I work in a neighborhood building above a chocolate shop that usually smells so good it evokes a predictable wave of nostalgia even patriotism, I guess.
It's an all-American street, with no less than three different places to grab a cup of coffee. Most days, there are kids on skateboards doing tricks in the parking lot behind the bank. Toddlers stop and stare every time the bright-red fire truck cranks up its sirens and lumbers out of its cave to save the day.
That's the kind of street where I work. Youve seen it a thousand times.
But now, the candy shop is closed. It's scentless. No kids on skateboards. There's still coffee to be had, but the coffee shop patrons grab their drinks and make their way back onto the empty sidewalks, using their elbows or the knuckles to open the door.
All of this is new and surreal. At the same time, all of this is also strangely familiar.
You see, I've seen all this before. I wrote this.
Nearly 10 years ago, I published a novel that garnered a bit of notoriety. It featured zombies and viral pandemics, and so the story was riddled with empty and ravaged cities. Zombies were particularly fashionable back then.
In the screenplay version of my story, written by the late George Romero himself, the opening scene shows sidewalks empty of people, littered with unread newspapers, headlines caught in the eddies of the whistling breeze.
George often reminded me that every story was derivative. If youre telling a story about a pandemic, and my novel was exactly that, certain signifiers must be present.
In our current pandemic, these signifiers are rearing their eerie heads. Of course most are absent. We certainly aren't and will not be anywhere near burning cars. There are no gangs of bandits on motorcycles. There are no broken windows. But there are uncollected newspapers, piling up at the entrance to the office building where I've been virtually meeting with patients through the wonders of sterile technology.
Lately, people keep asking me about my book. People seem to think I might have a particular angle on the psychology surrounding our current pandemic. After all, they remind me, I spent a lot of time imagining a world where this sort of thing could happen. I even feel a little guilty. I wrote an entire novel that indulged in a kind of salacious, infectious foreboding.
In fact, I have lots of angles. My first is that I'd much prefer all of this to have remained in the movies. We watch these disaster films in part so we can leave the theater and revel in the normalcy of the off-screen world.
My second angle is that we are not in a disaster movie. What we see in the movies is a lot worse, a whole lot worse, than the unsettling emptiness on the street where I work. That's important to remember. Film scholars have noted that we tend to over-interpret familiar cinematic images when we encounter these images outside of the movies.
Thats the trap of our current predicament, and therein lies the most important lesson from my novel, indeed from all novels and movies and stories that feature the eerie and unnatural trappings of apocalyptic landscapes: We are not in an apocalypse. We are in the midst of a public health crisis that will without question end, and life will go back to normal.
This is not to say that things won't be pretty strange for a while. This is going to be tough. But this isn't about zombies. This is about the cautionary tale of the zombie trope.
My book featured characters who grew bored and frustrated with one another. Ennui was at least as dangerous as the pandemic itself. This very ennui, the lonely, one-note chords that empty streets and closed shops play in our pattern-prone brains, is the sentiment we have to guard most stringently against.
This ain't no zombie novel, but the zombie novels can teach us a thing or two. In the zombie stories, the humans nearly always end up fighting. That's the trap, and we know better.
We tend to defend ourselves by adopting the attributes of our enemies. This is problematic, because a virus literally has no attributes. It doesn't think or feel or love. The cautionary themes of every zombie film feature these tropes. Exactly when we need each other most, we start acting like zombies. And this is not the time for microbial nihilism.
Now, I must apologize. As a psychiatrist, I am going to offer clichs. Clichs are clichs, after all, because they are true. Oddly enough, we tend to ignore clichs when things get weird. I am arguing, therefore, that these clichs are currently especially important.
Play music. Tell stories. Go for a walk. Check in on your neighbor and tip your hat to a stranger. These gestures, so boring, so ordinary, are to my mind right now extraordinarily important. They preserve normalcy even as we hunker down for what looks like a long and unfamiliar haul.
We do not, as a rule, tolerate uncertainty with grace. Current research suggests that in the face of uncertainty, we generalize we decide that everything is foggy and out of focus. But there are constants of humanity, and we need to keep these in mind.We need to live in the moment even as we plan for the future. We need to keep up with routines as best we can. We need to sing and to play.
We got this. It's going to be hard, but we got this. This ain't no zombie novel, but the zombie novels can teach us a thing or two. In the zombie stories, the humans nearly always end up fighting. That's the trap and we know better.
Let's stick together, and we'll get through it.
Dr. Steve Schlozman isan assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a practicing child and adolescent psychiatrist.
