Observations: COVID Positive? Who me?

Today is the last day of my ten-day quarantine. One of my players had tested positive for COVID-19 two weeks ago, which meant that the team had to quarantine for 10 days. I decided to take advantage of the new testing kiosk at my local pharmacy and take my first COVID test.  Of course, I thought of it as a new experience that comes with this new COVID era. I never thought I would test positive. Positive test it was. I was completely incredulous. I didn’t have a fever, my oxygen levels, courtesy of my online investment in a Pulse Oximeter showed that my oxygen level averaged well above 95%. My sense of taste and smell were still intact. No sore throat, just a cough that recurs every winter for as long as I have been an adult. I questioned the woman who called me, and she assured me that false negatives were more prevalent than false positives and that I should plan on staying home for ten days.

Luck would have it that a series of winter storms rolled through the area, so I wasn’t going to go out anyways. I had food in the fridge, and I was able to discover the wonders of online grocery shopping and anonymous deliveries. I was lecturing to my class through Zoom sessions and everything that I did was easily taken of online.

Except.

I was missing my twice weekly volleyball practices with my team; their quarantine ended a full week before mine did. I missed coaching my knuckleheads something fierce, something that I expected but I did not expect how much I missed them. So, lesson one: I am still passionate about coaching volleyball.

Many people have described their own quarantine experience as pure misery. Being deprived of human companionship was devastating to my friends who had the misfortune of experiencing the same situation as I was about to experience. I knew it would not affect me as badly as it affected them, as I was an introvert by nature and I had accrued an immense To Be Read book pile, so I was not short on entertainment. I didn’t even come close to reading all that I had wanted to read. Lesson two: no matter how much time you may think you have to read; you still don’t have enough.

I did miss the conversations that I had with my coffee klatch group. To be fair, they had also decided to cancel a few of the meetings for the sake of the aforementioned winter storms. I made up for my missed conversations by sending them emails and links to articles that I would have brought up as potential conversation topics during our twice weekly ninety minutes of whirlwind sessions of conversational daring do and intellectual high wire act. Lesson three: you will always  yearn for intelligent conversations with your friends.

I was extremely fortunate in that I was asymptomatic through out my quarantine. There were some coughs and sniffles but the big news with my COVID experience was that it was no drama. The only salient effect is that my circadian rhythm is way off, I couldn’t get a continuous night of sleep. But then again, I was having a hard time sleeping through the night before I tested positive for COVID.

Unlike some people I know who survived the virus, I refuse to examine the chronology of my illness in complete hindsight and pontificate about the wisdom of my approach towards dealing with the virus; I know different, I know I dodged a bullet. Through some miracle of genetics or just sheer dumb luck, I avoided the worst of the punishment that could have been. I am grateful for my unaffected health, I am appreciative of winning this flirtation with disaster, and I am in awe of the powers of ambiguities, uncertainties, and randomness of our world which somehow came down on my side of the equation. Lesson four: dodging the possible by skating along the edges of the probable is very sobering.

There were moments of sheer terror as I experienced a number of  temporary symptoms that threw me into instant panic. Coughs, moments where I thought my forehead felt warm, or moments where I started to sneeze repeatedly. Every time I thought it was time to pay the piper the symptoms went away. I lived in a constant state of vigilance for the first five or six days of the quarantine, always having to pin my ears back at the first sign of abnormal bodily functions. But it never came. Lesson five: living every second of the ten days of quarantine as if you were under the sword of Damocles is a crappy way to live life.

I developed a ritual of texting my early morning vitals to a number of friends. I lived for those return texts of affirmation and happiness from these great friends, it is amazing just how I came to look forward to these tenuous connections to the world outside my house and the affirmations from those that care for me. Lesson six: affirmations from friends are better than ice cream when you are COVID positive.

As the end of the quarantine period came up, I began to feel a bit of guilt, about my asymptomatic status. I am not asking to getting beat up by the virus, I am not asking to suffer through the numerous pains and punishment that many others have suffered. I certainly don’t relish the thought of going into the hospital and hovering between life and death. But still, I keep wondering: why me? Why was I so lucky? One of my close friends lost her sense of smell and taste, she started suffered migraine headaches, and chronic fatigue. Yet here I am, someone who is ill-prepared physically to battle the virus, and I got away with minimal symptoms. You start to wonder about genetics and the serendipity associated with epistemological  uncertainties. I really don’t want to figure out the ins and outs of calculating the probabilities of my being where I am, but I still wonder. Lesson seven: no matter how good you have it; you will always feel guilty to not having had it worse.

