into the street. The man continues yelling. If I run, I think, he could run after me, and that would be even worse. I walk a few steps more and the man keeps up with me.

He doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t threaten me. He doesn’t come closer than 5 feet away. But his demeanor feels unpredictable, as though he could attack at any time. Standing on the deserted sidewalk, that is what scares me.

Suddenly, I hear another man’s voice from the other side of the street.

“Is everything all right?” he hollers. “Are you OK?” I peer into the darkness and see the man has come out of his house and is addressing me from a landing on his front steps. As he calls, the “dog”-screamer stops. Maybe he was tired of yelling, or maybe the presence of a witness has shut him up.

“Yes,” I say, so relieved to have an ally that I run across Haight Street to be closer. Greenberg in tow, I tell him what happened, that I am not harmed or hurt in any way, just shaken.

“Are you going far?” he asks. “I can walk you home.”

“No need,” I say. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you came out to see what was happening.”

A minute later, on Page Street, I run into a man I often see walking his dog. His dog is wearing a surgical keep-away-from-the-wound cone, and I know it had been neutered a day or so before.

“How’s he doing?” I ask.

“Better,” the guy says.

And then, because my heart is still racing and my knees are still wobbly, I tell him what happened, ending with my gratitude for the neighbor who cared enough to investigate what was going on.

“Well, sure,” says the dog-walker. “We are a community.”

---

When I took a break from watching the news last Wednesday to walk Greenberg at 5 p.m. or so, neighbors were bursting out of their houses. Some, like me, had dogs to walk. Others were just taking recesses from their TV screens. “Unbelievable,” we said to each other. “Could you imagine that this is America?” “All I’ve been doing is watching and eating.” “Well, it’s been coming for four years, hasn’t it?”

We were a community, ordinary folks in sweatpants and parkas, sharing our sorrows and fears, and that seemed to help. In the terrors, the horrors, the disappointments, the outrages of recent times, our strongest feelings will be bonds with each other.

Leah Garchik is a former Chronicle columnist and curator of the daily Public Eavesdropping feature. Email: culture@sfchronicle.com

Leah Garchik

Follow Leah on:https://www.facebook.com/SFChronicle/leahgarchik

Leah Garchik washed up on the shores of Fifth and Mission in 1972, began her duties as a part-time temporary steno clerk, and has done everything around The Chronicle including washing the dishes (her coffee cup). Over the years, she has served as writer, reviewer, editor and columnist. She is the author of two books, “San Francisco: Its Sights and Secrets” and “Real Life Romance.”

She is an avid knitter, a terrible accordion player, a sporadic tweeter and a pretty good speller.

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SHORT FILM202118 MINS

Another Hayride

As the AIDS epidemic took hold in the early 1980s, self-help guru Louise Hay created a space for healing called the Hayride. Drawing hundreds of gay men confronting a deadly pandemic, Louise promised that self-love would help them overcome AIDS.

Link to movie: https://www.pbs.org/pov/watch/anotherhayride/video-another-hayride/

(whatisnuclear.com)

Thorium is a basic element of nature, like Iron and Uranium. Like Uranium, its properties allow it to be used to fuel a nuclear chain reaction that can run a power plant and make electricity (among other things). Thorium itself will not split and release energy. Rather, when it is exposed to neutrons, it will undergo a series of nuclear reactions until it eventually emerges as an isotope of uranium called U-233, which will readily split and release energy next time it absorbs a neutron. Thorium is therefore called fertile, whereas U-233 is called fissile.

Reactors that use thorium are operating on what’s called the Thorium-Uranium (Th-U) fuel cycle. The vast majority of existing or proposed nuclear reactors, however, use enriched uranium (U-235) or reprocessed plutonium (Pu-239) as fuel (in the Uranium-Plutonium cycle), and only a handful have used thorium. Current and exotic designs can theoretically accommodate thorium.

The Th-U fuel cycle has some intriguing capabilities over the traditional U-Pu cycle. Of course, it has downsides as well. On this page you’ll learn some details about these and leave with the ability to productively discuss and debate thorium with knowledge of the basics.

