Making Sense of The Week That Was #40: Loss and Coping
News Wrap Edition #40 of Volume 1 | October 22, 2021
Lead Editors: Ben Thurman and Su McVey
These are a series of stories and headlines we are tracking in the
Grey Swan Guild’s Global League of Sensemakers Newsroom. Here is The Great, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of what we observed this week.
This week’s theme is loss and coping
When faced with grief, loss and trauma, people find different ways to cope, some isolate while others connect. Lynyrd Skynyrd said it well when they sang, “… Tuesday’s gone with the wind, oh my baby’s gone with the wind, and I don’t know where I’m going. I just want to be left alone…”
On October 20th, 1977 Sweet Home Alabama’s southern man Lynyrd Skynyrd’s tour plane crashed, killing several band members. The world lost a brilliant, soulful musical light that day. In the last two years, the world experienced loss and trauma on a vast scale.
With the anniversary of the Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash on our minds, and thinking about loss, an exploration of the topic and how people cope — often through the pursuit of new innovation or social change, or fail to cope and form maladaptive behaviours to hide from trauma, we look to Skynyrd lyrics for inspiration:
“What you see is what you get/I ain’t that old — I’m not dead yet/ All those words we said/Are in my head/Now all I got left/Is this Sad Song.”
Our mother earth is in turmoil and we have all lost so much. It’s easy to think the world stinks. To quote Joseph Heller of Catch 22 fame and fortune (the good news of his theory — you are not crazy if you think the world is crazy, but you have to stay on this earth Elon.)
Here are Heller’s words, negative and as real in this pandemic as they were 60 years ago when first written. Read them slowly, out loud.
What a lousy earth! He wondered how many people were destitute that same night even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands were drunk and wives socked, and how many children were bullied, abused, or abandoned. How many families hungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night, how many people would go insane? How many cockroaches and landlords would triumph? How many winners were losers, successes failures, and rich men poor men? How many wise guys were stupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave men cowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of trust had sold their souls to bodyguards, how many had never had souls? How many straight-and-narrow paths were crooked paths? How many best families were worst families and how many good people were bad people? When you added them all up and then subtracted, you might be left with only the children, and perhaps with Albert Einstein and an old violinist or sculptor somewhere.
Loss can make heroes or villains of anyone. This is a call to sensemaking if there ever was one. Looking across the news landscape this week, we see great things in the form of solutions to large problems borne from, medical emergencies, environmental devastation, tragic deaths, and corporations behaving badly.
At the bottom of the spectrum, a great leader died; people are distorting events that didn’t go their way and perpetuating idiocy, and mental health is on the decline. Remember one of Colin Powell's rules of leadership, harmonized with the values of our group. “Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier”.
Have you lost someone or something across the pandemic and economic crisis? How did you cope? How will you cope? We are listening.
So…Let’s Wrap that perpetual optimism into the losses we must cope with.
Why not join us on Sunday, October 24th at 8am (PST) 11am (EST) / 4pm BST We’d love to hear your thought on loss and coping so why not join us on Clubhouse this Sunday the 24th of October 2021 at 8 am PST | 11 am EST | 4 pm BST | 5 pm SAST to make sense of it all, have your say, and engage with your favourite Grey Swan Guild Wrap Editors:
Doyle Buehler, Sylvia Gallusser, Sean Moffitt, Agustín Borrazás, Rob Tyrie, Louise Mowbray, Ben Thurman, Antonia Nicols and now new additions to our team Esmee Wilcox, Geeta Dhir, Gina Clifford, Su McVey with Clubhouse Captains Howard Fields, Scott Phares, and Lindsay Fraser.
The Great 😇
1.Change is going to come Sam. A community in Georgia turns tragedy into progress. Brunswick, GA is a community coping with trauma. Brunswick is where Ahmaud Arbery was killed for no good reason at all in February 2020. In response to the senseless tragedy, people spoke out and kept speaking out. The prosecutor on the case was voted out and indicted for her role in helping to shield suspects. New, bipartisan hate crime laws were passed, and the citizen’s arrest law was revised — one that dated back to the Civil War.
We love this example of a community coping with loss through positive change. Arbery’s death was tragic and unnecessary and the reforms that resulted from the tragedy probably don’t lessen the pain of family and friends. The hope is that future tragedies are averted so that others don’t need to go through similar pain. Hope emerges from deep grief and adversity.
“Whatever the verdict in court, activists say outcry over the case has forced changes from local authorities who faced public mistrust and allegations of uneven justice long before Arbery’s death.”