Once the state of Ohio receives your positive result, they send your information to social workers and they contact you and basically tell you how to count the days of quarantine and what to do, what to avoid, what is OK, and what is forbidden. My case worker called, and we started chatting. I asked her a million questions and she patiently answered all of them, reassured me if I became nervous or borderline hysterical, and calmly gave me resources to contact. She walked me through the if-then scenarios thoroughly; indeed, she told me to keep the number on my caller ID handy so that I could call her back if anything came up. I called her back a few times and wonder of wonders, she played volleyball collegiately and she coached club volleyball. Who would have thought? Lesson eight: there are volleyball people everywhere you look, and by and large, they are the good people out there.

As my quarantine is coming to a close, my friend asked me what I was going to do when I leave the house for the first time in ten days. I honestly don’t know. First of all, I probably need to shovel the driveway as I had not bothered to do so through a few days of snowfall, so I might be stuck for a few more involuntary days. I may take a little drive around town, enjoy running errands, enjoying grocery shopping for the first time in ten days, even if I have become dangerously enamored with having my groceries delivered. I may even call one of my many favorite restaurants and order take out. I am not going to start eating out in person, not yet anyways. I am hoping to look upon the outside world with new eyes and experience every experience with a new perspective. Most of all, I will be thankful.

Observations-Thanksgiving 2020

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday ever since I first moved to the US in 1973.

It is my favorite holiday for many reasons and on many levels. For a fat kid, it is the best  holiday, you are expected to partake in massive consumption of the bounties of the land. What can be better than that? Turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, green bean casseroles, and pumpkin pies; it was a fat kid’s dream. I don’t even mind the cranberries. When we think of Thanksgiving, the mental picture that comes to mind is that of Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom from Want”: a table crowded with family and abundance of food, and the unspoken love that permeates the scene.

On a poetic Americana level, the Thanksgiving holiday is evocative of a more romantic and idealistic time, when American society was much more agrarian, when the end of harvest meant something to everyone. The marking of a change of seasons when the hard work of harvesting is done, it was time to rest and reflect before the resumption of the planting season in the Spring.  This sentiment is best expressed by Connecticut Governor Wilbur Cross’ Thanksgiving Proclamation from 1939. It has become an example of evocative exposition, I read it every Thanksgiving eve to get into the mood of the season.

Fall is also my favorite season of the year. The scent of Fall, the colorful landscape dotted with the golden hues of the changing leaves, the need to wear a jacket to ward off the chill of the season, and the visions from my memories of being ensconced in the comfort of home and hearth while being  tucked in against the nip of the cool weather outside.

Most importantly, there is also the meaning of holiday itself. Even though our knowledge of the holiday’s origins have been imbued with the mythmaking involving the Pilgrims and Native Americans partaking in a meal together; the sentiments of gratitude, thankfulness, familial warmth, friendship, nostalgia for simpler times, and community is always present and treasured. It is a time to enjoy the companionship of families and friends, a time for friendship, and communion with our family members.  Even though my own family was just a nuclear family of three, my parents had always hosted others to celebrate together; whether they are newly arrived families to the communities, students and children of friends who have been planted in a foreign land for an unfamiliar holiday, or just friends. My parents didn’t need a reason to host Thanksgiving. Thanksgivings were always a time for togetherness, full bellies, and a great time celebrating amity and our commonalities.

Accordingly, we know that this year is going to be different. It is: Amity in the time of COVID. We will be struggling and searching for reasons to be thankful in excruciatingly difficult times. It is not that we are incapable of finding things to be thankful for, it is that the circumstances facing our world has become so strained and constrained that it is best that we lower our external sights to look deeper into our internal self, in our hearts and minds, to find gratitude that came easily in previous years.

In some ways, that makes our thanks in this time of chaos and uncertainty much more precious  because we are not giving superficial thanks to the obvious advantages that we take for granted because they have disappeared for the moment; we are instead giving thanks for the inherent, amorphous, and ethereal. The emotional toll of isolation, disruption of our long-accustomed routines, and the metamorphosis of our economic wellbeing strains us; as the curtailment of travel, commerce, and large social gatherings constrains us. In some ways, we are no longer us, or the us that we have known and taken for granted; we have been changed, abruptly, without having given our consent, and perhaps irrevocably.  We have evolved instead: in some ways we have evolved routinely and perhaps for the better, yet in some ways we have evolved abruptly and for the worse. Regardless of how and why we have evolved, this Thanksgiving of 2020 has allowed my ruminations about the holiday to mirror my present state of mind. After months of solitude, change, and adjustments, my point of view about this Thanksgiving has changed as compared to the many previous Thanksgivings.

