W.B.’s Book Report: How to Survive Dystopia (With Your Humanity Intact)

We entered a new dark age in 2020 when governments around the world closed down economies, restricting people’s business, pleasure and their very movements, citing the danger from a novel coronavirus not, it seems to have turned out, dramatically different from other viruses that had achieved pandemic status in recent years.

The coordinated attack on our freedom was so complete, sudden and unexpected that most people complied without thinking. Of course, then more and more people started thinking, and they thought even harder when it became clear that independent thought was being systematically suppressed and censored.

Starr O’Hara’s helpful little book lays down a concise summary of what happened, along with practical ways to maintain one’s sanity and independence in the resulting dystopia.

As I wrote the other day, I feel conflicted about introducing a book called It’s Going to Be All Right at this particular time. On the other hand, someone needs to encourage people to remain calm and think things through while alleged leaders are screaming messages of fear and loathing at us, waging proxy wars, and otherwise behaving as if they’d love to incite an apocalypse to reduce the surplus population. So I’m moving forward with plans to release my latest collection curated from this blog on Oct. 18.

In the meantime, I strongly urge anyone who is alarmed at the totalitarian excesses of recent years to get hold of Ms. O’Hara’s book — and to obtain a paper copy, as I have. It’s available as an ebook, but ebooks can be erased as if they never existed or lost if the grid goes down. They haven’t yet succeeded in burning every last book.

Real life vs. real life

In a blog post called “One Morning, Two Realities,” Toirdhealbheach Beucail (whose name I must someday learn how to pronounce) writes about the contrast between the life that greets him when he awakes — the dog and his other pets, his family, his home — and the life that assaults him when he flips the switch and lets the outer world invade.

I call the morning news “The OMG Report.” The TV personalities seek out the most alarming and aberrant behavior they can find and hurl it in our faces in what feels like a deliberate attempt to disrupt our calm and fuel our fear and rage.

“The sky is falling!” shouts the expert or the petty tyrant on the screen. “A piece of it struck me in the head! You’re next!” (Do they tell children the story of Chicken Little anymore?)

TB considers that the life he first encounters in the morning, the one with the charming dependent animals, his morning read, and the human loves of his life, “are far more of life than ‘real life’ seems to be. Absolutely. “The OMG Report” is a bit of nervous entertainment, akin to a horror movie or roller coaster, and the reality we wake up to is more like an epic romantic poem, more challenging to get through, perhaps, but full of real nourishment.

Equinox opportunities

Here around the 45th parallel, the high temperatures are expected to drop into the upper 50s today after a high in the mid to upper 70s on Wednesday, the last full day of summer.

The autumnal equinox is supposed to occur right after 8 p.m. tonight in this neck of the woods, and for the next six months the days will be shorter than the nights, barely noticeable at first and then darker as we approach winter. The only good news about the first day of winter is that the days start regaining a few minutes back daily even as the cold gets colder.

I am a big fan of summer, but I’m fond of fall and spring, too. Autumn is OK because the hot and muggy days of summer are behind us, but the cool weather is not yet bone-chilling, and spring is OK because the bone-chilling is behind us and the green comes easing back. It’s only in winter that I wish my modest book sales would start sprouting extra zeros so we could buy that second home somewhere where freezing weather is just something you read about or see on TV.

For now, though, here we sit on the cusp between seasons, a cold front ushering summer out the door rather brusquely if I say so myself. The switch is not usually quite so dramatic, but what are ya gonna do, it is what it is, and a dozen more cliches that people use when they’re making small talk about the weather.

So here we are entering autumn, and who knows what happens next? The only thing that’s certain is the green leaves will turn to brown, we might get a few inches of snow by the end of the year, and life goes on. That’s something.