“The soldier above all others prays for peace,” the former American military general Douglas MacArthur once said, “for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.” But what about peace with oneself?
More than 120,000 U.S. veterans have died by suicide since record keeping began in 2001, according to Veterans Affairs department data. Many more, in the U.S. and elsewhere, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as conflicts spiral around the world. Ukraine’s health ministry estimates that 3 to 4 million people in the country live with PTSD.
Amid this mental health catastrophe, authorities have begun turning to psychedelics for help—and for good reason.
On Feb. 21, Ukraine’s special parliamentary commission responsible for the medical care of veterans and service personnel, voted to establish a working group to assess the effectiveness of MDMA-assisted therapy on PTSD. “We have to deal with mental health issues,” Minister of Healthcare Viktor Liashko, who still needs to sign off on the group, told Ukraine’s official parliament TV channel, “[and examine] how new methods will help quickly and qualitatively.” In December, the U.S. Congress voted to study the effects of psychedelic therapy on soldiers suffering from PTSD and traumatic brain injury. In Israel, a study that would treat Oct. 7 survivors with PTSD, including soldiers, with MDMA could get underway later this year.
The current conventional treatments for PTSD include cognitive behavioral therapy and the FDA-approved antidepressants Zoloft and Paxil. Patients may also be prescribed antipsychotic medications, and benzodiazepines. But, for many veterans, these options are ineffective, and can lead to serious side-effects.
The adoption of psychedelic-assisted therapy could represent a tectonic shift in psychiatry around the world. Research suggests that the psychedelic drug MDMA, an empathogenic stimulant also known as Molly or ecstasy, can spark changes in the brain that induce a childlike state of neuroplasticity and help forge new neural connections. (It could well be approved for PTSD by the U.S. Food and Drugs Administration in August after two advanced stage trials showed significant benefits.) Researchers are also studying other psychedelics as well, like the powerful drug ibogaine.
But Ukraine may be at the vanguard given its wartime realities. Some soldiers have already received legal ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic with some hallucinogenic effects, at private clinics. Dr. Vladislav Matrenitsky, who began working with ketamine in 2018, a year after it was permitted for medical use, is now seeking funding for a study to build on existing research in an effort to bring ketamine therapy toward mainstream healthcare in Ukraine. Underground practitioners elsewhere also provide MDMA and psilocybin therapy, which is illegal.
Meanwhile, efforts are underway to remedy a serious shortage of therapists trained to provide the requisite support before and after psychedelic treatment. Some 15 Ukrainains attended a psychedelic therapist training program in Sarajevo in December, convened by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, the organization behind the MDMA-assisted therapy studies in the U.S. Hundreds of mental health specialists have also signed up for an online psychedelic therapy training program with U.S. company Fluence.
The use of drugs by soldiers during war, both to recover and as battle stimulants, is nothing new. During World War II, the U.S. army treated soldiers suffering with “shell shock” with sodium amytal, or “blue heavens.” It would precipitate a deep sleep of more than 24 hours and most returned to combat within days. But the powerful sedative is addictive and has serious side-effects, and soldiers eventually stopped using it.
Methamphetamines were central to Nazi Germany’s high octane blitzkrieg strategy, and the stimulant was also given to Japanese, U.S., and British troops to keep fatigue at bay and improve endurance. A report published in May by the Royal United Service Institute suggested that Russian soldiers in Ukraine are being given amphetamines before battle. Small numbers of Ukrainian soldiers, in the highly decentralized army, are also experimenting with ibogaine—which is a potent stimulant in low doses—to improve battle preparedness.
But there are concerns among experts over the use of hallucinogens by active duty soldiers, especially if intended to improve combat readiness, or in the trenches to reduce the fear of death. Research suggests that MDMA and ketamine can help treat PTSD but more study is needed into these and other psychedelics. “We should decide wisely how we use these medicines,” Leor Roseman, a neuroscientist at the University of Exeter, told TIME. “Psychedelic therapy should not be undertaken lightly to heal soldiers and just put them back into the field.”
