In economics, inflation is the erosion of the purchasing power of fiat currency over time. In 1935, you could purchase a liter of milk for 10 cents. Today, a liter of milk costs $1.48 on average in Canada. In other words, a dollar today buys much less than a dollar in 1935. Inflation is generally a deliberate goal for monetary authorities. For example, the Federal Reserve has adopted a policy of average inflation targeting which is exactly what the name suggests: Aiming for a specific inflation figure in an economy.

While we tend to understand inflation as an economic phenomenon, I wonder if the general idea can apply elsewhere. What about in language? In particular, is there such a thing as “inflation of the English language”?

If in economics inflation is a reduction in purchasing power, perhaps in language, inflation is a reduction in the strength of a word. I can think of two examples:

First, the word “amazing”. A European stereotype of Americans it that they are insincere and exaggerate their emotions. One culprit may be the tendency of (some) young Americans to describe every experience as “amazing”. They try a new ice cream flavour: Amazing! They download a fun iOS game: Amazing! They go for a 5-minute jog in the park: Amazing! Is everything really amazing, or are we reducing the strength of the word by overusing it? When we encounter an experience that may universally be seen as deserving the moniker “amazing”, can we even use that word anymore or has its meaning been diluted?

Second, the words “thank you” or “thanks” have seen a gradual erosion of meaning. While expressions of gratitude are commendable, it seems like we have dulled the edge of our words by thanking people for things that probably don’t require a “thank you”. I think of email messages where the sender automatically writes “thanks for your message”, even where they genuinely may not care about receiving the message (or indeed, may be hostile to it!). When we use the same word for an email message to a random recipient, as we would when expressing gratitude to a lifeguard who saved us from drowning (for example), is something lost?

I end with a quote from the inimitable Robin Williams.

I don’t think language was invented to woo women, but is there is a kernel of truth to the claim that certain language habits are the product of laziness? The inflation of certain English words has led to a proliferation of adverbs like “very”, “deeply” and “truly”. It is no longer enough to say “thank you”, but would be kinder to say “thank you very much”. Or an experience that was once “amazing” is now “truly amazing”. And so on. Is it dulling the edge of English words? Is this an example of language inflation? And if so, does it matter?

There is a strange condition which describes many of us during the pandemic. It is called “Antarctic Stare”, “winter-over” syndrome and various other names. It is a mild psychological fugue state first identified in researchers spending the long, dark winter months in Antarctica. These researchers entered a state of psychological hibernation where they felt as if their minds had gone totally blank.

Antarctica is inhospitable. For about 11 weeks a year, the South Pole experiences an astronomical polar light when the sun is below the horizon, so there is 24-hour total darkness aside from the moon’s reflections. The extreme cold (going down to 80 degrees below zero) and the extreme isolation (trips lasting an average of 9 months) are also stressors. It is not a place conductive for health.

This painting by Nicholas Roerich, a Russian artist and explorer who travelled often to the Himalayas, is to me a representation of Antarctic Stare. The frozen landscape and towering cliffs betray a haunting human form with a petrified face trapped in its environment. It is an eerie representation which inspired H.P. Lovecraft, the father of horror fiction, to write The Mountains Of Madness.

Triggers for Antarctic Stare are lack of social variation, monotony of the physical environment, confinement and limited privacy, and emotional and physical deprivations. People suffering from Antarctic stare are vulnerable to mental and somatic health problems such as depressive mood, cognitive impairment, and sleep difficulties.

The pandemic seems to have replicated the triggers from Antarctic Stare. People are sheltered inside their homes, waiting for the menace to disappear. Socializing is strictly curtailed and we are trained to fear people. We cannot travel or vacation easily. There is no longer any separation between work and home life. The result is depressive mood, cognitive impairment and sleep difficulties. We are suffering from Antarctic Stare.

Bodies enter this state of pseudo-hibernation as a defense. Research on Antarctic Stare suggest that the ability to “switch off” mentally is necessary to cope with extreme environments. In the pandemic, people try to avoid the harshness of reality through escapes like video games, for example.

Many people feel guilty for not achieving as much as the pre-COVID-19 days. Even without long commutes, but with the comfort of working at home and sleeping eight-hours we are not as productive. But this may be beyond our control. We are experiencing Antarctic Stare. Mental hibernation is just our body’s way of protecting us.