2. To paraphrase the Allman Brothers, workers ain’t wastin’ time no more. Mass job loss and uncertainty during the pandemic led workers across industries to contemplate their situations. Many people are choosing to not let precious moments slip by working long hours for employers that pay low wages or don’t offer remote working flexibility.
…we may instead look back to the pandemic as a crucial inflection point in something more fundamental: Americans’ attitudes toward work. Since early last year, many workers have had to reconsider the boundaries between boss and worker, family time and work time, home and office.
It’s easy to talk to people and hear stories about job changes, or re-examining work priorities or wanting a new job, but this is nothing new. What’s new is data that shows new business starts are rising; there are record numbers of job openings, and people moving to new states. Are workers redefining work-life paradigms? The Magic Eight Ball says, “all signs point to yes.”
3. These suits are made for walking. The suit is now gone. Good riddance. Even when we wore them 5 times a week, could anybody realistically call them the most comfortable or practical clothing in their wardrobe. Hell no. Especially off the rack fit-no-one clothes made of cheap hydrocarbon swell attracting polysomething and cotton. They usually were vestiges of your belonging to the rat race, enormously over-priced and a signal of class conflict and undeserved merit on important matters plus a stupid tie and too many pockets.
Check out this suit sale at Mens Work Warehouse. It’s over when a suit costs $69 and the latest jacket and sweats from Lululemon cost $400. The reality is they were uncomfortable handcuffs and false suits of armor that could convey unjustifiable status and intellect. “F*ck that”, say the Millenials. Goodbye and welcome dry-fit, fleece sweaters, woollens, sneakers and athleisure. Au revoir Brooks Brothers, all the way to chapter 11. Hello Lululemon, Ciao Armani, welcome Under Armour and elastic waists. Be wary as the luxury brands creep into relax-ware though. Let’s see where this over 40 Billion dollar market goes. We still work the same 50+ hours I did pre COVID but at least now we feel more comfortable unless you are James (or Jane Bond). 🤵
The Good😊🙌
1.The greatest love of all, the children are the future. Helping children deal with grief after the death of a parent is tough. After her father’s death Gabby Williamson, 20, sought to help her little sister cope with the loss. She created a box with toys, books, and worksheets to help younger kids deal with grief. Children operate with a different vocabulary and need different tools to work through the loss of a loved one in a way that isn’t overwhelming.
Children do tend to deal with grief very differently. Sometimes they find it difficult to find the right words to express their emotions. The good thing about the box is that they are able to express their emotions through different activities.
Now Gabby is creating boxes for other kids in similar situations and sending them to schools in her area. The death of a loved one is a trauma that can lead to long-term mental health issues. Maybe small solutions like Gabby’s will help keep kids from getting stuck in grief.
2.Diamonds are forever. Space rocks for the win. As natural resources dwindle or even disappear forever, some visionaries are looking to the stars — err, well the chunk of junk and rock that are asteroids — as a new source of precious metals. This sounds far-fetched, but space agencies have already travelled to and returned samples from, asteroids — why mine the dirt, when you can mine the miles high sky.
Most metal-rich asteroids live way out in the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. Famous among these is 16 Psyche, a hulking, 140-mile-wide asteroid first discovered in 1852.
NASA plans to visit Psyche in 2026 to learn more about it’s composition. 1986 DA and 2016 ED85 are two other asteroids that are classified as “near-Earth”. Scientists estimate that 1986 DA could bring in $233 billion in revenue a year. A year… Just enough platinum to make that trillion-dollar coin? [Ed. Best link ever]
With space travel getting cheaper, and privatization accelerating, there may be a future in mining asteroids. Let’s hope the miners don’t behave like Robert Heinlein’s characters and start launching rocks at earth from space.
3. Water of love deep in the ground, but there ain’t no water to be found. Western water sources are running on empty. 88 percent of western states are under some degree of drought warning. The cost of water in San Diego has tripled in the last 15 years, and ongoing drought is a more certain near-term risk than earthquakes (no matter how much fracking the oil industry keeps trying to do).
Technology to combat water shortages is starting to reach maturity. In San Diego, the Pure Water program is meant to provide more than 40% of city water from local sources by 2035. What’s remarkable is that it will use recycled wastewater to do it. The water is made so pure during the filtration process that minerals must be added back to the precious liquid for people to drink it. When complete, the facility will produce 83 million gallons of clean water each day. You first, the water feels just fine.🥤
The project is just getting off the ground, and the purification system at the North City Water Reclamation Plant is actually a lab of sorts: Engineers have been experimenting with different kinds of membranes, for instance, to see what works best for the wastewater the facility receives.
