But hopefully in a productive and healthy way.
So I had my phone appointment with Doctor Teal, the doctor from the Stroke Prevention Clinic at VGH, this morning.
Side note : I had completely forgotten it was a PHONE appointment until his assistant Candace left me a voicemail yesterday which mentioned the fact.
I was all ready to show up at the clinic today. Which would have been embarrassing.
Anyhow, the phone thing went down and the bottom line is that he found some narrowing of several important arteries in my brain, including the upper part of the carotid, and therefore I really need to get my indicators down or I will have a stroke.
I didn’t mention my extensive family history of stroke at the time. Because I was already starting to freak out.
Because strokes scare me. Moreso than other negative health events like heart attacks. Because heart attacks might kill you but you will die more or less intact.
But absolutely anything can happen if you have a strokes, from radical changes in personality to going blind or deaf to ending up in a wheelchair or even ending up retarded, my precious IQ obliterated, and I end up like the narrating character from Flowers for Algernon at the end of the story.
Only with far less practice at being retarded.
It could even lead to my ultimate nightmare, being completely paralyzed and unable to move at all, doomed to live a trapped-in life like this guy.
So ya know…. DO NOT WANT.
Oh, and I doubt this would stand up as a living will in a court of law, but just for the record, if that ever happens to me, PULL THE FUCKING PLUG.
So yeah, I am very scared right now. Freaking out, if you will. And that’s a good thing.
Because fear is the best weapon I have against this paralytic apathy that keeps me from looking after myself properly.
I do care, in theory. I don’t want to get sicker. I don’t want to die. Not officially.
But unofficially, a big part of me totally wants to die. It wants out of this life and it hates my malfunctioning guts and it wants me to die, die, die ASAP.
But I am way too practiced and effective at keeping actual suicidal thoughts at bay for it to “get” me that way so it has to play the long game of keeping me from doing the seemingly simple and easy things I should be doing to prevent my doom.
Wouldn’t that be the shitty icing on the crappy cake? Being extremely sick and knowing that I could have prevented it all so easily?
How frigging humiliating.
That’s why I am glad to be freaked out by all of this, and I hope to stay this way long enough for the fear to burn through as much of the dead tissue and dirty ice and other psychological detritus that is keeping me down.
If I am to be truly free, I must give up a little part of myself.
Hopefully not literally.
More after the break.
The Virus and Law
Let’s talk about the real role of law in society.
First, to ground it in current events : my province, British Columbia, no longer has a mask mandate. Just like everyone else, we ditched it in the beginning of March.
And I am glad it’s gone. Shows that we are on our way to beating this thing.
However, so far, as of the 15th of March, 2022, absolutely nothing has actually changed. We’re all still wearing our masks.
Because it was never the law enforcing the mask mandate. It was the far more efficient mechanism of social pressure.
To put it crudely but directly, what kept even a fairly reluctant (read : claustrophobic) mask wearer like myself putting that damned thing on every time I went out was that I didn’t want people to glare at me.
It was the disapproval of others that was the whip that drove me forward. The shame of it all. The feeling like I was being a bad citizen and a bad person. Public censure.
That is far scarier to me than jail. And unlike the law, the punishment would come immediately after the crime, which as any animal trainer can tell you is the best way to condition someone not to do something.
Of course, that’s the stick. The carrot is the feeling of being a good person doing the right thing, unlike SOME people.
Because nobody wants to be one of THOSE people. The outgroup. The disapproved. The people we are glad not to be because society looks down on them.
Even a happy little weirdo freak like myself was absolutely mortified when I forgot to put on my mask as I headed out to the cardiologist and that caused one of her staff to mistake me for an anti-masker.
I wanted to die. My internal cringe was so intense I thought I would turn inside out.
This is our primary moral enforcement mechanism. Social pressure. Fear of the disapproval of the community. The feeling of being a bad person.
Law runs a distant second to this. In real terms, on a moment to moment basis. law acts to keep us from doing bad things when nothing else will.
Everyone has had moments when they really wanted to do something – help yourself to someone else’s property, or punch that mouthy asshole in the face, or whatever else – where only the thought of the consequences can hold us back.
Then temptation passes and you calm down and you’re yourself again, principles and self-image as a good person intact, and you are glad you didn’t do it.
For this to work, there has to be a legal system that will catch and punish the guilty. And it is a mechanism we must constantly refine and adjust.
But the real reason most people are not criminals and therefore crime is quite rare is that most of us would feel guilty and ashamed of ourselves if we violated our own moral like that, plus we don’t want to go to jail.
And what would the neighbors think?
So yes. The real thing keeping you safe from crime is the moral character of your fellow citizens, not any laws or jails.
Feel free to freak out a little about that notion. Everybody does.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.