For some Ukrainians, who view the conflict with Russia in existential terms, they view the use of psychedelics primarily through a wartime lense. “It’s not a choice between war and a peaceful life for a lot of people,” Oleh Orlov, the chair of the Ukrainian Psychedelic Research Association (UPRA) and deputy director for research at the Mykola Yarmachenko Institute of Special Education and Psychology, told TIME. “It’s between existing and not existing.”
Some Ukrainian troops have already reportedly returned to the frontlines after receiving psychedelic treatment. Welcome to psychedelic psychiatry’s brave new world, sanctioned or not, where much more research is needed.
In the digital age, we have the technology to document our lives in extraordinary detail via photographs, voice recordings, and social media posts. In theory, this ability to effortlessly capture the important moments of our lives should enrich our ability to remember those moments. But in practice, people often tell me they experience the opposite.
I study the neuroscience of memory and one question I hear again and again is whether technology is making us “dumber”—or, more precisely, whether it’s hurting our ability to remember. For some, the question is motivated by worry about the amount of time their children spend on screens or mobile devices. For others, it reflects concerns about their own memory problems.
A common fear is that there might be a “use it or lose it” principle at play—that an increasing dependence on our devices for reminders will lead us to lose our own capabilities to remember. This might be true for certain skills. If, for instance, you always rely on navigation apps in new or unfamiliar neighborhoods, you might not attend to features in the environment to create a mental map that would allow you to learn to navigate on your own. However, there is no reason to think that relying on technology to store important information will somehow lead your brain to wither in ways that are bad for memory. In fact, I’m all for outsourcing mundane memory tasks, like memorizing phone numbers, passwords, email addresses, and appointments. I don’t have a photographic memory—but my phone does.
So, if technology can help us “free up space” for the things we want to remember when we need to remember them, why do so many of us feel like its presence in our lives is leading us to form blurry, fragmented, and impoverished memories?
The short answer: technology isn’t the problem—it’s how we interact with it.
To form lasting memories, we need to focus on what is distinct about the present moment, those immersive sensory details we can call back up to reconstruct an experience when we remember. As we go about our daily lives, we usually do a pretty good job of focusing on what’s relevant, and for that, we can thank a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex helps us focus attention on and meaningfully process what we need to learn, to search for memories that are “in there somewhere,” and to keep our recollections accurate when we manage to remember the right thing.
But, in a world where our conversations, activities, and meetings are routinely interrupted by text messages, emails, and phone calls, these abilities get swamped—and we often compound the problem by splitting our attention between multiple goals. Multitasking can make us feel that we’re being more efficient. Many of us even pride ourselves on our ability to switch from one task to another, but it comes at a cost.
Each time we are routinely distracted or intentionally toggle between different media streams (such as reading a text message while maintaining a conversation), prefrontal resources are sucked up to regain our focus. The result is that we remain one step behind, and after all is done, we are only left with blurry, fragmented memories.
Outside of the workplace, we often use technology to document our lives. The proliferation of “Instagram walls” and the throngs of people at concerts recording the action with their smartphones illustrate how technology has changed our lives. The ubiquity of smartphone cameras enables us to easily document our experiences, yet for most of us this hasn’t translated into a more expansive memory for the personal past. Again, the problem isn’t necessarily with the technology, but rather that we are filtering our experiences through the lens of a camera.
Taking photos does not necessarily have a good or bad effect on memory. The critical factors involve how you direct your attention and whether you meaningfully engage with the subject matter. Our brains are designed to do more with less, by engaging meaningfully with a little bit of high-quality information rather than amassing a massive catalog of information. When we focus on “documenting” over “experiencing,” we don’t pay attention to what is distinctive in the moment, the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings that make an experience unique—and memorable. Without those immersive details, something that was so vivid when we experienced it (a family vacation or child’s violin recital) can wind up feeling as distant to us as a story we read in a book. By trying to record every moment, we don’t focus on any one facet of the experience in enough detail to form distinctive memories that we will retain.
