photo credit: Jimmy Chan on pixels.com
My training to be a neuropsychologist involved focussing on behaviours and what they imply for brain function. The task was to understand one person’s brain functions, and it was done with a meticulous accumulation of many, many data points. Enough observations on behaviour could form a pattern that could accurately reflect brain integrity, or lack thereof. The more information, the more clearly a pattern could be discerned. The richest source of data points were responses to neuropsychological tests. How quickly could someone complete a test? How many errors? How many correct answers?
The principle of detailed and careful observations of behaviour is a solid one. Journalism, the judiciary, medicine, all work on this principle. Once acquired, the skill boils down to being able to look beyond what are they saying and into what they are actually doing. It is of course not always the same thing. There are many hypotheticals to account for the difference between values expressed and actions taken. In common parlance the explanations may be psychological if we speak of repressed memory, or triggered emotions, acting out and the like. These conclusions may not be accurate, but they serve as explanations for the difference between what someone says and what they do.
The stories we tell to explain behaviour in ourselves are summaries of actions and experiences, pulled together into a narrative. Done well, they are like the neuropsychologist’s report covering hundred of test scores that coalesce into a meaningful pattern. Mr. X presents with a pattern of memory dysfunction consistent with dementia of the Alzheimer’s type.
Humans love to find patterns in any data set be it brief or comprehensive. Random events do not inherently have meaning, but we seem to be hard wired to try to find some. At the simplest level, it is the face of a deity in a slice of toasted bread. The point at which we see synchronicity rather than coincidence.
The urge to develop a narrative to summarize actions taken can also be useful for a cover story. These stories spin a behaviour into a realm of fiction. How to understand the words of someone protesting, I would never do such a thing when in fact, careful scrutiny reveals they did just that thing. The truer response would be closer to, damn you for catching me.
These are stories we build from whatever we can. Some hypotheticals, like building a legal case in court, can be substantially based on fact. Some are less detailed conveniences.
Narratives have another function. These are the levers we can use to convince ourselves, or others, to change. Perhaps the changes are small, based on a bit of insight and subsequent commitment. I did not realize what I was doing. Don’t be that guy. I did not know I was hurting anyone. I want to do better. Sometimes the change is not for the better, as in, I got away with that.
The truth is that the stories we tell and the patterns we think we see have a major vulnerability. This is the degree to which they are mapped onto real world events and actions. The closer the correspondence between fact and interpretation, the stronger the narrative. The story can be challenged, if not demolished, on the basis of facts. The answer to, I would never do such a thing, is the simple response of, You did exactly that thing and here is the proof.
Narratives are resilient but have this basic weakness of relying on an underpinning of facts. Even though they are glued together by the emotion of belief, this is the cleavage point where change can occur.
The narrative of our own actions, or those of others, acts to maintain the status quo, but seeing past it can change behaviour. When what we see no longer lines up with what is done, words are the leverage for change. The narrative is refreshed or altered. Behaviour changes. Perhaps the change is not in the politician who is spinning a tale for their own purposes, but in the observer who stops believing them.
So, what are we looking for beyond words? Some of us are convinced by facts. Some need a higher burden of proof and require more facts than others. There are those, like the patients dying in ICU, who continue to protest they do not have covid 19, and for whom no level of fact, authority or personal experience will suffice to change the cover story.
It all starts with watching behaviour and ignoring the words. The best way to do that is to look for consistent patterns of behaviour and comparing them to observations and facts. This is the way of good journalism. This is a just courtroom. This is medicine and neuropsychology and a host of other endeavours.
Psychology and neuropsychology work by discerning patterns of behaviour that persist. Intelligence is stable over a lifetime, barring disease or injury. The ways in which we habitually interact in the world, variously referred to as character or personality, are also stable over a lifetime. The things that make us happy, anxious, or engage us in sustained effort, tend not to change much over time. The youngster that loves to paint will probably delight in the visual arts throughout their lifetime. The kid with a particular talent for disassembling mechanics in childhood will be skilled in reassembling things later in life too. We will bring our broken things to them to be fixed. The kid that is easily frightened will tend to be anxious about other things as they grow up. The child that loves to test themselves will continue to frighten their parents with even bigger challenges.