Up and coming nuclear reactor powerhouses China and India both have substantial reserves of Thorium-bearing minerals and not as much Uranium. So, expect this energy source to become a big deal in the not-too-distant future…

Hype alert   If someone on the internet told you something unbelievable about Thorium, you might want to check out our Thorium Myths page just to double check it.

On this page

• What are the benefits of using Thorium?
• What are the downsides of Thorium?
• What about making bombs?
• Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors
• See also

What are the key benefits of Thorium?

• Thorium cycles exclusively allow thermal breeder reactors (as opposed to fast breeders). More neutrons are released per neutron absorbed in the fuel in a traditional (thermal) type of reactor. This means that if the fuel is reprocessed, reactors could be fueled without mining any additional U-235 for reactivity boosts, which means the nuclear fuel resources on Earth can be extended by 2 orders of magnitude without some of the complications of fast reactors. Thermal breeding is perhaps best suited for Molten Salt Reactors, which are discussed on their own page as well as in summary below.
• The Th-U fuel cycle does not irradiate Uranium-238 and therefore does not produce transuranic (bigger than uranium) atoms like Plutonium, Americium, Curium, etc. These transuranics are the major health concern of long-term nuclear waste. Thus, Th-U waste will be less toxic on the 10,000+ year time scale.

Are there any additional benefits of Thorium?

• Thorium is more abundant in Earth’s crust than Uranium, at a concentration of 0.0006% vs. 0.00018% for Uranium (factor of 3.3x). This is often cited as a key benefit, but if you look at the known reserves of economically extractable Thorium vs. Uranium [1,2], you’ll find that they are both nearly identical. Also, substantial Uranium is found dissolved in sea-water, whereas there is 86,000x less Thorium in there. If closed fuel cycles or breeding ever become mainstream, this benefit will be irrelevant because both the Th-U and the U-Pu fuel cycles will last us well into the tens of thousands of years, which is about as long as modern history.

What are the downsides of Thorium?

• We don’t have as much experience with Th. The nuclear industry is quite conservative, and the biggest problem with Thorium is that we are lacking in operational experience with it. When money is at stake, it’s difficult to get people to change from the norm.
• Thorium fuel is a bit harder to prepare. Thorium dioxide melts at 550 degrees higher temperatures than traditional Uranium dioxide, so very high temperatures are required to produce high-quality solid fuel. Additionally, Th is quite inert, making it difficult to chemically process. This is irrelevant for fluid-fueled reactors discussed below.
• Irradiated Thorium is more dangerously radioactive in the short term. The Th-U cycle invariably produces some U-232, which decays to Tl-208, which has a 2.6 MeV gamma ray decay mode. Bi-212 also causes problems. These gamma rays are very hard to shield, requiring more expensive spent fuel handling and/or reprocessing.
• Thorium doesn’t work as well as U-Pu in a fast reactor. While U-233 an excellent fuel in the thermal spectrum, it is between U-235 and Pu-239 in the fast spectrum. So for reactors that require excellent neutron economy (such as breed-and-burn concepts), Thorium is not ideal.

Proliferation Issues

Thorium is generally accepted as proliferation resistant compared to U-Pu cycles. The problem with plutonium is that it can be chemically separated from the waste and perhaps used in bombs. It is publicly known that even reactor-grade plutonium can be made into a bomb if done carefully. By avoiding plutonium altogether, thorium cycles are superior in this regard.

Besides avoiding plutonium, Thorium has additional self-protection from the hard gamma rays emitted due to U-232 as discussed above. This makes stealing Thorium based fuels more challenging. Also, the heat from these gammas makes weapon fabrication difficult, as it is hard to keep the weapon pit from melting due to its own heat. Note, however, that the gammas come from the decay chain of U-232, not from U-232 itself. This means that the contaminants could be chemically separated and the material would be much easier to work with. U-232 has a 70 year half-life so it takes a long time for these gammas to come back.