The negative potential of technology is exacerbated by a culture of sharing experiences on social media platforms. Social media engagement can have a negative effect on memory, partly because it involves multitasking (e.g., switching between recording the moment and engagement with social media platforms) and increases the potential for distraction.
Social media itself isn’t bad for memory, per se. Like most forms of technology, it’s a tool that when used properly can even enhance our memory of an event, but the images we post are often accompanied by captions with brief descriptions, rather than a thorough reflection on the event. Some platforms like Snapchat and Instagram stories, feature photo posts that disappear within 24 hours—an apt metaphor for the way in which mindless documentation can leave us bereft of lasting memories for our experiences.
Technology can enhance memory if it is used consistently with principles that help us remember. Thoughtfully taking pictures or videos at opportune moments can orient us to what is interesting and distinctive around us. My daughter, for instance, likes to selectively photograph plants and flowers that catch her eye on our nature walks, which allows her to pause and fully take in those aspects of the scenery as we are experiencing them in the moment.
After you take those pictures and videos, organize them in a way that will allow you to find them later (as we used to in the old days with photo albums) and make sure to revisit them later on. In the following weeks, revisit those photos and use them as cues to mentally re-experience those events, bringing back as many details as possible. By using the photos almost like a “test” of your memory, and spacing out those tests, you can enhance your ability to retain memories of the entire event, not only what is in the photo. Journaling can be another way to enhance memory because it allows us to test our memory for an event and also integrate it in a meaningful way, so that we can shape our narrative of the experience.
As with memory itself, a key principle for technology is that “less is more.” All the life-logging in the world will not enable us to remember all our experiences, nor is that a desirable goal in the first place. Our memories for events are selective, but they also can have a great deal of detail, meaning, and emotion. By mindfully using technology in ways that allow us to access those aspects of our past experiences, we can hold on to what matters.
When I got diagnosed with Stage 3b Hodgkin Lymphoma at age 32, it was almost impossible to process. Without a family history or lifestyle risk factors that put cancer on my radar, I stared at the emergency room doctor in utter disbelief when he said the CT scan of my swollen lymph node showed what appeared to be cancer—and lots of it. A few days away from a bucket list trip to Japan, I’d only gone to the emergency room because the antibiotics CityMD prescribed to me when I was sick weren’t working.I didn’t want to be sick in a foreign country. So when the doctor told me of my diagnosis, the only question I could conjure was: “So Tokyo is a no-go?”
Around the world, cancer rates in people under 50 are surging, with a recent study in BMJ Oncology showing that new cases for young adults have risen 79% overall over the past three decades. In the U.S. alone, new cancer diagnoses in people under 50 hit 3.26 million, which is a 79% rise since 1990, with the most common types being breast, windpipe, lung, bowel, and stomach. A new feature in the Wall Street Journal highlights the mad dash among doctors and researchers to determine what’s causing this troubling rise. Strangely, overall cancer rates in the U.S. have dropped over the past three decades, while young people—particularly with colorectal cancers—are increasingly diagnosed at late stages. “We need to make it easier for adolescents and young adults to participate in clinical trials to improve outcomes and study the factors contributing to earlier onset cancers so we can develop new cures,” saysJulia Glade Bender, MD, co-lead of the Stuart Center for Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) Cancers at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City (where I am currently a patient.)
Doctors suspect that lifestyle factors and environmental elements, from microplastics to ultra-processed foods, could be to blame. But many adults in their 20s and 30s, such as myself, were otherwise healthy before their diagnoses. It felt like all those years of forcing myself to run, eat high-fiber foods, and choke down kombucha were for nothing.
Cancer is hell at any age, but the challenges facing young adults are especially steep, as the disease disrupts a formative period for building a career, family, and even healthy self-esteem, from body image to gender identity. It’s critical that our approach to treating and supporting these patients reflects the severity of this disruption. In recent years, a growing number of cancer hospitals have developed young adult-specific programming like support groups, information sessions on dating and sexual health, and even mobile apps to help counter social alienation. But there is still a long way to go.