In broad strokes, patterns of behaviour are pretty stable. The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. This shouldn’t be a big problem if the world is also, again in broad terms, stable, reliable and consistent.
So, when the environment is in crisis, weather is unpredictable and a virus is not only causing a pandemic but is mutating as fast as science can keep up, well, we humans that are so strongly inclined to hold onto the same old stories have an obvious problem. Stay the course or change? A common response is to adjust the narrative to suit. There are a lot of ways to do that. There’s denial, deflection, obscuring facts, disinformation, attack and hostility to name a few.
If that proves unsatisfactory we can look look past the verbiage and watch what people do. In 2020, people started dying in numbers far greater than normal all over the world. Testing for the sars cov2 virus was widespread; case counts and hospitalization numbers were public information. Then testing and public information began to drop off in many nations. The restriction in health data was a choice made by governments, and that was a behaviour one needed to see.
It took quite a while to get a clearer picture of what was actually done. Since the pandemic began, Canada has had one of the highest rates of death amongst the world’s wealthy nations for people living in long term care (Canadian LTC deaths). Allow me to move beyond the passive voice and state it more clearly. After several years, an Ontario ombudsman’s report laid out the government actions and decisions that led to death. Governments can talk themselves blue in the face, but there are facts and findings, for example: ("Ombudsman finds serious lapses") .
Then there is the head spinning moment when a narrative seems to catch up to mirror reality. I started thinking about this when I read a Jessica Wildfire column and realized that the evolution of the covid 19 pandemic reminded me of post apocalyptic zombie fiction. This is the story line of people infected with some fast spreading thing that renders them half dead, while a very small band of healthy humans fight an increasingly difficult battle to stay healthy and alive. That small band has the dual task of retaining their humanity and reacting to the ever present threat of infection. There we go, the covid 19 pandemic all summed up in a sci fi series on Netflix.
It is becoming harder to rely on institutional figures to tell us what is safe, or what will moderate such a threat. When politicians spend more time framing a reality that suits their needs but not mine, I am grateful for the training that kept me from responding, well they have our best interests at heart and must have a good reason for doing that. What it taught me was I see you saying this and doing that.
The virus keeps evolving new ways to infect us, and our capacity to evade the virus relies on the ways we change our behaviour. Vaccinations for this virus have not stopped infection; they reduce severity of, and death from, infection. You will still be infected but you won’t be as sick and less likely to die. We were reassured that behaviour need not change and life could go on as normal. Travel. Dine out. Go to concerts. It is a narrative, but it is not an optimal way to behave in an airborne mediated pandemic.
Because this virus is adapting faster than we are. Because this, a quote from the substack TACT: “In other words, we are dependent on our finite supply of T-cells. The lower the viral load exposed to, the longer we live, and the better the chance we have to avoid a persistent infection.” (September 8, 2023). Because a sars cov2 infection compromises that finite supply of T cells. Finite.
The need to pivot can be as brutal as, change or die. It can be as gentle as, no to that, yes to this. It does not matter how you come to a pivot point. If the decision to change is made, the details will eventually come into focus. It matters to have a clear sense of what is in front of your own two eyes.
Who is masking these days? Not a lot of people right now. There is talk of mask mandates coming back this fall, a new wave, new variants to be monitored. One mask company recently put their products on deep discount. We bought more.
I have been overdue for a haircut, but I could not bring myself to go into a salon for one. I am spooked by the prospect of close contact with people in an enclosed space, at a time when people are generally not masking or even testing. I decided on the home haircut route again, and trust that over time my husband and I would become more skilled with these things. So, we traded haircuts on a sunny day on the porch. The haircuts turned out well enough.
It is ironic that I write all these words to say, look past words to see the behaviour. You can not see for yourself, but when inside public buildings, I wear a mask. We have home haircuts and enjoy take out meals on occasion. I can not care if anyone frames these things in a negative light. I have pivoted.
Finally, what that says about trust in a society experiencing a pandemic is another topic, also full of import.