Dear Family and Friends,
I get really excited watching animals, specifically dogs, more specifically my favorite dog, Mittens. I believe that the world is genuinely curious to know how animals– specifically dogs, more specifically my favorite dog, Mittens– perceive the human world. Without hesitation, I will give animals a voice with a unique cadence, and inflections, and intonations, and emotions, and hopes, and fears, and a backstory. I missed my calling to be a voice over actor for animal characters.
Is it weird? Oh, yes! This common behavior is to anthropomorphize an object by presuming the object has a soul and feelings. Is this a clinical illness? Not really. I’ve consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–5) to confirm this. It’s not. Ok, I lied. I refuse to check the DSM-5– just in case it really is a mental illness.
The theme for this year’s letters is to ask and answer a question. The belated question for this month is: Are Karma and the Covid-19 connected within 6 degrees of separation?
Of course the answer is ‘no’. It is uniquely human to see human-likeness in the non-human, non-sentient world. It is a sign of power and rank that things should be in human likeness, rather than reversed. But I must say ‘yes’ for the sake of writing a long letter this month. The only way that I can do this is through anthropomorphizing numerous inanimate objects to connect Karma to Covid-19.
Introduction
In Greek mythology, Narcissist, who by chance saw his own reflection in a pond (or because Nemesis lured him towards destruction) fell in love with his own appearance. People are self-absorbed in various conscious and subconscious ways. We look for elements of ourselves in other people, places, things, and ideas because we are attracted to other people who remind us of ourselves. If you are reading this letter, there are multiple aspects about your core identity that are either identical or significant to mine. You are probably black, millennial, female identifying, Christian, you most likely have a bachelor’s degree, you probably have a Master’s degree (or two), with a significant amount of student loan debt, you are an activist, a nurse, have traveled abroad, you are a bleeding heart progressive who trust MSNBC more that Faux News, and still has hope that Bernie Sanders will be the next president of the United States.
People seek community with others whose values and social norms reflect, accept, and affirm their own existence. For the things that don’t directly remind us of ourselves, we personify them to fit our worldview. Starting with our favorite– Karma.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, karma originated in India as a blanket philosophy explaining how each person’s current fortune was determined by the good and/or bad accumulated in their previous life. The idea of having good karma for the next life encouraged people to be moral and just, and the idea of karma helped people make sense of why evil exists in the world. Christianity, Judeasim, and Islam have theologically spun the idea of karma in the form of a divine authority who doles out karma/ vegenance/ rewards/ punishments for those who follow or disobey the doctrine of each respective religion.
A version of karma, irreverent of religious doctrine, reminds us that Karma– with a capital K– is a b!$@#, as we all know. Karma has been personified as an omnipotent, spiteful, and vindictive source of vengeance that can be unleashed when someone feels as if they have been wronged. The believed wrath of Karma can put action in motion to start a series of detrimental events that will bring hurt and pain to the offending party. People also believe Karma as a bartering system functioning in the spiritual currency of good intentions. If a person does a specific action (lets say, leave a tip in a tip jar), then they can expect that something good will come back their way. The contemporary idea of Karma has morphed into the expectation that every action has a reaction, the manifestation of that reaction will occur in this lifetime, and that Karma can be wielded to jolt other people.
First Degree of Separation: Karma and Slot Machines
Gambling is the definition of insanity: To keep doing the same thing over and over (i.e. continually giving/ losing money to a slot machine) and expecting a different outcome (i.e. winning a big jackpot). To be a serious gambler, you have to believe that slot machines, poker tables, race horses, the lotto, or whatever your fancy is has a memory. I’ve heard my mom, Grandma, and Aunty Gladys faithfully declare you have to stick with the slot machine until it warms up. It is the weird idea that the slot machine remembers and cares that the player has been faithful to it; therefore, the player is owed a reward for their faithfulness. Slot machines and Karma work on the premise that somebody is due fortune or harm decided by previous behaviors.
Statistically, if a coin is flipped 100 times it has a 50% probability of being heads and a 50% probability of being tails. The probability of flipping heads or tails is independent of the result of the previous coin toss; there is a chance you can flip 100 heads in a row or 100 tails in a row. In other words, probability has amnesia after every coin toss.
Every gambler who has ever dedicated hours, days, weeks of their life to the slot machine hopes to recoup all of the money they lost over the years even though they know the system is rigged. Gamblers waiver between conflicting partial truths: 1) they can win in a rigged system; 2) it is unlikely they will win in a rigged system 3) and, even if the system wasn’t rigged, they are never owed a big payout even after 6 hours of faithfulness to a single machine.
Second Degree of Separation: Slot Machines and Mirrors
Do you believe that every image you’ve seen of yourself looks exactly like you? Have you ever thought that the camera adds 10lbs or heard an audio recording of your own voice and wondered who that stranger was? For Narcissist to fall in love with his own beauty, he had to trust that the pond reflected an accurate reflection of his face. I used to think that all mirrors reflected life accurately until I had to buy a new body length mirror. I stood a cheap mirror and expensive mirror up next to each other and discovered that mirrors are imperfect and flawed by design. The distortion between the cheap and fancy mirror was stunning! When I stood in front of the cheap mirror it appeared as if I had a vortex forming in the middle of my stomach. When I stood in front of the fancy mirror, I stood 2 inches taller and instantly dropped 7lbs. Had I not compared the two mirrors simultaneously I would have never known that each mirror was presenting a slightly different reality of what I look like.