The lockdown has freed up time — in theory. I can avoid most commutes, socializing and traveling. But there is constant background static keeping my mind buzzing and distracted.

What has helped quiet the static is a short vacation. My fiancé and I had the fortune to safely visit a beautiful European-style city without leaving the country.

Like any big city, there were statues of privileged white men — warriors, colonizers, politicians. But there were also a few statues honoring the ignored, like women, minorities and children. One monument celebrated the women who fought for the right to vote. Another was a sculpture of an unknown woman tenderly kissing her child. These are like homages to honeybees — glorifying the humble, silent and poor — instead of lions. It is a symbol of refusing to ignore the oppressed.

This contrasts with what I saw on a pre-pandemic trip to Lisbon. One of Lisbon’s public squares has an imposing statute of the Marquis of Pombal, a Portuguese diplomat from the 16th century. His statue is flanked by a lion, an apt metaphor. Reading up on the history of the Marquis, it is not an exaggeration to describe him as a violent brute. He was responsible for a reign of terror against the Jesuit population in Portugal and exacted terrible revenge against an aristocratic family accused of an assassination plot. Even if he was a good diplomat, his violence overshadows his feats.

Just as many Soviet satellite states have replaced statues of Lenin and Stalin with those more deserving, I hope one day we replace the lions with the honeybees. Instead of honoring violence and conquest, we should honor the contributions of the essential but forgotten — women, minorities, children. Because “[i]t means a great deal to those who are oppressed to know that they are not alone” (Desmond Tutu).

They say relationship chemistry cannot be predicted. Cupid, the ancient Roman god of love, is portrayed as a “putto” — an Italian word meaning a chubby male child. Why is Cupid a putto, and not a wise old man? Perhaps because (as any mother of a young toddler can tell you) kids that age can be irrational and mischievous. And so, Cupid is portrayed as irrational and mischievous — ready to wreck havoc in love.

That makes some sense because emotions, which are a primary driver in relationships, cannot be predicted by any law of science we know of. We use terms like “odd couple” or “opposites attract” to describe the apparent unpredictability of love. But just because something can’t be entirely described by science, doesn’t mean science has nothing to say about it.

This is where attachment theory comes in. It is a branch of psychology that originally studied how children get along with their parents. The “Strange Situation” test developed by Mary Ainsworth is a famous example of attachment theory in practice.

More recently, attachment theory has been applied to dating and relationships. Dr. Amir Levine, a professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University, is a pioneer in this field. He speculates that relationship success can be predicted by the attachment styles of a couple. People fall into three categories: Secure, Anxious or Avoidant attachment styles. Dr. Levine claims that in dating, it is common for men to be Avoidant (the “commitment-phobes”) and women to be Anxious (the clingy types). Based on his clinical research, he warns that although Avoidants and Anxious types are drawn to each other, this combination of attachment styles is incompatible.

In attachment theory, securely-attached partners (the “Secures”) are the ideal. They are loving, confident and reassuring. They can communicate effectively and diffuse conflicts easily. According to Dr Levine, because Secures are so good in relationships, they are rarely single. Once hitched, they stay hitched. So dating pools tend to have high concentrations of Anxious and Avoidant types. The Secures are still there, but it takes patience and luck to find them.

My fiancé is a Secure. He is warm, loving and reassuring. I can’t give credit for meeting him to Dr. Levine (it goes to God), but his theory of attachment styles helped me understand the type of person who I could be in a healthy relationship with.

Often, the whole responsibility for a successful relationship is placed on women, who are expected to know how to deal with emotionally-stunted partners (even abusive men). Women who express needs are sometimes told they are too clingy, and taught that their needs are not valid. This is another reason why I like Dr. Levine’s theory: He does not blame women (or men) for a relationship failing. Instead, he relies on clinical research to make predictions about relationship success that can be applied by anyone.

Relationships are not a science, but neither are they astrology.

The pandemic has slowed down life for us. We are working from home, striving for normalcy, in a crisis. But by definition, a crisis is not normal. So we strive in vain. Many close friends have described these strange times as living in a dream. This new reality doesn’t feel real.

Now, we rely on the state to take care of us, as we are isolated from our communities. And the state has decided that only essential services and essential workers may operate. But what is “essential” has been a matter of controversy. The original Ontario list of essential businesses included mining exploration and real estate services, for example. This list seems to be narrowing to define essential as that what is necessary to live: Food (grocery services are essential), medicine (pharmacies are essential) and health (doctors and hospitals are essential).

Everything else is non-essential. Teachers, dentists, hairdressers, waiters, cooks, consultants, engineers — you are not essential because the state has defined “essential” as whatever permits us to live a bare-bones existence. Culture, art, religion, music and community — these are luxuries.

This skeletal definition of “essential” reminded me of The Little Prince, a famous novel by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It is a story for both kids and adults, and the moral (as I understand it) is that too many people do not see what is truly important in life. As the famous quote goes, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

For my own emotional and intellectual health, it is essential for me to have religion, culture, art, music and community. Seeing art exhibits, attending live orchestras and going to Mass make my life more than a bare-bones existence. Now, I understand the logic of limiting social contact to only services and employees that are necessary for life. You can’t experience any luxury in life if you’re clinging to life on a respirator, for example. But as the pandemic drags into the weeks, months, and maybe years, we should not forget to regularly ask if the lockdown can be lifted.

An Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben, who is in Italy in the midst of its COVID-19 struggle, said it best. Commenting on the extreme measures taken by the Italian state, he asks “what is a society that has no value other than survival?”. Agamben is not anti-science, but pro-culture. He sees the risks of a longstanding isolation that can only balance dollars against lives. He warns:

The first thing that the wave of panic that has paralyzed the country obviously shows is that our society no longer believes in anything but bare life. It is obvious that Italians are disposed to sacrifice practically everything — the normal conditions of life, social relationships, work, even friendships, affections, and religious and political convictions — to the danger of getting sick. Bare life — and the danger of losing it — is not something that unites people, but blinds and separates them.

So as we settle into our new routines, let us not forget that we should regularly ask whether we have not sacrificed too much.

My latest Mommy-hobby has been to hoard plastic straws, which very soon may be banned. I think it’s important to reduce waste, but the alternatives to plastic straws don’t work when you have kids. Metal straws are too hard and pointy, and cardboard straws turn into soggy pulp when young teeth chew on them. So I’m stuck with plastic until my son can drink from a cup without spilling it all.

The movement to ban plastic-straws is the latest example of virtue signaling by climate activists. You ban the creature comforts of hard-working middle-class moms, and ignore the private jet/super yacht of your celebrity patrons.

This virtue signaling reminds me of a Wall Street Journal video I watched about how Chinese toy factories are coping with American tariffs. The video showed the assembly line at Eastcolight, a factory in Guangdong, China that manufactures toy microscopes. In response to tariffs, the factory had two choices: Increase prices or reduce quality. The factory manager explains that they decided on the latter: Instead of metal, they changed to a plastic base for the microscopes. Instead of glass, they now use plastic lenses. And the design was simplified to use fewer screws. All ways of reducing quality to cut down costs that otherwise have would have increased the price from $70 to $90.

An Amazon review of the product described it as “one of the most disappointing purchases I have ever made” and complained that none of the advertised features (like 900x zoom) worked.

I wonder, what will happen to those cheap plastic microscopes once they’re tossed in the garbage bin by disappointed users? What landfill will it clog? What ocean will it pollute?

It’s this type of waste that I wish climate activists would focus on. Cheap, flimsy, low-quality junk. Instead of banning plastic straws, maybe they can keep bigger junk out of the garbage.

I had a debate about what it means to be “alive”. The impetus was my brother’s visit. He loves nature, hiking and camping. He takes incredible Instagram-worthy pictures of his trips, such as this beautiful winter’s sunset on Vancouver Island.

My brother’s view is that people who sit at home and avoid travel are not truly “alive”. It is through the beauty of nature that God manifests his presence to us. This is a popular view among many who love travel and adventure. It is the belief that only by coming in contact with nature (or other cultures or countries), can we experience a piece of the divine and the beauty of life.

At the other side, there is the leader of my Catholic book group, who today gave birth to her first child. It is a miracle that her and her husband prayed for many years, having suffered through five miscarriages on the way. For the short term, her life is changed — she won’t have the opportunity to travel to scenic beaches and the wonders of the world.

Does that mean she is less “alive”?