Read more from the original source:
This Is No Zombie Apocalypse Novel, Author Says But We Can Learn From Them - WBUR
- Nihilism Wikipedia - December 8th, 2016 [December 8th, 2016]
- Nihilism | Meaningness - December 10th, 2016 [December 10th, 2016]
- Nihilist movement - Wikipedia - December 22nd, 2016 [December 22nd, 2016]
- Therapeutic nihilism - Wikipedia - December 22nd, 2016 [December 22nd, 2016]
- Nietzsches Analysis of Nihilism | The World Is On Fire - December 26th, 2016 [December 26th, 2016]
- Moral nihilism - Wikipedia - December 26th, 2016 [December 26th, 2016]
- Nihilism @ American Nihilist Underground Society (ANUS) - January 14th, 2017 [January 14th, 2017]
- Nihilism Nihilism - January 25th, 2017 [January 25th, 2017]
- The boredom of nihilism - The Tablet - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- The Chinese Ford Raptor Website Is Profound And Crazy At The Same Time - Jalopnik - February 9th, 2017 [February 9th, 2017]
- 'Fatal,' by John Lescroart - San Francisco Chronicle - February 9th, 2017 [February 9th, 2017]
- Troy Reimink: 'This Land Is Your Land' doesn't mean what most people think - Traverse City Record Eagle - February 10th, 2017 [February 10th, 2017]
- Brendan Kelly on politics, nihilism, and the benefit of intimate shows - BeatRoute Magazine - February 11th, 2017 [February 11th, 2017]
- Sampha's Process Review: Drifting Through Space - The Picket - February 12th, 2017 [February 12th, 2017]
- Nihilist KMOX Reporter Discusses Existential Horror of February in St. Louis - Riverfront Times (blog) - February 13th, 2017 [February 13th, 2017]
- Why the White House's nihilism is so troubling - Los Angeles Times - February 13th, 2017 [February 13th, 2017]
- Teen Nihilism Erupts in LA Premiere of Fierce, Funny PUNK ROCK by Simon Stephens - Broadway World - February 15th, 2017 [February 15th, 2017]
- Faking It: The Rise of Political Nihilism - Study Breaks Magazine - Study Breaks - February 15th, 2017 [February 15th, 2017]
- Descartes, Nihilist - First Things (blog) - February 16th, 2017 [February 16th, 2017]
- Still Waking Up - First Things (blog) - February 18th, 2017 [February 18th, 2017]
- [ American Nihilist Underground Society (ANUS) :: Nihilism ... - February 20th, 2017 [February 20th, 2017]
- Pissed Jeans Why Love Now review: 'nihilism and cynicism' - Evening Standard - February 24th, 2017 [February 24th, 2017]
- Editorial | By any means necessary including dancehall - Jamaica Gleaner - February 28th, 2017 [February 28th, 2017]
- Reader E-Mailbag: Pussy Hats vs Asshats, How to Save Obamacare, Nihilism in the White House - TheStranger.com - February 28th, 2017 [February 28th, 2017]
- The fight between Nigel Farage and Douglas Carswell is the definition of political nihilism - The Independent - March 1st, 2017 [March 1st, 2017]
- Eye in the Sky: Where Nihilism and Hegemony Coincide - Antiwar.com (blog) - March 1st, 2017 [March 1st, 2017]
- NieR: Automata Starts With Nihilism and Futility at the Installation Screen - Geek - March 8th, 2017 [March 8th, 2017]
- I used to love the working-class nihilism of Sleaford Mods no longer - Spectator.co.uk - March 9th, 2017 [March 9th, 2017]
- Mereological nihilism - Wikipedia - March 11th, 2017 [March 11th, 2017]
- Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Four Big Critiques - China Digital Times - April 8th, 2017 [April 8th, 2017]
- What Colony Gets Right About Living in an Apocalypse - Gizmodo - April 8th, 2017 [April 8th, 2017]
- We're all political nihilists now - Washington Post - April 8th, 2017 [April 8th, 2017]
- Love, Western Nihilism and Revolutionary Optimism | Global ... - Center for Research on Globalization - April 8th, 2017 [April 8th, 2017]
- Occupy Wall Street: Nihilism And Communism - The Liberty Conservative - April 8th, 2017 [April 8th, 2017]
- What Is Nihilism? History, Profile, Philosophy and ... - April 8th, 2017 [April 8th, 2017]
- Changing This Bumbling Narcissist Impossible, So We Must Depose Him - Common Dreams - June 6th, 2017 [June 6th, 2017]
- A Defense for Moral Absence - Daily Utah Chronicle - June 6th, 2017 [June 6th, 2017]
- Withdrawing from the Paris Accord: Trump is behaving like a nihilist, not a nationalist - Los Angeles Times - June 6th, 2017 [June 6th, 2017]
- China bans 'Soft Burial', a novel about deadly consequences of land reform - Business Standard - June 8th, 2017 [June 8th, 2017]