Shockingly enough, canceling my trip to Japan was the least of my worries. Beyond the excruciating physical side effects of high-dose chemotherapy and a number of life-threatening complications, cancer pulverized my self-esteem into nothingness, as I watched peers get married and promoted from my bed. Thankfully, after switching to a new hospital, I found support groups that connected me with a community of peers who got it, as well as social workers who work exclusively with young adults and thus recognized many of my biggest challenges, like social isolation, financial strain, the dating nightmare, and hating my bald head.
Perhaps the biggest reason I resented cancer was for disrupting a milestone I’d worked for my whole life: a book launch. (My diagnosis came two months before my first book was published.) Young adulthood is meant to be littered with these kinds of professional and personal benchmarks, many of which are hard enough to accomplish without tumors; dating, for instance, is impossible for me even as a healthy person. Now I have to re-enter the pool older, weaker, and more traumatized?
“Young adult patients may be trying to assert independence from parents, establish a career or intimate relationship, or even be parents themselves,” says Bender. “Most will be naïve to the medical system or a serious health condition.” And so they require flexible, creative clinicians who can help navigate them “to and through the best available therapy and back to their lives, inevitably ‘changed’ but intact.” Not only do these patients need specialized psychosocial support, but research initiatives should prioritize developing treatments that minimize long-term toxicities.
Given that many young patients haven’t yet built financial stability and are often in some form of debt, organizations like Young Adults Survivors United (YASU) have emerged to support young adult survivors and patients through the financial overwhelm. Stephanie Samolovitch, MSW and founder of YASU, says that there’s still an enormous need for resources supporting young adult cancer patients and survivors.
“Cancer causes a young adult to be dependent again, whether it’s moving back in with parents, getting rides to appointments, or asking for financial help,” says Samolovitch, who was diagnosed with leukemia in 2005, two weeks before her 20th birthday. “Young adults never expect to apply for Medicaid or Social Security Disability during our twenties or thirties, yet cancer doesn’t give us a choice sometimes. That causes stress, shame, depression, and anxiety when trying to navigate the healthcare system.”
When Ana Calderone, a 33-year-old magazine editor, was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer at 30, the most challenging part of getting diagnosed so young was “everything.”
“I felt like it set my whole life back, which sounds stupid because I was literally fighting for my life,” she says. “Who cares if I had to delay my wedding a year because I was still getting radiation treatment? But it was really hard at the time. Everything was delayed, and still is.”
During chemo, Calderone’s doctors gave her a shot that she still receives to try and preserve her ovaries, and she’s been able to try IVF twice. She says she had to proactively advocate for those things with her care team. While Calderone is currently cancer free, she still must take medication that has further delayed her plans to build a family. “I’m fairly confident I’d have a child by now if I didn’t get cancer. That’s been the most devastating part,” she says. “My oncologist would consider letting me get pregnant in two more years, which would be 4.5 years post-diagnosis, and even that is still a risk.”
For 32-year-old Megan Koehler, whose son was one and a half when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma, the hardest part “was knowing the world continued on while I spent days in bed,” she says. “My coworkers still worked on projects I was supposed to be part of, and the worst was knowing my son was growing up, learning to speak sentences, and just becoming a toddler without me – or so it felt that way.”
She remembers crying for most of his second birthday because she was in bed post chemo, feeling devastated that she didn’t have the energy to spend the day with him. During a 50-plus day hospital stay caused by an adverse reaction to a chemotherapy drug, she would Facetime him and cry when he spoke in sentences, because he wasn’t doing that before she was admitted. While she’s grateful for the support she had from her husband and mother, she felt alienated. “I spoke to a few people my age via social media, but no one in person. My center mostly catered to the older generations, so it was somewhat isolating. I did have a great relationship with a few of the infusion nurses who were around my age.”
