The fragility of goodness and struggling with illness

Health update, plus a ramble on health, flourishing, efficacy of prayer etc.

tough wildflowers

When two weeks or so ago I went to the ER with rapidly growing pain, I knew already the news would not be good. They did testing to see what was causing the pain. Then it turned out, after we had tried surgery, radiotherapy and immunotherapy, that thrice the cancer got the better of us.

Now, barring some clinical trial with amazing breakthrough I can expect 1 to 2 years. Those are pooled numbers. It could be significantly longer, depending on how I respond to life-extending chemo which will not cure me but keep cancer at bay, hopefully, for a good while.

The best I can do now is sit with this somber news, and to ramble a bit on topics here below. These ramblings did not seem to come together into a coherent essay, but may be interesting for you to read nonetheless.

On the efficacy of prayer

These past months, I prayed with the fervor of a foxhole theist. I prayed and prayed until I felt numb and unloved, and I can’t feel the point anymore. Please God, the three previous treatments all failing can you give me a few more months with this one? Having suffered excruciating pain, can I have less pain now? The normal routes of healing exhausted, should I now pray for a miracle?

It’s clear that my healing either is not in God’s plans, or disease is outside his domain (for instance, according to Maimonides’s distinction between general and special providence, God only providentially deals with rational creatures, not with the workings of nature in general which he set up and continuously acts to work as they should). I do not want to think God wills my suffering somehow. I prefer Schleiermacher's idea that it is a foreseen but unwanted byproduct of how creation works. Creation works with lots of suffering involved.

Should I then pray for the crumbs of years more? Don't get me wrong, I crave these crumbs very much.

Writing and flourishing

Part of why I crave the crumbs is my work and my writing. Before I got ill I had no idea that writing was so important to me. I would like to write more and develop more as a writer.

I realize writing is a vital part of my life. As vital as being a mother to my kids, a spouse, an artist, a musician (sadly not well enough to make music, I hope I will be able again to)…

Audre Lorde

As Audre Lorde argued, all of us have many selves and we should realize those selves to be flourishing human beings, even if we are struck with cancer (I read her cancer diaries and they are wonderful).

So perhaps it is not too cruel a twist of fate that my writing is going well. I have plans for two books that hopefully will be written. As for fiction, my short story Rules for the Direction of the artificial mind has just appeared in AcademFic (you can read it linked for free here). Another story will soon appear in Kaleidotrope.

My first novella, titled "The artistry of magic” will be published by Pink Hydra press, a small independent South African press. It is a sweet fantasy romance story about the love between a homeless magician who makes a living with magical drawings and a university librarian who was a first-generation student, loves her job but feels a bit stuck. Do not expect it to be as cerebral as my other pieces. I wanted to write something heartwarming set in a secondary world, fantasy, but not set among fae or royal courts but only with ordinary people, including the very marginalized and dehuamanized identity of being unhoused. I interviewed someone who had been homeless for two years (as a young white man, so I know his experience does not universalize) to get those details of the story reasonably true to life.

I asked myself, Do I want this story out in the world? The answer was yes: so I sent it to a small independent press that publishes novellas, and they are willing to publish. It will be published in February.

Fragile good and flourishing

an image from the famous Orchid Album by Robert Warner and Benjamin Samuel Williams, vol 1, 1872.

It's been years now I have read Martha Nussbaum's Fragility of Goodness. She looks at two conceptions of goodness. Maybe goodness is like a delicate flower, an orchid in a hothouse, something beautiful but fragile that requires optimal conditions to flourish. Ill health, death of a loved one, loss of job, many things can destroy it. But that makes goodness also precious. Aristotle believed this. Or maybe goodness is like a tough wildflower: we can have it even if we lack, e.g., health or wealth. We can seek it because it is not entirely found in worldly goods. Plato believed it. So did, for instance, Spinoza.

I have never had an easy life, but I also want goodness, so it's perhaps not surprising given my experiences I prefer Plato's picture over Aristotle's. Amy Olberding gifted us this metaphor of orchids and weeds. She writes about career services session she attended.