We often personify mirrors to be honest and impartial truth tellers. Fancy mirrors contour the world in such a way that makes people appear skinnier and taller while cheap ones distort the world in an unflattering way. Slot machines and mirrors are similar in the fact that the user believes that they are “honest” and “fair”, even though both will deceive you into buying into a false reality. The gambling system is rigged and mirrors will distort your image.
This intentional distortion of the world isn’t limited to mirror tricks. The United States is deeply divided (and has been ever since the abolition of slavery) of what constititutes a safe, humane, and just society. If you watch certain left or right wing news channels or follow certain social media accounts you will come to the conclusion that the way you see the world is correct and the other side has no merit. Just as we pick friends and communities that affirm our right to exist in the world, we pick a political, socio-economic camp that waives our team flag– as we should.
Anyways, I chose the fancy mirror.
Third Degree of Separation: Mirrors and Borders
It is possible to break definitive boundaries and have two conflicting (seemingly impossible) things at one time. There are some places in the United States where you can stand with your legs slightly spread apart over state borders so you can be located in two states at the same time. If you want to be really a cool kid, you can go to the Navajo Nations Reservation and stand on the four corners– the spot where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet at a single point. Not only do you get to stand in four states at once, you also get to stand on sovereign land that hasn’t granted the indigenous landholders full sovereignty! What a deal!
Better yet, you can go to the Haskell library where you can be simultaneously in the United States and Canada. This library is a safe international destination where families reunite with loved ones when one member can’t leave the United States because their visa prohibits them from doing so, and racist traveling and immigration policies make it very difficult for non-European immigrants to enter the United States.
Borders “protect people” because both communities on either side of the boundary agree to uphold a social contract (out of fear or reverence towards armed guards and economic power) to not cross the imaginary lines unless they agree it’s okay to do so. Borders only have meaning as long as there are military powers enforcing the significance of those imaginary lines. Borders do nothing to prevent crime from happening on either side of the imaginary line, and they are not particularly good from stopping it from crossing over. How many times has the US government crossed into other countries and meddled in political affairs and supplied military weapons in conflict areas? There is nothing special about an imaginary line drawn on a map other than it is only significant as long as people agree that it is significant. There are a few exceptions. For instance, Canada and Europe are closing their borders to infection-ridden folks from the United States to protect the public health of their country’s citizens.
Both borders and mirrors offer distorted experiences of realities and safety.
Fourth Degree of Separation: Borders and Ms. K’Rona
Long before Covid-19, a.k.a. Ms. K’rona, came to the Earth and said, “F$*! You’re imaginary boundaries”, (because Ms. K’Rona has a name, she has a gender, she can now talk, she balks at the institute of marriage, and she has a personal stance on global borders similar to mine) I’ve been thinking about what does it mean to be a global citizen, or a person of the African diaspora, rather than just a Black american.
Similar to borders, Ms. K’Rona has shown that people will die when we create laws, rules, and policies that disregard the basic humanity of those who are most marginalized among us.
Similar to mirrors, Ms. K’Rona has shown that safety is an illusion distorted by the level of privilege and access to care and resources in the world.
Similar to slot machines, Ms. K’Rona has shown that the system is rigged and that black, indegenous, and brown people are dying and suffering more than white people in every indicator of health and wealth, not just Covid-19 disparities.
Similar to Karma, Ms. K’Rona has shown that life is chaotic, unpredictable, and mostly out of our hands. Yet, we still hold tight to the false idea of control, which is really just anxiety. Pretending to have control and counting Karma points is a coping mechanism in the hopes that life has a running tally of good deeds and bad deeds that we have done. That in the end, there will be a verdict of all that you have done– good, bad and indifferent– to creating a more just and balanced world. And we are all hoping to come out a winner, either now or later, depending on a religious, agnostic, or atheist standpoint.
Conclusion
Prior to Narcissist falling in love with his own face, and subsequently meeting his own destruction, Echo was deeply enamored by Narcissist’s beauty. She shyly followed behind him, out of sight, as Narcissist journeyed through the woods. Narcissist was aware of her presence, but he couldn’t see her. He would call out, “Who’s there?”, and other refrains, but Echo stayed hidden as she repeated every word he said. She finally got the courage to approach him, but he rejected her affection. She became so heartbroken that she slowly faded away until she became nothing but, you guessed it, an echo in the wind.
I’m sure many of you heard of the theory that all of humanity is connected through an average of 6-10 degrees of separation. While there are many critiques of the original and subsequent studies showing our global connections, the resounding critique is that this study truly carries no practical significance. Generally, an individual only cares for the people in the first 2-3 degrees outside of their personal orbit.
In conclusion, we personify too many non-human things yet refuse to see humanity in one another. Those of us who are well resourced and privileged (either at a national or individual level) are Narcissist in this allegory. We ignore the repeated cries of pain (I can’t breathe… Black lives matter… defend Water Protectors.. Defund the police) in hopes of the cries of pain will fade away in the pursuit of seeing only a world that reflects our own worldview.
Black lives matter is the minimum. There are still children separated from their families living in cages at the US border. We still have the highest incarceration rate in the world. We are still justifying police killing unarmed people while simultaneously protecting statues of confederate traitors. We are still at war for some reason somewhere in the Middle East bombing schools and the usual terrorist behaviors. Indegenous people still want their land and sovereignty back. Flint still doesn’t have clean water. We still haven’t arrested the murders of Breonna Taylor or Elijah McClain. The list goes on.
Fear Was Last Season 