The one hypothetical proliferation concern with Thorium fuel though, is that the Protactinium can be chemically separated shortly after it is produced and removed from the neutron flux (the path to U-233 is Th-232 -> Th-233 -> Pa-233 -> U-233). Then, it will decay directly to pure U-233. By this challenging route, one could obtain weapons material. But Pa-233 has a 27 day half-life, so once the waste is safe for a few times this, weapons are out of the question. So concerns over people stealing spent fuel are largely reduced by Th, but the possibility of the owner of a Th-U reactor obtaining bomb material is not.

Molten Salt Reactors

Update: See our full page on Molten Salt Reactors for more info.

One especially cool possibility suitable for the thermal-breeding capability of the Th-U fuel cycle is the molten salt reactor (MSR), or as one particular MSR is commonly known on the internet, the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR). In these, fuel is not cast into pellets, but is rather dissolved in a vat of liquid salt. The chain reaction heats the salt, which naturally convects through a heat exchanger to bring the heat out to a turbine and make electricity. Online chemical processing removes fission product neutron poisons and allows online refueling (eliminating the need to shut down for fuel management, etc.). None of these reactors operate today, but Oak Ridge had a test reactor of this type in the 1960s called the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment [wikipedia] (MSRE). The MSRE successfully proved that the concept has merit and can be operated for extended amounts of time. It competed with the liquid metal cooled fast breeder reactors (LMFBRs) for federal funding and lost out. Alvin Weinberg discusses the history of this project in much detail in his autobiography, The First Nuclear Era [amazon.com], and there is more info available all over the internet. These reactors could be extremely safe, proliferation resistant, resource efficient, environmentally superior (to traditional nukes, as well as to fossil fuel obviously), and maybe even cheap. Exotic, but successfully tested. Who’s going to start the startup on these? (Just kidding, there are already like 4 startups working on them, and China is developing them as well).

See Also

• Our Thorium Myths page
• Our breeding and recycling page
• Our molten salt reactor page
• IAEA TECDOC-1450 Thorium fuel cycle – potential benefits and challenges. 113 pages of professional information.
• Energy From Thorium – a site dedicated to potentially excellent uses of Thorium in LFTRs
• Thorium fuel cycle [wikipedia]
• Molten Salt Reactor Experiment [wikipedia]
• The First Nuclear Era [amazon.com]
• Nuclear Power is our gateway to a prosperous future – An Op-Ed by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, a former president of India
• Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor [wikipedia]
• Special May 2016 Edition of Nuclear Technology on Thorium

References

• World Nuclear – Known Thorium Reserves
• World Nuclear – Known Uranium Reserves

by: Tristi Rodriguez Posted: Jan 15, 2021 (kron4.com)

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) — Health officials are looking more closely into the deaths of nearly two dozen people after receiving their first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in Norway.

A total 23 people died within days of receiving their first dose, the Norwegian Medicines Agency announced in a statement.Pfizer study suggests vaccine works against virus variant 

Of those deaths, 13 were nursing home patients who were at least 80-years-old and were apparently related to the side effects of the vaccinations, according to health officials.

Dr. Sigurd Hortemo, chief physician at the Norwegian Medicines Agency, said in the press release that common side effects like fever and nausea “may have contributed to a fatal outcome in some frail patients.”

The Norwegian Medicines Agency says it cannot rule out side effects of the vaccine contributing to serious course and fatal outcome in patients with serve underlying disease.Permanent flu vaccine in the works 

As a result, the COVID-19 vaccination guide has been updated with more detailed advice on vaccinating the elderly.

The Norwegian Medicines Agency and the National Institute of Public Health will assess all reports of suspected reactions.

The Pfizer vaccine requires two doses separated by 21 days. It must be stored in an ultra-cold freezer, thermal shipping container, or refrigerator.Health care worker has allergic reaction to Pfizer’s COVID vaccine 

Amid a vaccine rollout that has offered real hope for some countries, the global death toll from COVID-19 topped 2 million Friday.

All told, over 35 million doses of various COVID-19 vaccines have been administered around the world, according to the University of Oxford.

