Random scary movie rant

I'm all about messing with kids' minds. In a good way. My family certainly messed with mine...or allowed it to be messed with.

When I was little, my dad read Edgar Allen Poe's stories and poems to me. They seemed pretty real when I would visit the ancestral farm in a dark hollow in Tazewell, Virginia, complete with an old family cemetery on the hill.

The torch was then passed to my brother, who pretended to call the Plutonian shores and ask for the Raven to come get his little brother Ricky.

I bugged my mother to read Dracula out loud to me when I was pretty small. Watched all the old movies.

When I had kids, I messed with them in a similar fashion. There's something fun about scary stories and movies, obviously. Otherwise they wouldn't be a billion dollar industry.

Come to think of it, many of the well known traditional folk and fairy tales that have been told for hundreds or thousands of years are pretty scary too. I think they serve functions of which we may not be fully conscious.

To paraphrase a well known saying, a mind is a terrible thing not to mess with...up to a point.

Sometimes, though there's a fine--or not so fine--line between the good kind of scary and the bad kind.

I though of this yesterday when I went to see the movie adaptation of Stephen King's Doctor Sleep.

I grew up on Stephen King. I can go for years without reading him, then go on massive binges. This  was one of those binge years, with nine of his down so far, usually in audio form and consumed while driving, running, walking the dog, or mowing. They vary widely in quality, by his own admission. And in...intensity.

Doctor Sleep was one of the most intense ones when I listened to it on CD a few years back.

As in, damn.

 It's the sequel to the "honey, I'm home" 1980 classic The Shining that featured Jack Nicholson as the father from hell..

The sequel is kind of about childhood trauma and the after effects. The main character is Danny Torrance, who was the little kid in the original. As a grownup, he's had to deal with addiction, self-destructive behavior, and inner demons.

This isn't a spoiler, but the main conflict in the book has to do with a group of people (at least they used to be people) who abnormally prolong their lives by feeding on the pain and fear of young children, especially children with special abilities.

The way they do it in the book--and especially the movie--is extremely graphic and disturbing. The movie version is even worse than the book.

I mean, really.

When I got to the theater, I was amazed that people brought very little children with them to see it.

I wondered if they even know what the kids were in for. If they didn't, it seemed kind of irresponsible to me. But if they did know, that seemed worse.

Don't get me wrong.

I'm pretty libertarian about cultural issues and hate censorship in any form. I tend towards the free range theory of child rearing. I think overprotective helicopter parenting is a disaster. I think a certain amount of adversity, discomfort and challenge is good and necessary for a child to become a functional adult.

But there are limits. And not everything is good for every age. Entertaining terror for teens and adults might not be just the thing for preschoolers.

As the biblical book of Ecclesiastes says, "to everything there is a season."

The bad kind of ACE

If you’re playing poker, a handful of aces can be a good thing. If you’re growing up, not so much, especially if the aces stand for Adverse Childhood Experiences.

That kind of ACE was the accidental discovery of Dr. Vincent Felitti, who ran a weight-loss clinic in California for the health care giant Kaiser Permanente in the 1980s.

A star of the program was a woman who initially weighed 408 pounds. She lost 276 pounds in less than a year.

Then, something happened. In less than a month, she put nearly 40 pounds back on.

Felitti questioned her about what happened. It came out that, after losing the weight, she was sexually propositioned by an older, married co-worker. While Felitti acknowledged that must have been disturbing, he thought the dramatic weight gain was an extreme response.

Then, she revealed that she had been repeatedly sexually abused by a family member starting at age 10. One could see the weight gain as a kind of protection, conscious or otherwise, from unwanted advances.

Felitti checked with other patients who quit the program and found that a majority reported childhood sexual abuse.

Sensing a connection between childhood experiences and adult outcomes, he partnered with Robert Anda, of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to survey more than 17,000 adults in the Kaiser system about the extent and effects of childhood trauma, including various kinds of abuse and family disfunction.

The main finding was that these were “vastly more common than recognized or acknowledged” and that they “have a powerful relation to adult health a half-century later.”

This led to the development of a widely-used ACEs test, which identifies whether people experienced one or more of the following: physical abuse by a parent, sexual abuse by anyone, emotional abuse in the household, physical neglect, emotional neglect, loss of a parent (from death, divorce or separation), growing up in a household with an alcoholic or person with substance-use disorder, living with a family member with mental illness, and the incarceration of a household member.

Add up the “yeses” to these and you’ll have an ACEs score.

Research suggests that, while trauma isn’t destiny, a high incidence of ACEs is associated with a much higher risk for behavioral health issues, such as physical inactivity, smoking, alcoholism, drug use and missed work, not to mention things like incarceration.