- Former Grateful Dead Tour Manager Chimes in on Long Strange Trip Documentary - Relix (blog) - June 8th, 2017 [June 8th, 2017]
- 'It Comes at Night' Review - Washington Free Beacon - June 9th, 2017 [June 9th, 2017]
- China's Latest Book Ban: An Award-Winning Novel About the Deadly Consequences of Land Reform - The News Lens International (press release) - June 10th, 2017 [June 10th, 2017]
- How Carmen Ejogo Helped Build a Personal Apocalypse in It Comes at Night - Den of Geek US - June 10th, 2017 [June 10th, 2017]
- SMOKERS' CORNER: DEATH CULTS - DAWN.com - June 11th, 2017 [June 11th, 2017]
- Jim Dey: Another fatal shooting raises the same question why? - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette - June 11th, 2017 [June 11th, 2017]
- Why Millennials Love 'Rick and Morty' - Study Breaks Magazine - Study Breaks - June 13th, 2017 [June 13th, 2017]
- Searching for the Last Sincere Festival Experience at Download 2017 - Noisey - June 14th, 2017 [June 14th, 2017]
- The book Christians should read instead of 'The Benedict Option' - America Magazine - June 14th, 2017 [June 14th, 2017]
- Film Review: 'All Eyez on Me' - Variety - June 16th, 2017 [June 16th, 2017]
- The Pendulum is Swinging Back Toward Liberal Forward Momentum - HuffPost - June 17th, 2017 [June 17th, 2017]
- Death cults - The Statesman - June 17th, 2017 [June 17th, 2017]
- 5 reasons why 'Wonder Woman' is the superhero movie America needs right now - LGBTQ Nation - June 17th, 2017 [June 17th, 2017]
- Review: Prodigy HNIC - SPIN - June 20th, 2017 [June 20th, 2017]
- The Nihilism of Julian Assange - The New York Review of Books - June 20th, 2017 [June 20th, 2017]
- Atlanta's Videodrome is the Last and Greatest Video Rental Store - Geek - June 21st, 2017 [June 21st, 2017]
- Why Prodigy Was A Once-In-A-Generation Rapper - Complex - June 21st, 2017 [June 21st, 2017]
- Prufrock: How Brainwashing Works, Julian Assange's Nihilism, and Emily Dickinson's Hope - The Weekly Standard - June 21st, 2017 [June 21st, 2017]
- Samantha Bee Mourns the Death of Language - New York Times - June 22nd, 2017 [June 22nd, 2017]
- Trump's bluff on White House tapes wasn't just dishonest it was also a failure - Washington Post - June 22nd, 2017 [June 22nd, 2017]
- In the Almost-Great Baby Driver, Hollywood Goes Asperger's - National Review - June 23rd, 2017 [June 23rd, 2017]
- Against Nihilism - MTV.com - June 23rd, 2017 [June 23rd, 2017]
- Can Robert Mueller be trusted? - Fox News - June 24th, 2017 [June 24th, 2017]
- Opinion: Gingrich admitted Trump was being dishonest - Holmes County Times Advertiser - June 26th, 2017 [June 26th, 2017]
- A Reply to Rod Dreher on Worldview - Patheos (blog) - June 27th, 2017 [June 27th, 2017]
- Vince Staples burns through nihilism and house beats on 'Big Fish ... - Mic - June 29th, 2017 [June 29th, 2017]
- Islamic Terrorists Aren't Nihilists, They're Firm Believers In Evil - The Federalist - June 29th, 2017 [June 29th, 2017]
- On Religion: Wrestling again with the gospel according to Bob Dylan - Herald and News - June 30th, 2017 [June 30th, 2017]
- Wrestling again with the Gospel according to Bob Dylan | Features ... - Bristol Herald Courier (press release) (blog) - July 1st, 2017 [July 1st, 2017]
- Praying for Hemingway | America Magazine - America Magazine - July 1st, 2017 [July 1st, 2017]
- Human Exceptionalism: We Understand Significance - National Review - July 2nd, 2017 [July 2nd, 2017]
- Politics podcast: Anna Krien on the climate wars - The Conversation AU - July 3rd, 2017 [July 3rd, 2017]
- Omnipotence at the price of nihilism - Patheos (blog) - July 6th, 2017 [July 6th, 2017]
- The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers - Film School Rejects - Film School Rejects - July 7th, 2017 [July 7th, 2017]
- Alternative rock comes to Grass Valley - Auburn Journal - July 7th, 2017 [July 7th, 2017]
- Data SheetSaturday, July 8, 2017 - Fortune - July 8th, 2017 [July 8th, 2017]
- Altstadt Echo - Reposed In Nihilism - Resident Advisor - July 11th, 2017 [July 11th, 2017]
- I'd Be A Nihilist If I Weren't A Hedonist - Patheos (blog) - July 14th, 2017 [July 14th, 2017]
- Review: 21 Savage Hits the Limits of Nihilism on Issa Album | SPIN - SPIN - July 15th, 2017 [July 15th, 2017]
- 'Rick and Morty' Creators Explain Why The Show is Horrifying - Inverse - July 22nd, 2017 [July 22nd, 2017]
- Ill Behaviour, review: the chuckles are broad but the grisly nihilism is rather unpalatable - Telegraph.co.uk - July 22nd, 2017 [July 22nd, 2017]