While oncologists may be rightly focused on saving patients’ lives, there must be more consideration for quality of life during and after treatment – both physical and mental. “More questions need to be asked about their relationships, fertility options, and any mental health concerns or symptoms,” says Samolovitch. From a research perspective, initiatives must expand to pinpoint not only the reason for the rise of cancer in young adults, but find ways to screen and diagnose earlier.
Towards the beginning of my treatment, before I switched hospitals, my oncologist seemed to treat my concerns about self-esteem and hair loss as trivial compared to the real work of saving my life. At my weakest, I had to advocate repeatedly to get accurate information on cold capping, a process of scalp cooling that can preserve most of your hair during chemotherapy, and I had to beg again and again for a social worker to reach out to me, which took weeks.
It’s a beautiful thing that more young adults with cancer are surviving their illnesses. But that means they’ll have decades of life ahead of them. Providers must do a better job supporting young adult patients through all the collateral damage that comes with cancer and its treatment.
The undeniable popularity of self-help books, wellness podcasts, and happiness workshops reflects the constant human desire to make life better. But could it be that many of our lives are already better than we recognize?
While we may have a loving family, a good place to live, and a decent job, we often fail to notice those things. It’s not because we are ungrateful or stupid. It’s because of a basic feature of our brain, known as habituation.
Habituation is the tendency of neurons to fire less and less in response to things that are constant. You enter a room filled with roses and after a short while, you cannot detect their scent any longer. And just as you get used to the smell of fresh flowers, you also get used to a loving relationship, to a promotion, to a nice home, to a dazzling work of art.
Like the front page of a daily newspaper, your brain cares about what recently changed, not about what remained the same. And so, what once took your breath away becomes part of life’s furniture. You habituate to it—you fail to notice and respond to elements of your life which you previously found enchanting.
The good news is that you can dishabituate. That is, you can suddenly start perceiving and responding to things to which you have become desensitized.
The key is taking small breaks from your daily life. For example, when people return home from a long business trip, they often find their ordinary life has “resparkled.” Mundane things suddenly seem amazing. The actress Jodie Foster recently described this feeling when sharing her experience of returning home after filming on location for six months. “I came back from somewhere that is amazing and beautiful,” she explained. “But you know, you long for really dumb things that you’re just used to… Right now, I’m like ‘my God avocados are amazing!’ or ‘I’m so glad I get to go to the gym again!’ Things that six months ago were sort of what I was trying to escape from.”
Of course, Foster’s life is far from ordinary, but we think that in this case her experience reflects a fundamental point. If something is constant, we often assume (perhaps unconsciously) that it is there to stay. As a result, we focus our attention and effort on the next thing on our list. But if we can make the constant less so, our attention will naturally drift back to it. If it is good at its core, it may just resparkle. This is why time away, however short, will enable you to perceive your life with fresh eyes—and to break up reality.
The renowned couple’s therapist Esther Perel draws similar conclusions. When Perel asked people to describe an incident when they were most drawn to their partner, they mentioned two general situations. First, they were especially drawn to their spouse when they felt unfamiliar and unknown—for example, when they saw their partner from a distance or when they observed them deep in conversation with strangers. Second, they were especially drawn to their spouse when they were away and then when they reunited. Perel’s conclusion is supported by science. A 2007 study of 237 individuals showed that when people spend more time apart from their partner, they report greater sexual interest in them.
But what if you are unable to get away from your daily routine, even for a short while? Well, perhaps you can change your environment using your imagination. Close your eyes and imagine your life, but without your home, without your job, without your family; create vivid images with color and detail. This small act might make you feel lucky about what you have.
It’s a bit like having a nightmare in which you lose a loved one—when you wake up and realize it was all a dream and the person is right there beside you, you feel especially thankful. Before the nightmare you may well have known that you had a good thing, but after you awake from it, you feel it too.