High ACE scores also increase risk for severe obesity, diabetes, suicide attempts, sexually transmitted diseases, depression, cancer, strokes, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and even physical injuries, like broken bones.

According to the CDC, people with an ACEs score of six or more die 20 years earlier, on average, than those with no ACEs.

Studies suggest that nearly two-thirds of Americans have an ACE score of at least one, and 38 percent have scores higher than one. Around 12.5 percent have ACE scores of four or more. The most common ACEs were physical abuse (28 percent), substance abuse (27 percent) and the absence of a parent (23 percent).

It’s hard to get an exact handle on the economic toll of ACEs, but the annual costs associated with symptoms are in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Unfortunately, many children dealing with the effects of trauma are misdiagnosed as having conditions such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder or other disorders. Or simply as being “bad.”

Research suggests that a better question to ask in such cases is “what happened to you?” rather than “what’s wrong with you?”

What does this mean for West Virginia? In short, a lot.

A 2014 survey suggests that at least 55.8 percent of Mountain State residents had at least one such experience, and 13.8 percent experienced four or more. That’s likely an underestimate, because of slightly different methodologies.

Consider the connection between ACEs and the state’s opioid problem. According to the WV ACEs Coalition,

“A 2016 study found that individuals who reported 5 or more ACEs were 3x more likely to misuse prescription pain medication and five times more likely to engage in injection drug use. Another study found that over 80% of the patients seeking treatment for opioid addiction had at least one form of childhood trauma, with almost two-thirds reporting having witnessed violence in childhood. Among the different forms of ACEs, sexual abuse and parental separation (for women) and physical and emotional abuse (for men) appear to be particularly highly correlated with opioid abuse.”

Follow-up research by Felitti and Anda suggests that boys with six or more ACEs were 46 time more likely to become intravenous drug users as adults than those with none.

That’s on the front end. It gets scarier if we think about the future effects of the trauma experienced by children dealing with the crisis today.

What can we do about it?

First, it’s time to recognize that punishing trauma doesn’t work, neither for children nor adults.

At the individual level, positive connections with at least one adult contribute to resiliency. So do things like physical activity and developing mindfulness skills.

At the larger level, protective factors include things like helping parents manage stress, building social connections, increasing knowledge of child development and parenting skills, concrete support for families in times of need and promoting positive interactions between children and adults. At the systemic level, obvious steps would be ending poverty, reducing inequality and addressing racial disparities.

We can’t change the past, but the future is unwritten.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Miasma

Recent acts of senseless violence and other forms of trauma reminded me of the ancient Greek idea of miasma, which means something like pollution. The religion writer Karen Armstrong talks about it as a contagious power that “has an independent life of its own.”

Think of it as hazmat.

The Greeks seemed to believe that every act of violence, hubris, cruelty or excess unleashes a bit of miasma on the world. Often the people who unleash it minimize it or think they can control it. They can’t. Miasma isn’t loyal. It bounces. And like a toxic chemical or an infectious disease, it can leak into the atmosphere and water and have effects far beyond the initial point of infection.

Miasma also doesn’t seem to respect borders — even those with walls — or to have an expiration date. The effects of the spiral of violence and trauma (miasma) can continue across continents and generations.

The child who is abused or witnesses abuse may one day abuse. The victim may one day become a perpetrator. The trauma done to a group or individual can have effects across time and space. The eventual target of all this may be random and innocent. It may be us.

One strand of Greek mythology follows the thread of miasma across generations in one family. It started with Tantalus, who for a time enjoyed the favor of the gods. He tried to trick them at a feast by feeding them the flesh of the shoulder of his son Pelops. For this he was punished in the underworld by eternal hunger and thirst. Hence the word “tantalize.”

Pelops, who was restored by Zeus, would later murder his would-be father in law by cheating in a chariot race. He also murdered the person who helped him do the deed. Not surprisingly, the victim cursed him with his dying breath. The curse would play out in the future.

Pelops’ sons were Atreus and Thyestes. They murdered their own half-brother but later had a deadly quarrel, which ended in a horrific act of child murder and cannibalism. Each brother had a son who continued the curse and the conflict in the next generation.

Agamemnon, son of Atreus, led the Greek forces to invade Troy. He sacrificed his own daughter Iphigenia to gain favorable winds for the fleet. While he was gone, his wife Clytemnestra became the lover of Aegisthus, the son of Thyestes, who was born of an incestuous union.

Yeah, it was a mess of extra-biblical proportions.

Agamemnon was murdered by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus when he returned from the destruction of Troy. His son Orestes murdered his mother and her lover and was pursued by the Furies, dark underworld deities who punished crimes against blood kin.

On and on, one thing after another. Kind of like world history.