Let’s hope this works before House Harkonnen takes control of all the dunes and the world needs Paul Atreides to save the day.
The Bad 😬
1.Flight of the bumble bees. This stings. US beekeepers continue to lose colonies at great rates. We are talking about 45% reductions. This is coupled with the loss of the American bumblebee in 8 states and scientists communicating that they should be treated as an endangered species. Not good. Reasons range from pesticides to encroachment, and climate change among other guesses. No bees and drought, is it that the preamble in the last Mad Max movie? To bee or not to bee, that’s the question. 🐝☠
2. My heart will go on? It appears that we may be losing “the last Ice”. A huge hole has been found in what is considered the thickest, oldest ice in the Arctic.
The sea ice along Ellesmere Island’s northern shore is regularly more than 13 feet (4 meters) thick, with an average age of 5 years. However, the Arctic’s “last ice” is increasingly susceptible to the northern hemisphere’s fast warming.
Initially, as this ice melts, there is a flurry of increased biodiversity as algae grows which attracts fish and crustaceans. This in turn draws seals and polar bears. In time as the temperature rises, the ice retreats, as does the habitat that sustains these species. They will become extinct. The “last ice” lost was unimaginable a few short years ago.
3. Industrial disease, but who’s counting… It’s common knowledge that pandemic statistics are flawed and are in need of maximal transparency. One might argue that statistics are the least of our worries, but something like death statistics are crucially important. Mounting evidence shows that the number of reported deaths is shallow. Apparently, this is a common historic pattern in infectious disease outbreaks.
We all have to demand a unification on common statistics and measurement of “cause of death”. As the wise data sages have said since there was math, how can we understand anything, if we can’t measure it?
These realities paint a complex picture of the spread of COVID-19 around the world — one that is fundamentally different from many prevailing narratives. Underascertainment of COVID-19 mortality obscures our understanding of the pandemic’s progression, the effectiveness of interventions, and the optimal allocation of resources. Modelling studies in Jakarta found that the effect of city-wide physical control measures is most clearly visible in data on excess funerals rather than official cases or deaths.
If we can’t measure what’s lost, there’s no way to know if interventions are working nor to what extent. The space marines in Aliens weren’t sure what they were dealing with and we all know how that turned out. Yeah, gets right inside you, doesn't it?
The Ugly 😱
1.Tears are not enough. Spectators watch with phones out as a woman is raped on a Philadelphia train. The loss of common decency is palpable in this story. Phones out, video rolling of a woman being actively assaulted, clothes ripped off, and no known bystander intervention. In Philadelphia, over a period of 40 minutes and two dozen stops she was harassed and then raped. What has happened to us in America?
The onus is really on us as a collective because we can’t always rely on the police,” Alexis Piquero, a criminologist at the University of Miami, said. “We have to rely on one another. We need a world where people are doing the right thing when you see someone assaulted.
Undoubtedly this horrific story will invoke the Kitty Genovese story where foolish journalists invoked a study about human inaction in violence that generated action and angst in 1964. The problem was that the incident was misreported, and it was told as a story to sell newspapers and in fact, kind humans did act and respond. This new violent act in front of witnesses is completely different.
There is already an update to this story, challenging the original story, by a prosecutor. We hope, the video recording was for evidence and the witnesses contacted the police. Time will tell.
“There is a narrative out there that people sat on the El train, and watched this transpire and took videos of it for their own gratification,” the prosecutor, District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer of Delaware County, said at a news conference on Thursday. “That is simply not true — it did not happen.”
It is a sad day when that has to be said. We demand to know why people did not act. Have we lost the ability to be human, have we been so isolated for so long that our phones have become our shields and we record real life so we can view it later? Is our reality becoming so distorted that we are immune to what is happening right in front of us?
2.We are not going to take it anymore. The devastating reality of children who had been abused as youths by family members having to return home due to job loss. Tragic. The people in abusive turmoil got hurt more. Heart-rending.
The pandemic had a devastating impact on survivors of child abuse…people had too much time to think about the past…new clients reached out for the first time, telling us of increased distress, nightmares, flashbacks and suicide ideation.
Can you imagine the horror of this situation, forced through circumstance, to reside with their familial abusers, day after day, with nowhere to go. The pandemic impacts are far-reaching into the past, the present and a somewhat undetermined future.
3. The kids, and adults, are not alright. Mental Health America released their annual report and an alarming number of people seem to be losing the battle to preserve their mental health. The numbers alone are enough to make us go listen to Pink Floyd’s “Brain Damage” on a loop.