Copyright 2021 Nexstar Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

We keep chasing happiness, but true clarity comes from depression and existential angst. Admit that life is hell, and be free

Julie Reshe

9 January 2020 (aeon.co

is a philosopher and psychoanalyst. She is a professor at the School of Advanced Studies (SAS) at the University of Tyumen in Siberia, and director of the Institute of Psychoanalysis at the Global Center for Advanced Studies (GCAS).Listen here

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Edited by Pam Weintraub

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I remember being depressed. It was a frightening state of mind that seemed to go on indefinitely. The very idea of waking up was riddled with dread. A state of internal turbulence, apprehension and negativity about the future propelled the total collapse of a positive and optimistic attitude. I felt like my mind suddenly became sick and twisted. I didn’t recognise my new self, and wondered what had happened to the cheerful person I used to be.

The reason for my depression was a breakup. But what led to depression was not so much the reaction to our split, but the realisation that the one you believed loved you, who was closest to you and promised to be with you forever, had turned out to be someone else, a stranger indifferent to your pain. I discovered that this loving person was an illusion. The past became meaningless, and the future ceased to exist. The world itself wasn’t credible any more.

In that state of depression, I found the attitude of others changed dramatically. Depression is not particularly tolerated in society, and I realised that those around me were of two persuasions. One group of people wanted to fix me, telling me to pull myself together or recommending professional help. The other group tended to shun me like a leper. In hindsight, I understand this reaction: after all, I had become cynical, agnostic and pessimistic, and I hadn’t bothered to be polite.

On the other hand, I developed a deeper understanding of the genuine suffering of others. In my depression, I learned about the dark side of the world, about which I knew little before. I could no longer ignore suffering and delusion, opening a new window on reality that was unpleasant indeed. My experience is not unique, but it was in some sense heightened because, in addition to being a regular human encountering a pathetic breakup, I’m also a philosopher. As a philosopher, I know that what seems to be obvious is far from always so, and therefore requires rigorous critical analysis. So, in the wake of my experience, I was especially inclined to doubt the equation of positive moods with health, and of negative moods with distortion. Could it be that, in my depression, I was finally seeing the world as it was?

Before my own descent, I’d been confused when my PhD mentor, the philosopher Alenka Zupančič at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, suggested that the common striving for happiness constitutes a repressive ideology. What in the world could be wrong or repressive about the desire to make the world a happier place?

Yet, after observing myself, I came to agree with her. Look around and you’ll notice we demand a state of permanent happiness from ourselves and others. The tendency that goes together with overpromotion of happiness is stigmatisation of the opposite of happiness – emotional suffering, such as depression, anxiety, grief or disappointment. We label emotional suffering a deviation and a problem, a distortion to be eliminated – a pathology in need of treatment. The voice of sadness is censored as sick.

The American Psychological Association defines depression as ‘a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act’. The very term stigmatises the sufferer and implies the need for her to be cured. It’s hard to say whether therapists and the medical establishment are imposing this attitude or are influenced by the prevailing cultural paradigm. Either way, most therapies today aim to eliminate negative moods.

What if reality truly sucks and, while depressed, we lose the very illusions that help us to not realise this?

The therapy best known for purging negative thoughts is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), originally formulated as a treatment for depression and anxiety. It is based on the cognitive model of mental illness, initially developed by the US psychiatrist Aaron Beck in the late 1960s. The premise is that depression is caused by a negative style of thought, called ‘depressogenic thinking’. When depressed, we tend to see ourselves as helpless, doomed, unlovable, deficient, worthless, blameworthy and rejected by others. Examples of this negative worldview can be exemplified by such expressions as ‘I’m worthless and ugly’, ‘No one values me’, ‘I’m hopeless because things will never change’, and ‘Things can only get worse!’ Beck suggests that in this depression we employ ‘distorted’ and unhelpful thinking patterns. CBT practitioners are trained to detect and break distorted thinking in order to set us in flight towards happier outcomes.

During my depression, under the influence of the friends I had left, I went to a CBT therapist. As you can see, I wasn’t completely cured and still find myself full of ‘depressogenic’ thinking. My feelings about the therapy varied, from a desire to trust myself and the care of the therapist to irritation at this very desire. I felt like I was told what I wanted to hear, like a child in need of comfort with a pleasant night-time story to get away from the harsh reality that was surrounding me. Depressogenic thoughts are unpleasant and even unbearable, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that they are distorted representations of reality. What if reality truly sucks and, while depressed, we lose the very illusions that help us to not realise this?

