THREE THINGS I NOTICED TODAY
First thing this morning I listened to a very cogent assessment of NATO’s "committment" to Afghanistan and in particular, Canada’s role. It was by Professor Roland Paris of The University of Ottawa. 
His interview on The Current highlighted the somewhat ambiguous and un-unified nature of the NATO nations approach.
However, while the Professor is supportive of the "mission", he failed to articulate or critically address the historic inability of western nations to formulate and pursue a rational and pragmatic policy with respect to so-called "failed states". In fairness, that is more the nature of the media outlet than it is the professor’s.
Still, he appears to buy into the Bush Administration’s line that there is some logic to the actions of western nations in Afghanistan. Like so many otherwise well-informed observers, Professor Paris and the CBC both failed the listener by not addressing the root of the present dilemma.
The bane of public knowledge in respect of the Middle East in general and Afghanistan in particular, is the very truncated historical narrative espoused by so many academics and media observers.
Sadly, the impetus for the discussion this morning was clearly the death of six Canadian soldiers as the result of a roadside bomb explosion and not the deeper purpose of understanding.
The interviewer asked the obvious but shallow question that is on the minds of so many Canadians…"How many deaths is too many"?
And while the loss of life is tragic and the maiming and shattering of soldiers’ lives is paramount-some equally important questions are these:
- what is the true purpose of this mission in Afghanistan and what is the precise strategy being followed?
- why is this one different from past foreign incursions into that country?
- and what can be accomplished by a relatively small force , unaccustomed to a combat role in unfamiliar territory and with equipment unsuited to the task?
NATO’s difficulty and by extension, Canada’s is that the exact purpose of the mission and its strategy have never been adequately defined or shared with the public, by either the U.N. or NATO’s political leadership.
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MUSLIMS CHRISTIANS AND JEWS: READ IT AND WEEP
There is way too much mudslinging amongst these groups and others who really ought to know better.
Islam was founded in the years of the 6th and 7th century. Many of its adherents are still stuck with the original. Some so-called Christians denounce Islam as a "militant" religious belief, intent on world domination. (Remember the Communists)?
Christianity forgets its own history which has had several hundred years to mature and get some perspective. Christians need to remember that for centuries that their "beliefs" harboured a highly militant and warlike soul, which was the engine of their faith. Christianity sought to conquer the world by force; it tortured, burned and otherwise disposed of all those who questioned its hierarchy and male-dominated structure.
Christians really ought to remember "The Holy Roman Empire".
Christians went through a Reformation in an effort to correct the evils and bigotry of their religious system and bring some individual responsibility into the mix. Muslims are going through that process now and they need time.
As for the Jews – they have suffered the slings and arrows of Christian elitism for many generations. They suffered through one of the most dreadful Holocausts known to humankind. And yet, despite their own suffering, their grasping leaders…like their Christian brothers, think nothing of persecuting and harrassing those who are weaker than them and unable to defend themselves by ordinary means. Christan nations – so-called – are complicit in this endeavour…and they wonder why Muslims don’t understand and love them.
Love is a two-way street. In the case of Jews, Christians and Muslims, it Love will be found at a 3-way Intersection.
The true heroes and the only truly "religious" ones of the 21st century are these people.
TRUE HUMANITY AND HUMAN TRUTH
And for those who think that all the media does is knock things down…here’s a column by Richard Conniff from today’s New York Times. It’s a heartfelt account of a human being’s growth…and not a mention of religion anwhere. I’m sharing the column without a link, because only paid subscribers to NYT can read it.
Cheers.
ACTS OF GRATITUDE BY RICHARD CONNIFF
I’m too big a skeptic to put much faith in the circularity of life, with deeds done long ago coming round years later to haunt us or make us whole. But I began to think about the possibility recently, during a visit to Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. One of the lectures that day was about the art of listening to patients’ stories with an almost literary ear, as a way of treating them with greater insight and sensitivity.
The speaker was looking at things only from the doctor’s perspective. But it struck me that there are at least two sides to every medical story. And it got me thinking back 30 years, to when I was a young man dying of no apparent cause.
My symptoms then included listlessness, faint-headedness, an inability to climb stairs without resting and unquenchable thirst. Twice, I took home a jug for a 24-hour urine test, and both times I came back with an extra bottle on the side. It didn’t seem to signify much to my doctor. The heart was his specialty, and he kept doing electrocardiograms suggesting something wrong there, but no particular diagnosis. I wasn’t much interested, in any case. I was only 26 years old, but the idea of dying seemed perfectly fine.