Why, though, does the emotional response habituate so fast? Why have we evolved a brain that derives less and less pleasure from good things that are constant or frequent? And perhaps most importantly, wouldn’t it be great if you marveled at your job, house, or spouse just as you did at the very beginning?
Maybe, or maybe not. Habituation to the good drives you to move forward and progress. If you did not experience habituation, you would be satisfied with less. For example, you might end up being happy with a low-paying, entry-level position many years after getting the job. Now, being satisfied with less may seem desirable, but it also means that you would have reduced motivation to learn, to develop, and to change. Without emotional habituation, our species may not have ended up with the technological innovation and great works of art we do, because people might not have had the motivation to create them.
A delicate balance must be struck here. On the one hand, without habituation (and dare we say some boredom, restlessness, and greed), we might have remained mere cave dwellers. But on the other hand, habituation can lead us to be unsatisfied, bored, restless, and greedy. Perhaps then, rather than focusing completely on how to better our life we need to also learn how to see our life better—to notice the great things we have habituated to a little bit more.
Play is a microcosm of childhood, a protective shell like a butterfly’s chrysalis that safeguards children from the slings and arrows of life, one that allows them to grow. What happens, however, when, through no fault of your own, you are born into conditions—poverty, racism, and other adversities—that groom children for bad outcomes? Can play, if nurtured and supported in such adverse conditions, create resilience? Can increased opportunities for play encourage better-than-expected life outcomes, and possibly even provide a buffer against the odds of the cycle of poverty being perpetuated?
I think back to my own childhood; when the violence and abuse started, I think I stopped playing entirely until I managed to escape that home. For me, as for so many other children, school was no place for play, either. Once I lost the sense of safety to play at home, I had no other outlets for it.
The classrooms I was educated in throughout K–12 schooling would be familiar to most of you: rows of desks in which students sat facing the front of the classroom; very little physical movement; a lot of time spent listening to the teacher; and then too much quiet time doing the required workbook or instructional activity alone at one’s desk.
The direct instruction setting was a nightmare for me but even more so for my teachers, who regularly pleaded with me to stop drumming on my desk or bouncing my legs up and down, which would rattle my desk and drive the teacher crazy. I often ended up in detention, where I wrote hundreds of sentences on the board or on sheets of paper, scrawling the same sentence over and over in my messy handwriting: “I will not…”
Then one year, when I was about eight years old, we moved to a new town. There I was placed in what was called an “open classroom.” I was free to choose what I worked on, when, and with whom. I mingled and worked with and alongside kids who were a grade below and one above me and we could walk around to different work areas and choose what we worked on. What was magical was also that we often goofed around and had fun, even played a little, as we worked and in that way, we weren’t overly supervised or reprimanded for not staying 100% task focused. And for the first time ever, I blossomed. I was not in detention, my grades were nearly perfect, and I jumped ahead two years in my reading and other skills. Then, a year later, we moved again; my father was a dry-wall finisher, and we had to move to Florida, where there was more construction happening. Once again, I was back in the direct instruction classroom and back to being the problem child.
That one blessed year in the so-called open classroom, one that was total liberation to me as a child, turned out to be a lot like an instruction model that was tested in a well-known study called the HighScope Perry Preschool Study, which was conducted in the mid-1960s. The study was a preschool instructional intervention program that focused on “at-risk” children, all of them Black youths and all living in poverty. The children were randomly assigned to either a “direct instruction” group or one of two “self-initiated” instruction conditions.
The direct instruction program focused on teaching academic skills. Teachers led children in short, planned lessons in language, math, and reading, using prepared materials such as workbooks. In the two self-initiated models, the classroom in one model was organized into distinct interest topical areas—for example, reading, writing, math. The central experience revolved around encouraging the child’s initiative, creating and sustaining social relationships, promoting self-expression through creativity, music, movement, language and literacy, and basic mathematical operations such as classifying and counting objects.