I could follow the pessimistic trend that has been with me since February with my internal dialog and bemoan the loss of opportunities and freedoms that I once took for granted pre-pandemic. I can, if I chose, to recount like the most precise and exacting accountant, all that had been denied me and bitterly list all that the universe owes me. Or I can exercise my free-will, and choose to observe all those losses as they are: things over which I have no control; indeed, they are circumstances in which the only freedom afforded me was my choice of choosing my intrinsic reaction. Of course, being a tiny minded, self-absorbed, and entitled human, there will always be a sense of loss and emotional despondence whenever the memories of this point in time surfaces in my memory, but this too shall pass.

My search for thankfulness in this time is of course, a work in progress, untested by my reality, but the alternative promises to be miserable, unsatisfying, and unpromising. I choose to take control of what I can control.

I am thankful for friendships. New ones that I never expected but have already been tested in the cauldron of necessity in these times. Old ones that have renewed and strongly affirmed because of those friends who have steadfastly given of themselves: their time, their energy, their unique perspective, and their unconditional love. I have depended on the kindness of friends to pull my thoughts out from the deepest abyss, an abyss that is of my mind’s own making. It is due to my friends that I am still at a relatively steady state of mind as the pandemic persists from days to weeks, and then to months. I am not sure if they all understand what they have meant to my mental state, I hope that they do now.

I am thankful for the challenges that have been set before me during the pandemic. It feels like we have been hitting driver on every swing: every little bit of weakness that is hidden in our swing has not only been exposed but amplified. It has forced us to improvise, adapt, and overcome in everything we do every day. We have had to learn to make decisions quickly and correctly as befitting the situation. While I am not perfect at this yet, I am getting better as the pandemic continues, as has everyone. The magic of neuroplasticity has made me realize that my mind is much more agile that I assumed while I hope that it is less beholden to my biases and logical fallacies. No doubt I will continue to stumble and err, the difference is that I am no longer afraid of erring and I have confidence that I can improvise, adapt, and overcome.

I am thankful for the Stoic point of view. My ability to think about things that I can control versus those I can not control comes from the dichotomy of control that is fundamental to Stoicism. Stoics have also allowed me to take the perspective of “premedio valorem”, or  “what is the worst thing that can happen?” This perspective opened my eyes to my own myopia when I became so focused on the negative possibilities rather than the indifferent probable, that was the source of my despair, my own vivid ability to be negative. The irony is that by thinking about the worst show us how our fertile and generally pessimistic conjectures in hard times result in fantasies which drives our worst fatalist fears about the unknown; whereas the practice of playing out “premedio maloram” logically and systematically leads us to the realization that all is not as dire as our immediate emotional responses will predict. It sometimes is necessary to be cruel to be kind to yourself.

I am thankful for all the material possessions that have accrued over my time on earth, and I am thankful for the knowledge that material possessions are not permanent.

I am thankful for the realization that our time on earth is finite, it is not so much that we have so little time available to us, it is that we are frivolous in how we use that time that we have to do what we wish.

I am thankful for my personal view of life, and the paradigm that I carry with me all the time; I am also thankful for the revelation that paradigms are transient, we should be changing paradigms all the time in order to best use our time here.

Of course, I am thankful for that fat and happy post-Thanksgiving prandial somnolence.

I wish you all better days and nights to come, a post-pandemic world, and Peace.

Pete

Observations-Marshmallow Experiment

The marshmallow experiment is a famous experiment, it has been referred to by people studying cognition, motivation, and decision making because the experiment demonstrates that a person’s ability to delay gratification is a trait that correlate with success in the later life. In other words, the children who are able to put off the gratification stage are more likely to have success in their lives. Here is an excerpt from James Clears web page that describes the experiment.

In the 1960s, a Stanford professor named Walter Mischel began conducting a series of important psychological studies.

During his experiments, Mischel and his team tested hundreds of children — most of them around the ages of 4 and 5 years old — and revealed what is now believed to be one of the most important characteristics for success in health, work, and life.

The Marshmallow Experiment

The experiment began by bringing each child into a private room, sitting them down in a chair, and placing a marshmallow on the table in front of them.

At this point, the researcher offered a deal to the child.

