fear itself….

apologies to my friend K. who often has to read the same crap twice. I spent the whole train ride this morning writing an email to her, and didn’t have time to write an entry, so I’m just posting a chunk of the email here. The topic of discussion was about people who worry too much about what’s in their food and stuff…

My wife has a friend whose husband refuses to let her get on an airplane. He also unplugs all of the appliances in the house at night. You know… VCRs… big fire hazards, those. ( “12:00… 12:00… 12:00…”) We also know people who won’t go into New York City anymore. These people are confusing “caution” and “fear” and I just don’t GET that. The crazy woman from my old job was that way about germs. My vegan friend from grad school is that way about food. All of these people need to lighten the fuck up. And yeah, I know you aren’t one of those people… but I bet you could BECOME one of those people if you started hanging with the wrong crowd down at the Organic Food Store. 😛

The NYC thing is really perplexing to me. I take a train into Penn Station every day. If there is ever some kind of poison-gas terrorist attack on the subway, you will very likely be able to say you know someone who died in that attack… cuz I’m quite thoroughly FUCKED down there underground with all those people. And if I stop to think about it, does that scenario freak the shit out of me? Yeah. But really… what are the chances? And what can you really DO about it besides checking out of life and hiding under your bed? So I go to work everyday, and I’m probably NOT going to die on the downtown #2 train.

And I do understand in part what is going on with people…. it’s the animalistic drive for self-preservation combined with the human capacity for recognizing cause-and-effect and finding patterns and drawing conclusions and it’s easy to spiral off into a state of paralysis and be afraid of everything. It’s a very human thing… to take a natural instinct and twist the fuck out of it with our intelligence into something that’s a parody of the biological intent. Like twisting the adrenaline rush into rollercoasters or S&M or spicy foods. Or twisting human empathy and compassion into bleeding heart PETA “oh those poor chickens” bullshit. Humans are complex and fucked up little monkeys.

And maybe everybody has their *thing*… you mentioned the business with SARS, and yeah… I can’t think about that shit for more than a couple of seconds, cuz the whole “plague” scenario… that’s my own personal favorite apocalypse… I don’t even go near those books like “The Hot Zone” or movies like “Outbreak”… cuz I know how dangerous that shit is… I *understand* evolution and the fact that these little bugs can mutate in a few hundred generations into shit we can’t deal with. I think about AIDS and viruses… look, COLDS are caused by viruses … y’know… they aren’t all as fragile as the HIV virus… they all don’t die after a few seconds in the open air. What if there was a virus with the EFFECTS of HIV but the communicability of the common cold. We’d be seriously fucked, that’s what. And I hear about SARS, and I think… oh, fuck…. this is it… this is how it’s gonna go down… there are a BILLION fucking people in China… that’s a great place to get the Plague of the New Millennium off to a running fucking start. But then you have to remember… Nature FIXES these things too… natural immunity and all that… plagues just STOP. You have to remember that nearly 80% of the population of Europe DIDN’T die in the Black Death! So even in a plague, your odds are pretty good. Better than Vegas, anyway. But when I hear about this Smallpox vaccination shit… FUCK… that’s a LIVE VIRUS in there people… it’s ok to do that when there is a REAL disease out there to vaccinate against, but FUCK… have NONE of you ever read a fucking Michael Crichton book?? Jurassic Park, anyone? “Nature will find a way.” A virus has one job and one job only… to make more viruses… and we’re gonna set loose a strain of Smallpox virus into an environment from which the ORIGINAL disease-causing strain has been ERADICATED?? Holy shit! Here you go guys… here’s a nice blank fucking slate, now get out there and protect us from a terrorist attack, or if that doesn’t happen… get out there and mutate into some kind of fucking monster… “Large Pox” or whatever the fuck… see you in ten years.

So… yeah… SARS has me a bit freaked. But still…. it’s not gonna keep me out of Chinatown.