The second self-initiated approach was the traditional nursery school curriculum, in which the main objective was for children to learn social skills rather than academic skills. There, teachers sometimes organized class activities, discussions, and field trips. Often, the children had the freedom to choose their activities, move from one activity to another, and interact with their peers or adults. Unlike the other two models of learning, the nursery school approach encouraged play; it was a central and welcomed activity, and the children were the initiators of various forms of play.
The results? The kids who learned—or at least tried to learn—in the direct instruction classroom fell victim to the same very bad outcomes of so many kids growing up poor in the United States. The kids who learned in the self-initiated classrooms did not become yet an- other statistic of growing up in poverty in America. Just the opposite, in fact.
In most instances, it didn’t matter which self-initiated classroom the kids were placed in; it just mattered that they were in one of those two settings and not in the direct instruction classroom. And the difference was devastating. Some of the unfortunate outcomes that characterized the kids who had been instructed in the direct instruction classroom were higher school dropout rates, more drug-dealing arrests, an arrest sheet with five or more arrests, bearing children out of wedlock, living on public assistance, not owning a home, and unemployment. Even if those kids were able to stay employed in the future, they were sometimes not able to make $2,000 or more per year (equivalent to about $17,500 today, adjusted for inflation).
Those unfortunate outcomes were not written in stone. The kids in the other classrooms who were lucky enough to be instructed with a play-forward mentality, by and large, were able to become successful adults. By age 27, they were more likely to own a home and to be earning a good living; they were not, on the whole, high school dropouts, single and raising children on public assistance, convicts or ex-convicts.
Prevention worked. Giving children some self-direction and allowing them to play in an enriched environment made a world of difference in interrupting the cycle of poverty.
Joe Frost, one of the leading play researchers, has unearthed similar findings: Children who are deprived of play when they are young are shown to demonstrate reduced resilience in adverse situations, lower levels of self-control, and difficulty relating to others both socially and emotionally. Play is no laughing matter, especially when it has been shown to help build a brighter future for our kids.
On February 24, 2022, 5:30 am Moscow time, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced to the world that Russia was initiating a “special military operation” to “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine. In reality, Russia was launching a full-scale invasion to overthrow Ukraine’s democratically elected government. Bombs began to fall on cities across Ukraine the moment Putin ended his speech. While the air campaign continued, Russian forces descended on Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Sumy, and other large cities.
A major portion of Putin’s force also converged on Mariupol. Prior to the invasion, Mariupol was Ukraine’s tenth-largest city with an estimated population of 431,000. More importantly, it was one of Ukraine’s largest ports that serviced approximately 2550 ships and 17 million tons of cargo annually. Located on the Sea of Azov, it was the largest city along the “land bridge” that connected the Donbas, Ukrainian territory that Russian-led separatists seized in 2014-2015, with the Crimean Peninsula that Russia had illegally annexed in 2014.
Russian forces rapidly attacked the city from three directions. Russian forces and Russian-controlled military forces from the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics advanced on Mariupol from the city’s northeast. Russian Naval Infantry advanced on the city’s west, after having conducted an amphibious landing on February 25. Russian forces originating from Crimea and advancing through Berdyansk had reached Mariupol’s west and began initial assaults into the city on February 27. By March 2, less than a week into the war, Russian forces had surrounded Mariupol by land and sea. With the rest of the country under siege, the limited Ukrainian forces now trapped in the city were left to defend it without any hope of reinforcements or resupply.
The Russian attackers quickly pushed the greatly outnumbered defenders into a large industrial zone along the city’s southeastern coastline that included the Azovstal steel plant. The plant’s many underground passages and bunkers offered an ideal location for the defender’s headquarters and as much of a rear area as possible for a surrounded force. The remnants of disparate defending forces fell under the command of Lt. Col. Denys Prokopenko (call sign “Redys,” pronounced “Red-Is”), the regimental commander of Ukraine’s National Guard Azov Regiment. This force included what remained of his Azov Regiment and elements from the 12th National Guard Brigade, 36th Separate Marine Brigade, Border Guards, KORD Special Police (similar to U.S. SWAT), Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and Territorial Defense Forces.