The researcher told the child that he was going to leave the room and that if the child did not eat the marshmallow while he was away, then they would be rewarded with a second marshmallow. However, if the child decided to eat the first one before the researcher came back, then they would not get a second marshmallow.

So the choice was simple: one treat right now or two treats later.

The researcher left the room for 15 minutes.

As you can imagine, the footage of the children waiting alone in the room was rather entertaining. Some kids jumped up and ate the first marshmallow as soon as the researcher closed the door. Others wiggled and bounced and scooted in their chairs as they tried to restrain themselves, but eventually gave in to temptation a few minutes later. And finally, a few of the children did manage to wait the entire time.

Published in 1972, this popular study became known as The Marshmallow Experiment, but it wasn't the treat that made it famous. The interesting part came years later.

The Power of Delayed Gratification

As the years rolled on and the children grew up, the researchers conducted follow up studies and tracked each child's progress in a number of areas. What they found was surprising.

The children who were willing to delay gratification and waited to receive the second marshmallow ended up having higher SAT scores, lower levels of substance abuse, lower likelihood of obesity, better responses to stress, better social skills as reported by their parents, and generally better scores in a range of other life measures.

The researchers followed each child for more than 40 years and over and over again, the group who waited patiently for the second marshmallow succeed in whatever capacity they were measuring. In other words, this series of experiments proved that the ability to delay gratification was critical for success in life.

And if you look around, you’ll see this playing out everywhere…

·       If you delay the gratification of watching television and get your homework done now, then you’ll learn more and get better grades.

·       If you delay the gratification of buying desserts and chips at the store, then you’ll eat healthier when you get home.

·       If you delay the gratification of finishing your workout early and put in a few more reps, then you’ll be stronger.

… and countless other examples.

Success usually comes down to choosing the pain of discipline over the ease of distraction. And that’s exactly what delayed gratification is all about. [1]

The premise is that if you have the willpower, discipline, or the mental aptitude to forestall your immediate desire to have gratification, the marshmallow, you are more likely to have more success later on in life. Having this ability demonstrates our willpower to put off the immediate rewards while dealing successfully with the unpleasant duties.

During our crisis moment in the COVID-19 pandemic, we are challenged just as those children were challenged. We are asked to put off immediate gratification of living our regular lives, or making our livings as we normally would. We are asked to not go shopping, go out to eat and drink, to put off everything we had considered normal as our society goes through the lockdown.

We were all able to comply because we understood the ramifications of letting the virus persist unchecked. We learned and believed in lowering the curve and to forestall the possible chaos that could come from a full-blown pandemic. We did it with some grumbling, but we all took it in stride because this pandemic is such a massive unknown. After months under a lockdown it is understandable that we all have a short fuse.  We are pretty much at our wit’s end and are itching to go out and lead our regular lives again, the return to normality that is the carrot at the end of the stick.

The undesired and unintended consequence that this lockdown has wrought is that it has essentially destroyed the economy.  36 million people out of work to date is catastrophic. Large and small businesses have been decimated; many have declared bankruptcy never to return again.

It is no wonder that we are all itching to get back to reclaim our society, our jobs, our economy, and our normal way of life. So much so that some have taken to the streets to protest what some consider to be draconian measures continuing the lockdown. In their haste to return to normality, I would guess that the vast majority did not considered or is ignoring the fact that the nationwide infection rate is still on the climb, ignoring the expert opinions  on everything, infection rate, the necessity of further isolation, the need for more significant testing, and the dangers of igniting the infections anew.

In essence, a number of people who has failed the marshmallow experiment. They cannot delay their gratification: their desire for returning  to a state of normality, so they chose to ignore the potential dangers with reopening before all the states has reached the CDC edict on the when reopening is safe and have taken it upon themselves to jump the gun.

Unfortunately, some of the chief executive, leaders, have failed the marshmallow experiment as well. As of the last weekend, 48 states have reopened their states to businesses, some with strict social distancing restrictions, and some with relatively lax rules. Only nine states meet the reopening criteria that the CDC recommends.

There is nothing that can be done at this point to reverse the reopening, unless a catastrophic second wave hits all the states and municipalities that have opened prematurely. As an individual, we can choose to not partake in the reopening until we are sure that the second wave has been averted. The unsatisfactory and nagging feeling is that  we, those who passed the marshmallow test, are at the mercy of those who did not, that our lives may be adversely affected by their inability to delay their gratification, and that those who passed the marshmallow experiment are not infected or worse because of the actions of those who did not pass the marshmallow experiment.

No basket of hot wings is worth sentencing your fellow human to extreme sickness or death.

Observations-On Churches Supporting a Rescinding of the Quarantine by Easter

The response to the posting on my page that mentioned the Evangelical Churches that fell in line with the president on pushing the timeline for the sheltering in place and quarantines around the country so that Easter services  can be held was interesting. Most talked about their own churches and how their churches did not meet on Sundays, they dutifully sheltered in place and attended services online. One person talked about the importance of the social aspect of their church community, another boasted about how awesome their online services were. They spoke with pride about how their churches were able to overcome the challenge and made them able to meet online.

The thing that stood out to me is that there is a defensiveness in their responses. They seem to disavow the practices of the churches mentioned in the posting. The argument was along the line of:  that's not us, we're not that kind of people, we good people who would not do that. That's all fine and good except that, and I am not going to argue whether you are a good Christian or a bad Christian. The tone is distinctly different from the way people talked about Muslims after 9/11.  when most of America blamed Muslims, all Muslims. There was no differentiation at that time, there are no good Muslims, it was said, time and again. There were no differentiations between them, there are no shades of grey. Most sane people did not buy into the hysteria, in fact President George W. Bush very clearly differentiated between the extremist fundamentalist and the rest of Islam. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, many of the people are taking the easy way out by talking about the nuances and shades of grey between Christians. Believe it or not, when there is no separation in people’s minds. People will think in terms of monolithic block called Christians.  That is the Christians baggage, that's your burden to take with you, the good comes with the bad period. Just like Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, etc. have to live with the burden of shouldering the malfeasance of their black sheep. Realistically, I understand the differences between the fundamentalist Evangelicals sects versus other sects of  Christians. Yes it is insane, but that is the way it is. Deal with it.

The other thing I noticed is that people are personalizing the church’s behavior, or more accurately, their personal church’s behavior. Narrowing down the discussion down to their own churches, as a small segment of the overall religion. “We don't do that, we are different, we are better”. As we are talking about this particular situation, your first reaction is defending your little personal church? I find it interesting that no one thought about what this action was going to do to congregations. Most of congregation are older member, the chances of the virus spreading amongst that group of people is great and because there's so many older people, those folks may not survive any potential outbreak in those gatherings. There wasn’t even a “thoughts and prayers” on the comments. Christian charity and empathy were not mentioned.

I look upon one’s moral philosophy, or morality as something that is up to the individual. Moral philosophy is something personal and intangible which is created through my life, through my parents moral teachings, through my own experiences in life, through my own readings, through my exposures to others, and even through whatever religion I was exposed to. I personally put those beliefs through a cycle of questioning, critical thinking, and rigorous testing every time there is a situation that's will test my beliefs. I weigh the facts compared to my experience and I make my decision. If I decide that my personal moral philosophy is wrong after I've gone through my process, then I will adjust my personal moral philosophy. I am not saying that everyone should do as I do. That would make me a hypocrite.

As I look at those people who are in those congregations, I wonder what they think about the church leadership's intent on insisting that they gather on Easter because that decision may very well kill someone. I wonder personal philosophy lines up with what their leaders are telling them. If they are not aligned, I hope that they are courageous enough to walk away because freedom of religion means you can walk away from what they had chosen as their congregation. Many people have in recent days. The real problem is if they are aligned with their leaders, then I wonder about these people’s grasp on reality, on whether they understand that they could very well be killing their friends, neighbors, and family. This is how the Branch Davidian this is how the Jonestown massacre happened: people who have align the personal philosophy to that of their leaders unthinkingly and without question, because they followed that cult of personality.

Observations-Rugged Individualism in the time of COVID-19

I was watching television in fascinated horror as CBS News interviewed a bunch of young people who are enjoying life on the beaches of Florida in the days leading up to shelter-in-place, but after the orders from the CDC and WHO to observe social distancing. They were doing what young people at beaches do: having a lot of fun and sun;  a lot of drinking; a lot flaunting their youth; and assiduously practicing their privilege to disobey the rules of civil society. The interviewer asked them whether they knew about social distancing, the threat of the coronavirus, and whether they knew that what they are doing can threaten the health of  everyone gathered as well as themselves. Their responses was about what one would expect from a bunch of young people: self-absorbed, lacking in self-awareness, and self-centered. The backlash was immediate and harsh.

