I feel a need to apologize for missing my self-imposed
deadlines for posting on this blog. I
just didn’t get it done. I’m sorry. I shall endeavor to do better in the
future.
Following the death of Zeus, I was depressed, and on top of
that had a very nasty cold which insisted on moving into my lungs. For several days I couldn’t drive and had to
be chauffeured by the Sergeant Major.
She was barely recovered from the awful stuff herself, but was very
stoic and never once complained. Sergeant’s
Major are tough like that. Noble
too. They are not to be messed with.
Fortunately, the various of parts of my body are beginning
to return to work and I’ve begun to have this sort of hazy idea that maybe I’ll
go on living for a while longer yet.
But as I make my way back, I keep noticing this hysteria
which seems to have taken over in some parts of our great country. I feel a little like Rip Van Winkle must have
felt after he woke up under the tree.
What is going on here? Did I miss
some catastrophic event while I was under the weather?
I’ve seen the usual bumblers, braggarts, and con men who set
themselves up as players, but nothing catastrophic seems to have occurred. Still, I keep running across these mad dog,
foaming at the mouth crazies who act like the world is really coming to an end
this time.
In the old days, we’d call them “harebrained”, or “befuddled”. My kids just call them “bat shit crazy”. I like that better.
Hysteria on the farm is always bad news so we don’t go
there. I can remember my Grandfather
cautioning me as a child to “quit running
around like a chicken with its head cut off!” He just didn’t see it as acceptable
behavior.
Hysteria in herds can be deadly. I’ve seen thunderstorms spook horses into
hysterical, headlong flight. If they hit
a barbed wire fence though, it ends badly.
Picking up the pieces of that kind of disaster is not fun.
So why do people go hysterical? Psychiatrists apparently aren’t really
certain, but stress and anxiety seem to play a part. I think choice plays a part too. We know from a variety of studies, including
Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, that the one thing we have in
life is the ability to choose our response to an event. We may not be able to control Nature or Other People’s behavior, but we can choose our response to it. We can choose to be responsible, and behave
accordingly.
When I was a kid we thought it was great fun to wait for the
teenagers to come down the street on their motorcycles. We’d wait until they came even with us then
jump up and yell, “Shot!” as they
went by. They’d usually turn and chase
after us.
Having been completely irresponsible the moment before, we’d suddenly become somewhat responsible and run like hell to avoid getting our butts beat. When we did get caught and whupped up on, we’d be
fully responsible and tell our Moms, “I
fell off my bike”. There was
absolutely no point in letting her know that your irresponsibility was the
proximate cause. It was enough that you
understood that yourself.
But fueled by the media’s 24/7 need for “breaking news”,
many opt for the hysteria. Apparently it
can be a lot of fun. In all fairness,
there wasn’t a 24/7 media presence back in the 15th and 16th
centuries when the hysteria of the time consisted of finding and prosecuting
all the “witches”. Witch trials remained
quite popular for at least a couple of hundred years. It seems there is just something irresistible
about losing your mind.
The common charges against the witches were that they spread
diseases, participated in orgies, cannibalized children, and worshiped
Satan—pretty much the same charges that Liberals and Conservatives accuse each
other of now.
As early as 1841 Charles Mackay wrote a book on hysteria
called Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. He noted that, “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they
go mad in herds, while they recover their senses slowly, and one by one”.
So far I have resisted the temptation to join them, but in moments
of weakness I have caught myself singing that old song:
"When in trouble, when in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and shout!”