What if, to the contrary, positive thinking represents a biased grasp of reality? What if, when I was depressed, I learned something valuable, that I wouldn’t be able to learn at a lower cost? What if it was a collapse of illusions – the collapse of unrealistic thinking – and the glimpse of a reality that actually caused my anxiety? What if, when depressed, we actually perceive reality more accurately? What if both my need to be happy and the demand of psychotherapy to heal depression are based on the same illusion? What if the so-called gold standard of therapy is just a comforting pseudoscience itself?

Modern psychology recognises everyday thinking as largely biased, based on a number of distortions. But this recognition exists within the framework of positivity. In short, the mainstream embraces commonplace illusions as healthy as long as they don’t disrupt the positive flow.

The current concept of positive illusions first appeared in the 1980s in a paper by the psychologist Shelley Taylor of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Jonathon Brown at Southern Methodist University. Positive illusions are common cognitive biases based on unrealistically favourable ideas about ourselves, others, our situation and the world around us. Types of positive illusions include, among others, unrealistic optimism, the illusion of control, and illusory superiority that makes us overestimate our abilities and qualities in relation to others. Study after study indicates that such illusions are rife. Around 75-80 per cent of people evaluate themselves as being above average in almost all parameters: in academic ability, job performance, immunity to bias, relationship happiness, IQ. However, cruel mathematical laws tell us that this is an illusion – all, by definition, cannot be above average.

The roots of the modern positivity trend can be found in the religious past, which once provided people with guidelines for life and the notion of salvation, offering a solid picture of the world with a happy ending. In our secular world, psychology fills a void left by religion, serving to provide explanations and give hope for a better life. Replacing religion with psychology keeps many features of the Christian tradition, for instance, intact. The role of a counsellor or therapist, and our need to attend them, finds many analogies in the practice of a pastor and the tradition of confession. Both counsellor and pastor are figures with authority to claim what is wrong with you and tell you how to fix it. The French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-84) traced the origin of psychotherapy to pastorhood, elaborating on the idea that the initial religious goal of pastoral care was to deliver the individual to salvation.

The contemporary Danish scholar Anders Dræby Sørensen points out that our modern aspiration to shed suffering and anxiety and, ultimately, to discover happiness is at least partially based on the religious idea of deliverance from worldly suffering to a heavenly condition. In the secularised world, salvation becomes a task that must be accomplished in our earthly life. Heaven is no longer about the transcendental realm, but about attaining a total state of happiness and transforming Earth itself into Heaven in the now.

Next to religion and its psychotherapeutic counterpart, philosophy could be considered heresy. The most problematic patient might be the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), well known for his contention that suffering is unavoidable and a key part of human existence. Schopenhauer argued that there is no meaning or purpose to existence, and that life is moved by an aimless striving that can never be fulfilled. He turns our positive worldview upside down – the normal basic mode of our existence is not happiness that, from time to time, gets disrupted by suffering. Instead, life is itself a bone-deep suffering and endless mourning. It will never get better, Schopenhauer claimed: ‘It is bad today, and it will be worse tomorrow …’ Schopenhauer posits that consciousness further worsens the human condition, since conscious beings experience pain more acutely and are able to reflect on the absurdity of their existence. ‘I shall be told … that my philosophy is comfortless – because I speak the truth; and people preferred to be assured that everything the Lord has made is good,’ he wrote in the essay ‘On the Sufferings of the World’ (1851). ‘Go to the priests, then, and leave the philosophers in peace.’

For Freud, the goal was helping patients to accept and reflect on the hell that life is

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) doesn’t provide much reassurance either. He referred to anxiety as a basic mode of human existence and distinguishes between authentic and non-authentic human forms of living. We mostly live inauthentically in our everyday lives, where we are immersed in everyday tasks, troubles and worries, so that our awareness of the futility and meaninglessness of our existence is silenced by everyday noise. We go to work, raise children, work on our relationships, clean the house, go to sleep, and do it all over again. The world around us seems to make sense, and is even richly meaningful. But the authentic life is disclosed only in anxiety. Then we become self-aware and can begin to think freely, rejecting the shared illusion that society has imposed. For Heidegger, anxiety represents a proper philosophical mood.