The national rate of suicidal ideation among adults has increased year-over-year in every report, but this is a larger increase than seen in last year’s report and is a concerning trend.
More disturbing is the number of people that do not receive treatment — even when there’s access. 50 million Americans are experiencing mental illness; over half do not receive treatment.
The Grey Zone of Uncertainty 🧐
1.We have been so busy trying to survive and now we have to deal with the guilt of being alive. It has been hard dealing with the challenges of negotiating different levels of lock-downs, lack of normality, isolation, job loss and now many of us who are still here and healthy are dealing with survivor's guilt. The pang of “why did I make it and my uncle, cousin, friend, spouse, didn’t”. The guilt if we didn’t get vaccinated, or were vaccinated but unknowingly passed the virus onto to someone, someone we loved, someone we just knew.
Survivor’s guilt can affect up to 90% of survivors of traumatic events. COVID-19 survivors in Bergamo, Italy, one of the world’s hardest-hit towns, have experienced this on a widespread basis. Some people have reported a type of survivor guilt when they have been vaccinated, with many wondering why they have been so fortunate.
We are becoming a bifurcated global community; the dead and those alive, those vaccinated and those not vaccinated, those who believe in science and those that don’t. We are at the point where almost half of the world’s population has been received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine. That makes for more than enough guilt to last many lifetimes. Let’s call what it is, the most effective “Survivor Mission” in the world. If you are feeling guilty, get vaccinated, or just stay isolated if you have sickness symptoms. It helps others, and it will help you. There is science on that too.
2. Here’s to you Mrs. Robinson. Don’t hide it from the kids Mrs. Robinson. The natural tendency of parents to fiercely protect childhood innocence — like Sigourney Weaver battling a horde of bloodthirsty aliens, helicopter parents are fierce enough to lie, cheat and steal to save their kids from grief and give them the best chances they had or may not have had— is not new (not if you remember any Shakespeare or Greek Tragedies).
In some cases, this thinking led to the passage of child labor laws and other ways to protect children from their parents. However, it also contributes to exclusionary practices where the upper-class is protected, by helicopter parents and marginalized groups are left to contend with war, famine, poverty, etc.
COVID-19 shone a light on uncomfortable truths and forced a reckoning with child innocence that can’t be ignored. Sheltered children can become fragile, entitled adults. The question is how far to take the conversation without pushing into trauma and maladaptive behaviors.
COVID-19 can be an opportunity to rethink pervasive and dominant western beliefs in innocence as a universal childhood ideal. We can create space for more open dialogue about children’s rights and capabilities.
3.We are the champions? Are sports on the 10 yard line with two minutes left in the game? For many cities, the pandemic has interrupted our relationship with its sports teams. If you were a major city, you would have had much less live experiences with your top 7 sports teams (in North America, football, basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer, tennis, golf).
ESPN reported that “the sudden disappearance of sports will erase at least $12 billion in revenue and hundreds of thousands of jobs, an economic catastrophe that will more than double if the college football and NFL schedules are wiped out this Fall by the coronavirus pandemic, an analysis conducted for ESPN shows.”
After 500 or 600 days, live sports, in full stadiums are back. It is a milestone in post-pandemica. We sometimes minimize sports by calling them mere games but they really do make up the fabric of a city and community. Bread and circuses are signs of civilization as long as they replace war and do not hide government malfeasance. Homecoming, first dates, triumphant municipal pride, Friday Night Lights, business deals, family bonding, tourist entertainment and the purity of winning and the agony of defeat have all been impacted.
Where will it go now that fans can go back to stadia? Three scenarios?
- It comes back bigger than before, we hunger for real-world experience and passion.
- We have reappraised how we spend time, and we modulate our time down in favour of things closer to home.
- We forget about sports all together with our more on-demand lives of Netflix, eSports, social media and other digital pursuits.
The score is not yet determined on this one, but don’t count the verdict until the fat lady sings [Ed. apologies for the overused 1970s metaphor].
The Tapestry
Meme of the Week
Workers in the age of the great resignation… or the largest labor strike action in the history of earth…
Chart of the Week
October is Mental Health Awareness Month. Mental Health America (www.mhanational.org) completed an annual study and published this infographic. The results are alarming and show significant potential for loss of life, loss of livelihood and burdens to family and friends trying to care for people suffering from mental illness.