There have been reports of other young people all around the world doing the same things, so those Florida revelers are not alone. Indeed, I’m sure that American youth does not have a monopoly on entitlement, selfishness, and self-absorption. I do believe that there is an exclusively American attitude and brashness that stems from the myth of the rugged individual that is the hallmark of American identity. It is the origination of the idea of American exception, of the entitlement mindset, of how we feel the government fits into our culture and how our society should function.

The mythology of the American rugged individualism is ingrained throughout our culture, throughout our society, and throughout our core beliefs. We worship at the altar of the lone hero, who is always right, matched up against the vast majority, who are always wrong. We worship the mythological self-made man who succeeds, alone, through pulled up bootstraps.

This mythology is propagated through our entertainment media: John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and many others have made the lone gunman character the hallmark of their acting careers, the Die Hard franchises, the action adventure films, as well as the entire comic superhero genre is a tableau of the lone hero, succeeding because they are left to their ingenuity and individualism.

It is a mythology because the entire background of these stories of the lone hero, fictional or non-fictional, are ignored. We ignore, whether through deliberate myopia, or through the blurring of the background details by the deliverer of the message; the role that community, society, and the infrastructure of people who enables the smooth and efficient functioning of society. The existence of the invisible background detracts from the theme of the mythology, because the reality does not fit into the desired narrative.

Quite simply, this invisibility allows the individual to make their claim to be the lone hero, to exercise their unencumbered freedom without regard to the others around them. The narrative is that these lone heroes are what stands between us and a society of groupthink which threatens to subjugate individual rights.

It is extremely Randian in its unreality, and just as silly.

The irony is that without society, without community, and without basic support infrastructure, these individuals would not have the wherewithal to exercise their rugged individualism.

Returning at the situation at hand, these people on the Florida beaches are demonstrating their rugged individualism by exercising their right to do as they wish, without consideration for the health of the people around them, whether they are family, friends, or strangers. In a broad sense, they are living the rugged individual lifestyle, with an unrealistic disregard for the community and society that surrounds them, support them, and enable them to be who they want to be, yet they ignore that fact and steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the existence of their immense support infrastructure.

In yet another ironic twist, we have seen people shower effusive praise and appreciation for those who had previously blended into the invisible background. We have seen people not only acknowledge the vast importance of the massed powers of the society, indeed we have seen them show deference and gratitude to those who were once considered a drag on the noble quest of the rugged individual. Whereas we had shown our appreciation for the police, fire fighters, emergency room doctors, nurses, and EMTs previously; we are seeing the less appreciated workers in our invisible background for what they are: the true foundation of civil society. It is as if suddenly the once adulators of the rugged individual discovered, much to their surprise, that there is good in mass action, even as they consistently looked past them. They pretend that the individuals who are willing to work together did exist, that the people who are the base of where we all stand on to do our work do not exists. In other words, they think they hit a home run because they were put on second base by the masses who don’t perform saliently heroic things, just necessary non-heroic things. Yet, when our society is in crisis, we realize how much they contribute to our society. It is only then that we, quite belatedly, realize how fundamental they are to our society.

Unfortunately, that is the way of our society: we don't appreciate what we don't see. There is a Chinese proverb: referring to someone who is hugging the feet of the Buddha at the very last minute. It applies to those people who cram for a test at the last moment rather than studying when they have ample time. It applies to this case because we heap praise on those that we have ignored throughout our daily existence.

In kind or non-pressure environments, we embrace the idea of the rugged individual, we lionize them, and we hold them up as the standard of excellence. In wicked or challenging environments, i.e. in times of crisis; we rely on the system, the collective whole, to pull us out of crisis. We realize that the rugged individual alone is not enough to overcome massive challenges.  Are we schizophrenic, depending on the nature of our immediate surrounding environment? Are we hypocrites? Are we two faced?

I would not be so harsh. I would, instead, say that we are living in a pluralistic society, so we have an infinitely number of possible solutions which allows us to prosper regardless of the environment. The environmental conditions vary continuously through different sets of challenges with varying difficulties. Adhering to a single mindset, both the rugged individual mindset or the groupthink mindset are recipes for disaster because there is no room for the uncertain, there is no room for adjustments, we have made the commitment to a deterministic reality.

The Spring breakers, through their youthful hubris, and a dedicated belief in the rugged individualism that they have swallowed from childhood gave them the cachet to respond to possible disaster by catering to their lone hero fantasy, that the fate of the collective whole does not depend on them, and that their fate does not depend on the collective whole. They are the rugged individual, and rugged individual always win.