At the time, I heard them [the career service facilitators] snidely dismissing all the places they would never work and thought they seemed like hot-house orchids, like people who had bloomed into these fantastically impressive flowers but did so in conditions meticulously designed to nourish them. In contrast, I thought of myself as kin to a lesser, less fantastical wildflower springing up out of some manure pile on the roadside. I had a bit of color in me by then, a bit of bloom brought on by good mentors, but except where I could smuggle myself in, had never been in the hothouse, never lived with the sense of high expectations and assumed success. We were like utterly different sorts of plants, yet trying for the same role in the world, seeking to be selected for the bouquet of academic life. Whether for admissions committees or for hiring committees, we inhabit a world in which wildflowers sit alongside hothouse orchids and, regrettably, it’s clear which the field prefers.—Amy Olberding, Luck and precursive belief

But we can't all be orchids. I am, like Olberding, a first-gen college student. I grew up solidly working class. I like her idea that people who cannot flourish the way an orchid does, can still flourish the way a wildflower does. This botanical metaphor gets works well because it reminds me of Richard Lewontin's views of agency in evolution.

Lewontin argues against genetic determinism, showing how organisms can flourish in spite of not-so-great genes being passed on, through ingenuous secondary pathways. He also argues against environmental determinism to show how organisms, like tough wildflowers, for instance, can beat the odds in truly dire environmental conditions. If you weren't born as a privileged orchid in one of the nation's finest hothouses, you may yet thrive as a wildflower. But that has costs. To fully realize yourself as a wildflower means making significant sacrifices, as Jennifer Morton has brilliantly argued in her Moving up without losing your way, on strivers from disadvantaged milieus.

As I have grown older, I have grown more skeptical that goodness is really so fragile. Rather, I think goodness can be found, though the road may be hard, cf Spinoza's final lines in the Ethics:

If the way I have shown to lead to these things now seems very hard, still, it can be found. And of course, what is found so rarely must be hard. For if salvation were at hand, and could be found with­ out great effort, how could nearly everyone neglect it? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare. (Spinoza Ethics 5, 42, Scholium, Curley's translation.

Spinoza is right that finding goodness, blessedness in his terminology is excellent, difficult and rare. Particularly if there is no set path for you, you must set the path. And this means you might be able to flourish even when sick or poor, for instance. The path is excellent because it requires ingenuity, creativity, and skill. It is rare because it is specific to your circumstances. One of the two books I am planning aims to tie Lorde's ideas of self-realization to the Spinoza rare and excellent road.

Talking to Sue at the infusion center

I had a wonderful conversation partner for my new chemo regimen. Sue, a 75-y-old white woman from rural Missouri, has lived for 8 years with terminal cancer (after she received a tough prognosis of two years). Her life and approach to it demonstrates better than I theoretically ever can how such a difficult, rare, and excellent approach to finding goodnesss is possible.

She was masked (also like me, respirator) and she has continuously done throughout the pandemic. We had a very nice deep conversation about meaning of life, things to live for (she said "I'm 75, but I have so much to live for) -- she has one 12-y-old granddaughter she treasures and hopes to see grow up further. Having something to live for makes life worth living, even under difficult circumstances.

We talked about how sidelined cancer patients have been in the pandemic, people who are left behind. As if our lives, our flourishing, as vulnerable immunocompromised people does not matter. We also talked about how improvements in health care and insurance were not even seriously on the table this past election. Harris laughed at Trump for having concepts of a plan to replace Obamacare, but what was her plan? Nothing much, just some improvements on the edges whereas the recent case of the murder of Brian Thompson and the general reaction to it (the deep anger against the American healthcare system and its greatest benefactors) shows us how deep transformative change is needed. Both Sue and I have battled our insurance providers for denials of necessary care, offered surprise bills etc. It's a lot on top of being so illl. No-one should have to do this, let alone in our state.

I did sense some political differences between Sue and me but this did not prevent a good conversation. Americans seem to be united in their dislike of how healthcare works, but yet no change is on the horizon. It is so important. I hope it happens soon. I hope our political leaders put the interests of millions of people whose flourishing is fragile above the interests of a few CEOs and shareholders.

Because, while I believe that Plato is more right than Aristotle, and that goodness can be found even in difficult circumstances, I also believe we must try as societies to create conditions that are overall less difficult, where many beautiful wildflowers and orchids grow rather than the rare bloom between the thorns.

(Note: I may not respond to replies but do read them. I will soon crash from the chemo and will not be able to write for a while. Also apologies for any typos.)