DIMMER SWITCH AND VOLUME CONTROL

AUGUST 2, 2025 – Lately, I’ve been torn. In these troubled times . . . Do I climb onto the rooftop to shout “The sky is falling!” or do I crawl into the wine cellar to mumble, “Uh, um, there’s nothing I can do about it, so I’ll just grab another bottle of grape sauce and pretend it’s all a bad dream”?

A similar dilemma arises in the context of health conditions: Do I make a bee-line for Urgent Care or do I wait and see if this or that troubling symptom will resolve itself over the weekend?

Or in another context, one involving national policy: When Dmitri Medvedev, the former president of Russia, and our dual former and current president exchange trash talk over “going nuclear,” do we  take a Zen Buddhist approach and simply practice a nationwide deep-breathing meditation session, or do we launch a resounding, teach-’em-a-lesson-they-won’t-forget-full-force military attack, shooting first and aiming after we’ve seen what was hit, hoping it was the Kremlin?

Left, right, center or “ostrich,” we live in times that test our personal psychological navigational skills as we wander through a maze of issues and associated anxieties. Yet, as is the case in so many contexts, the on-off button in each space we enter is also a dimmer switch. We can strike whatever balance we wish along a continuum between “keep me in the dark” and “way over-exposed.” I’ve concluded that heavy reliance on the dimmer switch is the way to go, at least on the receiving end. By that, I mean, when consuming information about what’s happening out there in the larger world.

Then there’s the matter of our response to the information we consume. Again, I think there’s a continuum of possibilities. Each of us has degree of choice. I like to think of it as a microphone with a volume control dial, as well as an on-off switch. Sometimes we’re best off with the microphone off. You want to let rip a string of expletives over the latest cheap shot—Trump’s firing of BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer because he “thought she rigged the employment figures.” But for your outburst, you will be rewarded with a spike in blood pressure. Do you really need or want that? At other times, though, you, I, everyone, need to crank up the volume all the way to “10” and yell together, preferably in the streets, “STOP! JUST STOP THE B_ _ _ _ _ _ T!” The problem is, knowing when and where to do this. An argument could be made for a national filibuster until a modicum of rationality is restored to governance. We could take turns at a neighborhood microphone, listing our grievances until the rapscallions responsible for our plight have been driven out of office.

I worry a little that too many of us have fallen in the rut established by many Jews in Germany before Kristallnacht. Among those who saw bad times ahead, many had the will and the means to pull up stakes and flee; others were advised to go but for one reason or another, stayed. “The Nazis can’t be that stupid!” they’d say to friends and relatives who urged them to leave; or “I couldn’t possibly leave our home and business behind.” So they stayed, and soon they would have nothing except a one-way ticket in a boxcar on a train headed for you know where.

Just when will it be time to revisit acceptance or complacency? No one knows before it’s too late. But of one thing I’m certain: never before the current era have I asked such questions.

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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson