Door Knob Phobia in COVID-time

Psychologists have noticed the emergence of a new mental illness, and wonder why it doesn't get the attention all the others do. People suffering from Door Knob Phobia need help. They need understanding. They lose the ability to work, socialize and make a living. A Foundation has formed to apply for funding to help them.

What door-knob-phobics fear is germs on door handles. As we know, coronavirus can be anywhere. It hangs in the air, it lands on surfaces, it seethes in lobbies, shops and buses … and door handles. Not only should you not touch these, you shouldn't even go near them. Shouldn't even look at them. When you go through doors that open automatically, shut your eyes. The danger though, is that you might bump into someone coming the other way. And they might have coronavirus. And you might die.

So you don't go out.

The sight of door handles is so distressing that you can't even touch the door handles inside your house, those that only you have touched before and that you've scrubbed a hundred times. You know you're being irrational but you can't help it; you're addicted to imagining germs multiplying obscenely on door handles, no matter how often you wash them. In fact, the more you wash them the germ-ier they become.

You're told by experts a hundred times a day to wash your hands (hand-washing is itself no longer obsessive-compulsive -- it's now healthy) but what's the use of washing, if you have to touch a door handle? So you're trapped inside. You have nightmares in which you're desperate to get outside -- you must go outside -- but you can't escape because going out means going through the door. Which you won't do.

People with claustrophobia are especially hard hit by this mental illness, because their knob-phobic desire to stay indoors now has to do battle with their desire to go outdoors, and the stress of keeping their phobias straight can be overwhelming. It can lead to divorce and family breakdown, especially when family members are unsympathetic.

Sufferers however just can't stand being inside and can't stand going through the door. Not if they have to open it. But when they consider not closing it in the first place, they fear being watched. They feel exposed, and then they get agoraphobia. These pan-phobic victims are ripped apart as if by a pack of wolves: claustrophobia, agoraphobia, and doorknobophobia battling across their precarious mental universe.

They are told to join self-help groups -- online of course -- but research has shown that those who fear door handles also come to fear invisible germs on computer keyboards and cellphones. Experts are studying the linkages but research is in its infancy, and is under-funded. Sufferers therefore have appealed to donors to kick-start some crowd-funding, but donors have failed to respond. They suggest sufferers have a door kick-down instead.

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"Be Well" -- Or Be Unwell?

       "Be well" we sign our emails now, even in business messages to total strangers. But what does it mean? How do we "be well"? During the coronavirus epidemic it means don't get coronavirus, and the sub-text is "stay away from me". Go home. That's what the doctor ordered, and fear has made us obedient.
       But is it making us more well or less well? "Well" is one of those ancient monosyllables with a richly suggestive host of meanings. In English the word comes via Saxon from the Old German "welle", meaning wave. Health and good fortune well up like water in a well, or waves on the sea, or they sink like the water table in a drought.
       Famous wells such as those at Bath, Wells Cathedral, or Struell Wells in Ireland are fed by actual underground springs, and carry spiritual connotations. Religious structures like cathedrals are built on them. They illustrate the inseparability of the physical and the spiritual.     
          The COVID19 pandemic has licensed a hazardous flight from the physical. From the biological world we flee to cyber-space, and find that an easy, slack, undemanding and habit-forming place. We are rewarded for withdrawing indoors in front of computer screens, pretending that online networking is no different than meeting others in a cafe or lecture theatre. 

 Sedentary idleness too is an epidemic, and spreading ever-faster. Something is lost when scholars, knowledge seekers and philosophers don't communicate face-to-face. “Virtual” life is sterile life. We need body language, unconscious perception of hidden cues, the emotions below words, the expressions on faces. Our sensory-neural equipment evolved along with our need to be social, adept at sensing moods of those around us.

We also need cues from other species: the scents we pick up while forest-bathing, the pheromones of plants and animals, the sound of birds whose songs probably birthed human language. Did early feminid mothers not chirp at their infants, lulling them with the lilts of birdsong? In the fullness of time lullaby became verbal and words spun epic stories: religion, drama, literature were born.

       These could all but die in isolated cells where people merely watch computer screens. Poets made verse to the rhythm of walking, musicians created wind instruments with the living breath in their lungs: we've always tied creativity to physicality, we've never been robotic – until now. Now that we've created robots we've let them become the teachers. We follow them, instead of the peregrinating philosopher talking to the crowds in village after village. Maybe our future world ruler will be Top-Robot-Doctor, who welled up from the poisoned springs of digitalia. 

       There's no agora in the middle of town now; it's closed. No village green for the players to entertain us on, no spicy, sensuous and variegated Silk Trail, only the online retailer. Its delivery drones save us the trouble of going outside, getting up from the couch, being physical. It's not only our muscles that get flabby but also the parts of our brains that register muscular sensation, and the parts stimulated by smell, touch, vision and hearing.

Fearing that our bodies might catch a virus, we abandon bodies. We live without enchantment, a word related to “chant” and “cantare”, to sing. We don't sing and we don't recite; we merely speak to “Siri” and “Alexa” in their language: cybernetics. We have abandoned our inner animal, but our wild selves still keen and howl at night in dreams of lost physicality, dreams of longing.

The region of the brain supporting memory lies alongside the area devoted to smell. Leaves and flowers, humus-y soil and salty seas give off smell for a reason. They trigger communication among species, and they stimulate memory. Without physicality we become dumbed-down prematurely senile amnesiacs.                                       

Solitude too deepens life and mind, and hibernation provides rest, but immersion in online chatter is not real solitude, and the point of hibernation is to wake up refreshed. Let's not consent therefore to the theft of sensation and the freedom to roam, for physicality is our robust core (“robustus” -- strength). Without strength you cannot fight any virus. So let's call up our physical being, out of doors. That's what “be well” means.

  Stay strong - let nature be your guide

Social Distancing as done in Qualicum Beach, BC

Living the good life on Vancouver Island.



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Tree Spotted in Downtown Core Frightens Residents

“Haven't we progressed beyond that nature shit yet?” asked a high-rise building security manager when a tree was spotted in the neighbourhood. It was growing behind a nearby community association's daycare centre. “I mean: nature? Birds? Seriously, in this day and age?”

“We live right around the corner from it,” said one tenant of the high-rise, mouth trembling, on the verge of tears. “Does it harbour disease? Bugs? Poisonous songbirds?”

“And right beside the daycare centre too,” added her companion, disgusted. “Right in front of innocent urban kids. We don't pay high taxes to live in a dense smart city for this. This is dumb.”

City officials couldn't say whether the tree was an overlooked survivor of development or a new sapling unaccountably sprouting from dusty, chemical-laced earth: no biology-trained staff who might have a theory remain in the City's employ after recent staff changes. 

“What I don't understand,” said one City Councillor, “is how this outlaw tree escaped the surveillance cameras. As guardians of the public purse we need to hold the surveillance service-provider accountable. We love pavement here, but we won't allow anyone to pave over cracks in official transparency and accountability. The next thing we know, freedom will replace bureaucracy and leaves will be falling in gutters. They'll land on top of safely-injected homeless people just lying in their sleeping bags, minding their own business.”

Police suspect that Someone might be extracting Something from the bark of the tree in an archaic process once used by illegal substance labs. The Mayor promises to acquire Bark Recognition Cameras for the city. Volunteers from the “Leave Leaves Out” campaign applaud this announcement. “We'll never go Back-To-Bark in this town,” they assure the Urban Purist Support Group.