Then one afternoon on my parents’ front porch, I stood up in front of my father and briefly passed out. My parents arranged for me to see an endocrinologist named Robert Modlinger, who got hold of my ample test records, phoned me, and started to talk in a strangely unmodulated voice. His wife April was also on the line, repeating my answers to his questions so he could read her lips. I learned later that he’d gone deaf a decade earlier, in his mid-twenties, when he was a student in medical school. Finally, he said, “I want you to come into my office. I think you have Addison’s Disease.” It sounded more like, “I THINK you have AHHHH-dison’s Disease.”
The idea of a deaf man diagnosing my problem by phone, when a seeing, hearing physician had repeatedly failed to do so in person, has stuck in my head ever since as the Miracle of St. Modlinger.
I went to see him on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in May when my blood pressure was 60 over 40. He spent three hours doing tests, asking questions, listening (that is, lip reading) and having the good sense to question more closely when my answers didn’t fit the evidence he was seeing. He confirmed that it was Addison’s Disease, a failure of the adrenal cortex that is fatal if untreated, and put me on the course of drugs I have taken ever since.
Within a day, I felt better, it seemed, than I had ever felt in my life. Within a few months, I was running five miles a day. I began to travel and to write articles, and later books, about the natural world, human behavior and other topics. In the years since, I have collected tarantulas in the Amazon, tracked leopards with !Kung San hunters in Namibia and trekked in the Himalayas of Bhutan in pursuit of tigers and a mythical beast called the migur. I remained Dr. Modlinger’s patient for years after the diagnosis, and he seemed to take vicarious delight in these far-flung adventures.
Eventually, though, I relocated, and we lost contact. My career in journalism gave me a garden for cultivating my native cynicism, and the business of making a living as a writer brought out an inclination to be blunt and not much good at social niceties. So when my oldest child announced a few years ago that he wanted to spend his life helping people, I said, “That’s a strange idea.” When he added, in college, that he had decided to become a doctor, I expressed horror.
“Think of the snot-nosed children,” I said. “Think of being stuck in an office seeing the digestive complaints, the migraine headaches, the depression, the vague symptoms of possibly imaginary origin.” I did not say, “Think about me on that Saturday afternoon in Dr. Modlinger’s office.”
In the face of this paternal discouragement, my son persisted, and it has been interesting to watch. He volunteered at a hospice and genuinely seemed to enjoy caring for people who were old, incontinent, terminal. I’d been telling him it was naïve, in modern medicine, to expect to get to know patients as much more than symptoms. Everything had become too impersonal. But then, by an odd coincidence, his childhood piano teacher showed up at the hospice and together they helped make her husband comfortable as he died.
I probably should have known that the stories of patients and the people who care for them can still circle together in strange ways. A few years ago, I looked up Dr. Modlinger to ask a question, and with April on the phone as always, he told me that on top of being deaf, he’d lost the vision in one eye and developed problems with his balance, forcing him to give up his practice while he was still in his 50s.
I expressed my sorrow. It seemed like a terrible loss, not least to his patients. And it seemed wrong that the doctor who had given me back my life should be losing the pieces of his. I thought gloomily of a book I used to read to my kids, Edward Gorey’s “The Dwindling Party,” in which the guests mysteriously vanish one by one.
When I phoned Dr. Modlinger again more recently, he was in a wheelchair. But he was also full of a characteristic quality of delight, bordering on ebullience. I reminded him of my miracle cure, and I could hear him beaming. “I must have been very good,” he said.
And he was. I thanked him for everything — that is, for keeping me alive long enough to marry, to travel, to write, to raise three fine children. In August, I told him, my son will become a medical student at Columbia.
“That’s wonderful,” he said. And the inexplicable note of happiness in his voice made me think that spending Saturday afternoons healing sick people might not be such a bad life, after all.
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End Note: This is the last column in my stint as a guest writer for TimesSelect, and in the spirit of giving thanks, I would like to say what a pleasure it has been to read your comments, which have been remarkably thoughtful and well-informed.
Thanks especially to the reader who pointed out that the Germans, bless them, do indeed have a word, gluckschmerz, or luck-pain, for what I called the “un-schadenfreude.” Thanks also to the reader who noted that my Rule of the Decent Interval dates back at least to Dante, who consigned deathbed confessors to the first circle of Purgatory (“During life they made God wait for them; so, after death, they must wait for God.”) I even enjoyed the comments catching me on factual errors, and the nice turn-of-phrase from a reader who accused me of writing from my “own towering mountain of naive assumptions.”
For writers of books and magazine articles, the relationship with the page often feels one-sided. It’s like wandering alone in a forest from which all the animals have disappeared. The thrilling thing about this blog or online column or whatever you want to call it is the chance to hear readers roar back, almost instantly, from the other side of the computer screen.
So, yikes! And thank you.
LIFE IS ABOUT A WHOLE LOT MORE THAN RELIGIOUS BELIEF.
