Two-faced

For a better view in your browser, click here

A man in pajamas and slippers sits comfortably in his chair, joystick in hand. Thousands of miles away, the drone he controls releases a guided missile. Through the drone’s camera, he watches his missile blow up an apartment building, or hit a boat and kill its passengers.

“Got it!” he says. Smiling, he reaches for his coffee.

We’ve become really good at inventing machines that kill other people for us. With remote killing we can destroy without getting dirty, or getting blood on our hands. Distance has become our moral anesthetic.

This past year has felt relentless. You know the morning routine. Coffee in hand, you unlock your phone before you’re fully awake and start scrolling through the headlines. Each morning brings fresh disasters, body counts. The mass slaughter by Hamas terrorists. The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Israelis and Palestinians more unyielding than ever in their animosity over a tiny piece of contested land. The invasion of Ukraine, entering its fourth year.

In his New Year’s address, Vladimir Putin told his Russian troops that they are “fighting for truth and justice” in Ukraine. Truth and justice! They are hardly the first to attack a peaceful, sovereign nation and kill its innocent civilians, while preaching “truth and justice.”

Adolf Hitler understood this well when he wrote in Mein Kampf that “in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility.” He then used the big lie to justify murdering six million Jews. Colossal falsehoods gain power through their audacity and repetition.

Yet I remain stubbornly stuck on the idea that truth should matter. It seems a quaint notion these days—almost old-fashioned.

The lies have multiplied. AI-generated images flood social media, and in the pictures and videos AI produces it is now impossible to know if what we see is real. Elon Musk’s Grok is taking images that have been posted on the social media site X of women and children and undresses them. The real people are sexualized, victimized with an algorithm.

And then there’s the Prideful President possessed of a Pathological Personality, the PPPPP, addicted to Power and Personal Property. I know, that’s a lot of P’s.

We could add Pomp and Prizes to the list.

It does feel like a year to close the door on. Of course, it wasn’t all bad; life is never that simple. The same grandiose PPPPP engineered a ceasefire and the return of suffering hostages. The AI of disinformation has as much capacity for good as evil. AI scribes now handle administrative burdens for doctors, freeing them to focus more on their patients.

And I think of Ahmed el Ahmed, the Australian man who tackled a shooter during the antisemitic massacre, saving many lives.

January is named after Janus, the two-faced Roman god of transitions and doorways. He looks simultaneously backward and forward. Like him, we stand at a threshold, surveying what has happened while also facing what’s to come.

So what do we hope to see?

I imagine stepping outside where a flower opens its petals to follow the sun. A bee buzzes past, then circles back, mesmerized by orange petals. It enters the flower, and while delighting in the sweet nectar it collects pollen on its back. The bee buzzes off—if only certain human leaders would buzz off, too—carrying pollen to the next waiting flower, rubbing it where it fertilizes the receptive plant. Seeds germinate. Life persists. Birds migrate and perch on a tree that has been there longer than the internet, longer than any current human crisis, and that will remain long after Trump and Putin and you and I are gone.

May we all connect with what is lasting and good. May your New Year be one of hope, and renewal. And may we do what we can to make our human world flower again.

Meanwhile, I’m going to step outside, take some deep breaths, and walk.

I’ll use my forward face.

To see other posts on Musings on Medicine and More, click here.

Leave a comment

Share