Term of the Week
Missing White Women Syndrome — Coined 15 Years ago. Echoed in the horrid case of Gabby Petito. “ ‘What it says is that if a white woman goes missing, she’s much more likely to attract the attention of the news media,’ said Liebler, who added, ‘And the white women who go missing, who do get that attention tend to be young, white, blonde, thin, sort of fit — a dominant beauty ideal.’ “
Acknowledging ‘Missing White Woman Syndrome’ | Psychology Today
Photo of the Week
Colin Powell died this week from COVID-19 complications. He is remembered as a great and flawed leader — having presented evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Powell acknowledged the mistake, which is uncommon in an age where many political personalities double-down. He also refused to run for President when the Republican Party was ready to hand him the nomination. If anything, the decision suggests he would have been great if elected, or at least ethical and honest. We are reminded of the 13 Rules he operated his career by:
- It ain’t as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning. Leaving the office at night with a winning attitude affects more than you alone; it also conveys that attitude to your followers.
- Get mad, then get over it. Everyone gets mad. It’s a natural and healthy emotion. My experience is that staying mad isn’t useful.
- Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it. Accept that your position was faulty, not your ego.
- It can be done. Have a positive and enthusiastic approach to every task. Don’t surround yourself with instant skeptics.
- Be careful what you choose: You may get it. You will have to live with your choices. Some bad choices can be corrected. Some you’ll be stuck with.
- Don’t let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision. Superior leadership is often a matter of superb instinct. When faced with a tough decision, use the time available to gather information that will inform your instinct.
- You can’t make someone else’s choices. You shouldn’t let someone else make yours. Make sure the choice is yours and you are not responding to the pressure and desire of others.
- Check small things. Leaders have to have a feel for small things — a feel for what is going on in the depths of an organization where small things reside.
- Share credit. People need recognition and a sense of worth as much as they need food and water.
- Remain calm. Be kind. Few people make sound or sustainable decisions in an atmosphere of chaos.
- Have a vision. Be demanding. Followers need to know where their leaders are taking them and for what purpose. Good leaders set vision, mission, and goals.
- Don’t take counsel of your fears or naysayers. Those who do risk wasting their time and energy.
- Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier. If you believe in the likelihood of success, your followers will too.
Video/Song of the Week
This new hit release from Adele sums up much about loss, especially for a generation of young people who did not get to experience much of life and living during the last 20 months:
….There ain’t no gold in this river that I have been washing my hands in forever…I know there is hope in these waters but I can’t bring myself to swim…I was still a child, didn’t get the chance to feel the world around me…I had no time to choose what I chose to do…so go easy on me
We need to go easy on each other.
That’s the Wrap! Your thoughts?
Why not join us on Sunday, October 24th at 8:00 (PST)/11am (EST) /4pm (BST) on Clubhouse to engage with your favourite Grey Swan Guild Wrap Editors, including Sylvia Gallusser, Sean Moffitt, Agustín Borrazás, Rob Tyrie, Ben Thurman, Louise Mowbray Antonia Nicols.Esmee Wilcox, Geeta Dhir, Gina Clifford, Su McVey with Clubhouse Captains Howard Fields, Scott Phares, and Lindsay Fraser.
See you next week for Edition #41 where we will ponder and ruminate on the week that was, what it means for the future, and Wrap it for you.
MORE TO DO… yes do with us!
Check the Grey Swan Calendar and join us in our latest events: City-focus Feature City Town Hall — Boston.
We’ve chosen Beantown as our Guild-wide profile city of the month for October. Let’s convene online as a city cohort and make sense of the world’s top challenges and next Grey Swans
And Grey Swan Atelier #8 — Thousand Day Radar — Three Year Trends.
Wayfinding the volatile and ambiguous path to 2025. In one of the Guild’s biggest initiatives of the year, we are asking Guild members to put on their three year radar and take us out to 2025 without h 20+ hours of activity. Register for Day #1 and Day #2.
The GSG Medium is The Message
Visit our Medium channel every Friday for a weekly wrap on the world’s biggest challenges and other fresh articles and points of view The Guild is sharing. Please drop by our Grey Swan Guild website (greyswanguild.org) for more publications and articles about how we make sense of the world ongoing and also the raft of possibilities to participate as a Sensemaker.
This Week’s Grey Swan News Wrap Editor: Ben Thurman with help from Su Mcvey. and the Editorial Team: Sylvia Gallusser, Sean Moffitt, Louise Mowbray, Rob Tyrie, Scott Phares, Ben Thurman, Doyle Buehler, Antonia Nicols, Agustín Borrazás, Howard Fields, Geeta Dhir, Dand Esmee Wilcox.
Grey Swan Guild — Making Sense of What’s Next
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