The Norwegian thinker Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899-1990) took philosophical pessimism even further. Human consciousness is tragically overdeveloped, he said, resulting in existential angst. In his essay ‘The Last Messiah’ (1933), Zapffe referred to it as ‘a biological paradox, an abomination, an absurdity, an exaggeration of disastrous nature’. Humans have developed a need that cannot be fulfilled, since nature itself is meaningless; to survive, he argues, humanity has to repress this damaging surplus of consciousness. This is ‘a requirement of social adaptability and of everything commonly referred to as healthy and normal living’.

Zapffe named four universal defence mechanisms humankind has developed:

• isolation, including repression of disturbing and destructive thoughts and feelings;
• anchoring, the establishment of higher meanings and ideals. The examples of collective anchoring he gives are: ‘God, the Church, the State, morality, fate, the law of life, the people, the future’. Anchoring provides us with illusions that secure psychological comfort. The shortcoming of anchoring is the despair we feel upon discovering that our anchoring mechanism is an illusion;
• distraction, the focusing of our thoughts and energy on a certain idea or task to prevent the mind from self-reflection; and
• sublimation, a type of defence mechanism in which negative urges are transformed into more positive actions. For instance, we distance ourselves from the tragedy of our existence and transform our awareness into philosophy, literature and art.

The father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was – like the philosophers – against religion, and claimed its purpose is to satisfy our infantile emotional needs. ‘Neurotics are a rabble, good only to support us financially and to allow us to learn from their cases: psychoanalysis as a therapy may be worthless,’ he reportedly told his colleague Sándor Ferenczi. Freud wasn’t optimistic about the outcome of psychotherapeutic treatment, and was reluctant to promise happiness as a result. In Studies on Hysteria (1895), he pledged that psychoanalysis could transform hysterical misery into ‘common unhappiness’. For Freud, the goal was helping patients to accept and reflect on the hell that life is. Not in any beyond, but here on Earth.

Despite its turn toward positivity, psychological theory includes one branch with a focus on the pessimistic philosophical tradition embraced by Freud himself. Called ‘depressive realism’, it was initially suggested by the US psychologists Lauren Alloy and Lyn Yvonne Abramson in a paper subtitled ‘Sadder but Wiser?’ (1979). The authors held that reality is always more transparent through a depressed person’s lens.

Alloy, of Temple University in Pennsylvania, and Abramson, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tested the hypothesis by measuring the illusion of control. After interviews with a set of undergraduates, they divided the students into depressed and nondepressed groups. Each student had a choice of either pressing or not pressing a button, and received one of two outcomes: a green light or no green light. Experimental settings presented the students with various degrees of control over the button, from 0 to 100 per cent. Upon completing the tests, they were asked to analyse the degree of control their responses exerted over outcome – that is, how many times the green light came on as a result of their actions. It turned out that, the sadder but wiser students were more accurate in judging the degree of control they exerted. Alloy and Abramson concluded that depressed students were less prone to illusions of control, and therefore showed greater realism. The nondepressed students, on the other hand, overestimated the degree of their control, and therefore were engaged in self-deception in favour of enhancing self-esteem.

The ‘depressive realism’ hypothesis remains controversial because it calls into question the tenets of CBT, which assert that the depressed individual has more thought biases and hence has to be healed in order to become more realistic. But subsequent studies have bolstered the idea. For instance, the Australian social psychologist Joseph Forgas and colleagues showed that sadness reinforces critical thinking: it helps people reduce judgmental bias, improve attention, increase perseverance, and generally promotes a more skeptical, detailed and attentive thinking style. On the other hand, positive moods can lead to a less effortful and systematic thinking style. Happy people are more prone to stereotypical thinking and rely on simple cliché. They are more likely to ‘go with the flow’ and are prone to making more social misjudgments on account of their biases.