In the end, as the Greek tragedian Aeschylus tells it, it took divine intervention, rational deliberation and democracy to bring the awful cycle to an end.

The way things are going, we may need all that as well.

The American philosopher Martha Nussbaum finds some lessons for us in all this:

“Greek tragedy shows good people being ruined because of things that just happen to them, things that they do not control. This is certainly sad; but it is an ordinary fact of human life, and no one would deny that it happens ... . Tragedy also shows something more deeply disturbing: it shows good people doing bad things, things otherwise repugnant to their ethical character and commitments, because of circumstances whose origin does not lie with them.”

Things happen to us and to others. We react, not always in the best ways. We get caught up in situations beyond our direct control. The chain of events gets longer. Dominoes fall. Which means more miasma.

Recent research in the field of public health shows that the long-lasting effects of the trauma of things that happened to us or that we get caught up in aren’t confined to mythology. They can occur in much more ordinary ways — often in childhood — but still have long lasting effects.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that trauma isn’t destiny and that there are ways we can help those who’ve suffered from it and reduce the damage that it can do now and in the future. Often these are as simple as a positive relationship with a responsible adult.

I think it would be a huge step forward for us all if we became more conscious of the ways that the effects of trauma can spiral out over time and space — and if institutions such as schools, health care providers, public services, law enforcement, courts and corrections institutions became more trauma informed and adjusted their practice accordingly.

As Albert Camus put it, “We all carry within us places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. Our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves and others.”

(This appeared as an op-ed in yesterday's Gazette.)

DEFENSIVE THINKING

Caption: Illustration from the Bubishi, an anonymous Chinese martial arts text of the 18th or 19th century sometimes referred to as "the bible of karate."

For the last two weeks, the theme here has been about writing to change things that should be changed or preserve things that should be preserved. There's also a daily dose of links and comments about current events.

I'd like to close off the series by taking some lessons from the martial arts and applying them to the subject of writing and working for social change or preservation. Why martial arts? Because unlike many things, they actually work and have proven themselves over the centuries in many difficult situations.

In trying to make things better, we are often faced with more powerful opponents. But the strategies developed by these arts can be great equalizers, provided people focus the energy they have at the right time and place.

Here's the first thing: think, write and act defensively.

Most martial artists spend a good bit of time sparring with highly skilled opponents. Sometimes it can get rough. But one invaluable lesson you get from that kind of practice fighting is immediate feedback. You learn "If I do this, they can do that" and vice versa.

Even if your sparring partner is your best friend, it is their sacred duty to nail you if you leave yourself open. It's your sacred duty to do the same, preferably before they nail you. After a while, you should start automatically acting in ways that create the smallest possible opening or opportunity for an opponent to attack (not to mention take advantage of any opening that occurs).

I remember when I first joined my current karate club over 30 years ago. It's a fighting dojo. While we're easy on kids and beginners, consenting experienced adults sometimes ramp it up. I was an intermediate student fighting a female black belt. I decided to dazzle her with my high kicking ability. She responded by kicking me in the groin while my foot was sailing around at head level.

I told you it could get rough. I wasn't expecting a move like that and hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. (Most dojos don't allow groin kicks in sparring, but ours did at the time. It was a great way of keeping kickers honest.)

That was one of the best lessons I ever had, although it didn't feel like it at the time. I've kicked a lot of people since then (recreationally and gently, for the most part) but I've been pretty careful about leaving myself open in that particular way. Thanks O., wherever you are! Sort of.

Similarly, when I was trying to learn the grappling arts of judo and jiu jitsu, I learned pretty quickly that if I let the opponent get behind me, I could expect to choked; if my balance was broken, I could expect to be thrown; and if my arm or leg was extended, it would be joint-locked.

This is something that people interested in trying to change things should always keep in mind and ask themselves at all times: if I say, do, or write this, what could an unsympathetic opponent do?

The idea is to present as small a target as possible--even better no target at all. If you don't, then don't be surprised if they respond in a way that can discredit and dismiss you and the change you are hoping to achieve.

That's just the way it works.

I've seen several groups adopt some ill-advised course of action, get clobbered for it, and then say "No fair!" Whoever said it was?

ON THE POSITIVE SIDE. Could contemporary economic and environmental ills push us in a more sustainable direction?

SPEAKING OF WHICH, Bill McKibben argues here that it's getting pretty close to now or never to get there. The alternative is unacceptable.

MOTHER'S DAY came and went, but pro-family policies haven't got here yet.

TRAUMA ON THE BRAIN. New research sheds light on the strenght and persistence of traumatic memories.

SPEAKING OF THE BRAIN, this article blames its engineering on some of our shortcomings.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED