Burning Snow: False Prophets In The Heart of America, Sublimation In The Southern States

Snow begins to fall. Falling slowly like in a dream, and when it hits the ground it keeps falling, sinking a little into the grass as if the earth embarrassed by her creation was trying to swallow it whole.

A few days later, a thin man around thirty-five years old is pawing the snow into a ball while his friend films him on his phone. He takes the snow into his kitchen and begins to put a flame from his lighter. ‘It’s not melting’, he says ‘smells like plastic’. He opens the kitchen window.

Outside, the delicate sound of joyful play fills the air. Children are making snow angels and singing Christmas songs. One man films his wife trying to sledge while his daughter shouts encouraging words. Another man tries to climb a tree. A group of teenagers are trying to throw snowballs into a chimney while a young couple walks by hand in hand, talking about Paris and Truffaut.

Outside, the snow is still falling.

February Freeze Out

It’s unusual for Texans to see snow. Even in winter, the temperature rarely falls below 5℃. February was different. Sudden stratospheric warming sent temperatures down to as low as -18℃ in places. This warming causes the westerly winds circling the Arctic, known as the polar vortex, to weaken. The cold air then descends like a fine mist, naked and invisible to all, while the warm air rises rapidly, as much as 50℃ —sudden stratospheric warming.

It’s the reason why it snowed in Texas.

Burning Snow

I’ve never tried to put flame to a snowball, but if I did, I think I would be surprised that it didn’t melt. Science has a name for this — sublimation. In short, sublimation is the physical change of state due to the heat from a lighter, say, transforming a solid into a gas bypassing the liquid phase.

The Big Melt

The snow has melted, but something, what is it? — a sense of disorder, perhaps, remains. The authorities were unprepared for what happened. Power providers cut off households due to high demand. Skylines went dark, including Dallas. People died from carbon monoxide poisoning using their cars for warmth. Blackouts lasted for days. More than twenty perished in motor vehicle accidents, and President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency.

The lack of organization from those in power is not what most people expected. Is it any wonder that a minority believe that snow manufactured by America’s enemies disrupted infrastructure.

The Cognitive Style of Conspiracy Theorists

Research published in the Journal of Individual Differences suggests that conspiracy theorists share similar cognitive styles.

“These people tend to be more suspicious, untrusting, eccentric, needing to feel special, with a tendency to regard the world as an inherently dangerous place. They are also more likely to detect meaningful patterns where they might not exist.” — Josh Hart, associate professor of psychology

Is this a description of a fundamental flaw in believers thinking? Or merely the appearance of their belief from an outsiders perspective? After all, if someone tries to convince you that the Queen of England is a lizard, they might seem suspicious, untrusting, and even eccentric.

“Our results clearly showed that the strongest predictor of conspiracy belief was a constellation of personality characteristics collectively referred to as ‘schizotypy’.”

Can we conclude that all conspiracy theorists are suffering from mental health issues? No, this is an over-generalization, and some studies suggest conspiracy belief has a protective effect on the mind.

What else then?

Something that is striking about Hart’s study is how active the search for meaning is among conspiracy theorists. He found that conspiracists, when shown triangles moving randomly on a screen, were more likely to judge them to be acting intentionally.

“In other words, they inferred meaning and motive where others did not.”

Hart goes on to conclude,

“First, it helps to realize that conspiracy theories differ from other worldviews in that they are fundamentally gloomy. This sets them apart from the typically uplifting messages conveyed by, say, religious and spiritual beliefs. At first blush this is a conundrum. However, if you are the type of person who looks out at the world and sees a chaotic, malevolent landscape full of senseless injustice and suffering, then perhaps there is a modicum of comfort to be found in the notion that there is someone, or some small group of people, responsible for it all. If ‘there’s something going on,’ then at least there is something that could be done about it.”

Perhaps conspiracy theorists are looking for meaning in all the wrong places.

The Search for Meaning

An elderly General Practioner is standing in the corner of the young Doctors waiting room. Silent, withdrawn. He isn’t family. He raises his hand to his face for a moment and then lowers it; opens his mouth, closes it. He shuffles a little to the left to shake the snow from his shoes and then stops. He looks around the room: two plants, a bookcase, a table and some chairs.

‘Is it snowing?’ asks a voice in the darkness.

Are we near the end.

The Doctor Will See You Now

The Austrian psychotherapist and founder of Logotherapy Viktor Frankl’s quotes are everywhere. If you haven’t heard of him, you will have heard him.

“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with any ‘how’.”

“The meaning of life is to give life meaning”

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” — Viktor Frankl

Frankl proposes meaning in life can be discovered in three ways:

• By creating a work or doing a deed.
• By experiencing something or encountering someone.
• By the attitude that we take toward unavoidable suffering.

The principles of logotherapy can been seen in a famous excerpt from his book Man’s Search For Meaning.

“Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now, how can I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, ‘What would have happened, doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!’ Whereupon I replied, ‘You see, doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering — to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her.’ He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”

Man Is a Meaning Machine

In many ways, we are all burning snow and blaming the Chinese. Have you ever opened a book and read a paragraph that seems pertinent to your current situation and thought, I needed to read that? It has a name — bibliomancy. Have you ever, despite yourself, had a longing for wine and conversation only to go to a bar and encounter someone who would become a lifelong friend? Was that meant to happen or mere happenstance? Are we all not staring at the random shapes life throws at us an inferring ‘meaning and motive where others did not.’

Perhaps it’s not just meaning we’re longing for but empathy and kindness.