Depressive rumination is a problemsolving mechanism that promotes analysis

Other researchers have looked at the evolutionary advantage of depression. For instance, Paul Andrews at Virginia Commonwealth University and J Anderson Thomson at the University of Virginia challenge the predominant medical view on depression as a disorder and biological dysfunction, and contend that it is, rather, an evolved adaptation. The evolutionary function of depression is to develop analytical thinking mechanisms and to assist in solving complex mental problems. Depressive rumination helps us to concentrate and solve the problems we are ruminating about.

Like a fever that can be scary in the moment but isn’t inherently bad, depression causes a decrease in functional wellbeing, impairing many domains of life, such as work, social relations and sexual life. However, though unpleasant, fever is not the product of biological malfunction. Rather, it is an important infection-fighting mechanism. The impairments that fever causes are the adaptive outcome of trade-offs in body systems needed to fight the infection. Similarly, depressive rumination is a problemsolving mechanism that draws attention to and promotes analysis of certain problems.

In her book Daseinsanalysis (2008), Alice Holzhey-Kunz, a modern, existentially oriented Swiss psychoanalyst, turns to Heidegger’s distinction between authentic and non-authentic forms of living. She claims that mental suffering signifies a disillusioning confrontation with the reality of existence. In that sense, depression is not so much a disorder as a disillusioning explosion of the nothingness of human existence. In this context, a cheerier form of what we might call ‘inauthentic living’ would hardly be a pathology since it counters acute existential awareness with everyday tasks and oblivion in the commonness.

Although the depression following my breakup doesn’t rise to the level of existential angst, it was the strongest perspective-shifting experience of my life. It irreversibly changed and traumatised me at the core of my being, and I am now generally sadder and more withdrawn than I used to be.

Alas, what if this is the cost of losing our illusions and learning infinitely more about reality itself? We might be getting there. Some studies suggest that existential suffering and mental distress is rising worldwide, but particularly in modern Western culture. Perhaps we chase happiness precisely because it is no longer attainable?

The vicious cycle in which we find ourselves – the endless pursuit of happiness and the impossibility of its attainment – hurts us only more. Perhaps the way out is actually accepting our raised level of consciousness. In our melancholy depths, we find that superficial states of happiness are largely a way not to be alive. Mental health, positive psychology and dominant therapy modalities such as CBT all require that we remain silent and succumb to our illusions until we die.

In closing, I must address you, my dear reader. I realise that, as you were reading this essay, you must have experienced a ‘yes, but…’ reaction. (‘Yes, life is horrible, but there are so many good things too.’) This ‘but’ is an automatic response to negative, horrifying insights. Once exposed to these forces, our positive defence mechanisms kick in. I myself was caught in the drill while writing this essay (and pretty much during the rest of my life). Without this protective measure, we would all probably be dead already, having most likely succumbed to suicide for relief.

A small proposal of mine would be to explore disillusionment and refuge from positivity as a new space to experience life, hopefully before a suicidal reaction follows. Next time, before you plunge into alcohol, or make appeals to loved ones, friends, psychotherapists or to any other of the many life-affirming practices, remember that almost all constructions of meaning – from work to sport to opening our hearts to Jesus – are inherently illusory. An alternative to running away from life through illusion is to explore an illusion-free space for as long as possible, so as to become more capable of bearing the reality of a disillusioned and concrete life. If successful, you’ll free yourself from your faux-positivity and your chains.

In the end, of course, we might not be able to liberate ourselves, either from suffering or from illusions. Life is hell, and it looks as though no heaven awaits us, to top it off. This, in itself, might be a path to liberation since, after all, we have nothing to lose.

Brave New World

by Aldous Huxley 

Brave New World is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, inhabited by genetically modified citizens and an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by only a single individual: the story’s protagonist.

(Goodreads.com)

A Wrinkle in Time

by Madeleine L’Engle 

It was a dark and stormy night.

Out of this wild night, a strange visitor comes to the Murry house and beckons Meg, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O’Keefe on a most dangerous and extraordinary adventure—one that will threaten their lives and our universe.

Winner of the 1963 Newbery Medal, A Wrinkle in Time is the first book in Madeleine L’Engle’s classic Time Quintet

(Goodreads.com; recommended by Janet Cornwell, H.W., m.)