Is a mother whose life is filled with diapers and tantrums, less “alive” than an adventurous traveler who sees the world? Is she less free? Does she experience less of the divine?

There is a Belgian psychotherapist, Esther Perel, whose view on this resonates deeply. She is a child of concentration-camp survivors who distinguishes between those who survived, and those who didn’t die. I suspect Perel’s view would be that the bookclub leader who survived heartbreaking miscarriages is more “alive” than a bachelor who has never experienced such hardship. One is merely surviving, but the other never died at all.

Despite a nasty cold this Christmas, I am grateful for the pause to the frenzied pace of life. One time a year, my routines halt — stores close, work slows and news sleeps. Winter break is like the iconic Swiss Railway clock, which stops just before it reaches the full minute (at about 58.5 seconds), pauses briefly and jumps forward. There is clever engineering behind the brief pause before the jump: It ensures that the train clocks are kept in sync.

Similarly, Christmas is a brief pause in my life when I can disconnect from routine, reflect on the past year and jump forward eagerly into the new year.

The Swiss Railway clock metaphor goes a bit deeper. The clock design is meant to fix inaccuracies caused by electric clock movements (which due to AC current, have small imprecisions). At the Swiss railway stations, there are multiple secondary clocks with the famous 58.5s pause. At this pause, the secondary clocks await a signal from the master clock, which ensures they all jump to the next minute at the same time. The master clock is more precise.

Looking at the new year, I wonder, what master clock do I synchronize to? I would hope God, and indeed, Christmas is a time of deep religious reflection. But as the year goes on, the clock falls out of sync, pulled by the currents of work, politics and other distractions.

In folklore, the witching hour is the deepest part of night when supernatural events happen. It is when terrifying demons and witches practice their magic, in children’s fables at least.

But I believe even fairy tales have logical origins. The witching hour is said to occur around 3am, give or take a few hours. This is also when “sleep maintenance” insomniacs wake up, unable to fall asleep again. I think historically, there would be little to see or hear around 3am. Your senses are heightened, so the slightest noise or light can have a sinister undertone. A creaking floor, or a demonic visitor? The moon’s reflection, or a wandering shapeshifter? According to some, the witching hour is when our mind is most creative. Maybe some of those creative insomniacs liked to write fairy tales?

The other logic of the witching hour is that sleep has long been a metaphor for death. In The Sleeper, a poem by Edgar Allan Poe (a famous insomniac himself) describes a beautiful woman’s death:

A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not for the world awake.
All beauty sleeps! — and, lo! where lies 
With casement open to the skies, 
Irene with her destinies!

Therefore, maybe the witching hour insomniacs were reminded of death when they saw their peacefully sleeping housemates. Another reason to introduce a mystical element to being awake at that time.

Doesn’t it seem like Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon are hogging the monopoly spotlight lately? Everyone loves slamming them, fining them, suing them — US DOJ, state attorneys general, the European Competition Bureau, maybe even The Hague?

But I wish one of these Big Villains would encroach on the coddled Canadian cellphone companies. Maybe then we could see real price competition in the cellphone market, instead of some of the highest rates in the industrialized world.

I was struck by how outrageous our prices are when I bought a SIM card in Europe. In Portugal, my Vodaphone plan was only 20 euros ($30CDN) for 5 gigs data and 500 mins phone calls (including 30 mins international calls!). By comparison, my Canadian plan is twice as expensive for less: $60CDN for 4 gigs data and unlimited nationwide calling only.

I’ve heard the argument that Canada is just so much bigger than Europe and it’s more expensive to build cellphone towers, internet “tubes”, etc. But a friend in Russia has a plan for 500 rubles (about $10CDN) for 20 gigs data. Russia is larger than Canada, so is this really an issue of geography?

I suspect this is just simple economics: Why do Canadian telecoms charge more? Because they can, as Dr. Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, put it succinctly. His theory is that the Canadian wireless market is too concentrated — basically, we need more competition.

But as I look at the good that the Big Villains have done, I wonder if more competition isn’t the only fix. Google dominates in search — it’s the only show in town, really — but search doesn’t suck. Similarly for Facebook, Amazon and Apple. They dominate their fields and there is no competition, but still provide a superior service. While here, we have three Canadian telecom companies which arguably compete, and yet they don’t.