Over the next couple weeks, the situation in Mariupol looked more and more grim. Prokopenko’s small force, numbering approximately 3,000 with varying levels of military training, was surrounded by approximately 20,000 Russian forces. The Ukrainian defenders lacked the necessary weapons to hold back the advancing Russian armor and mechanized infantry units and were being constrained into a smaller and smaller space. Their ammunition was running dangerously low, casualties continued to mount, and they had little ability to treat wounded soldiers and no ability to evacuate them. Medical personnel were forced to conduct amputations without painkillers and infections became deadly. The Ukrainian defenders maintained their morale against these immense odds, but morale alone would not be enough. Even highly motivated soldiers require ammunition and medical supplies to sustain a fight.
A secret and dangerous mission
Even though Ukrainian leaders knew that Mariupol was lost, holding onto Mariupol was strategically important. The small number of defenders were tying up tens of thousands of Russian forces and preventing Russia from moving them to support offensive operations elsewhere. At this point in the war, it was not clear that Ukraine would hold Kyiv and if the capital fell, so would the nation. Defending Kyiv was the priority, so the Ukraine’s military leadership could dedicate little to support Mariupol’s defenders.
Thus, Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, the chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence within Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, developed an audacious, and what many might consider a foolhardy plan to reinforce the desperate defenders. His plan: Conduct a resupply mission into Mariupol by helicopters that had to fly through advanced Russian air defense systems. According to retired U.S. Army Aviation Colonel Jimmy Blackmon, “This mission would require practiced skill for highly trained and proficient crews. It’s not a mission you would consider for an aviator’s first combat experience.”
The infiltration flight would take 80 minutes, 42 of which would be flown over enemy-controlled territory. Sometimes it is said that for military operations “speed is security,” and this mission followed that age-old adage. The helicopters would fly at maximum speed and minimum height, below the tree line many areas, to minimize their exposure to Russian air defenses. They would be flying what pilots call nap-of-the-earth. Flying so low would reduce their risk to enemy air defense systems but would put them at risk from rocket propelled grenades—the weapons that Somalis used to shoot down U.S. helicopters in Mogadishu in 1993.
If they were lucky, they would avoid trees, powerlines, missiles, and rockets to reach their objective: The Azovstal steel plant where the Ukrainian defender had established their headquarters. As hard as getting in might be, getting out might be even tougher because they would have to fly a similar flight path home, with the Russians now alerted to their presence. It would be similar climbing Mount Everest, where far more die during the descent than during the ascent.
The Ukrainians conducted their first helicopter resupply mission on March 21, 2022 when two Mi-8 helicopters launched from an airfield outside Dnipro, 82 kilometers northeast of Mariupol. After taking off, the helicopters headed southeast before continuing to the coast. As planned, they flew low and fast…maybe too fast as one of the helicopters damaged its wheel when it hit a tree. Luckily, this was the only damage they sustained as they were able to complete the mission and deliver critically needed ammunition, medical supplies, and Starlink internet terminals.
The Ukrainians launched their second resupply mission a few days later. This mission looked much like the first, but the Russians would not be caught by surprise a second time. The Russians hit one of the helicopters with missile, but luckily for the Ukrainians it failed to explode. The missile did, however, pierce one of the helicopter’s engines, forcing the pilots to shut it off. Despite the gaping hole in the side of aircraft, the pilots were able to continue flying, albeit slower, and limp back to Dnipro along with approximately twenty wounded soldiers that had been loaded onto the helicopter at the Azovstal steel plant.
Pilot VitaliyCourtesy of Vitaliy
The pilot and the third mission
Vitaliy served as a helicopter pilot in the Ukrainian Army in the early 1990s. His combat experience, however, only included flying transport missions during peacekeeping operations in the former Yugoslavia. He served his mandatory service time and then left the military to fly commercially for the next two-plus decades. Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, Vitaliy was mobilized on March 14.
On March 22, Vitaliy and other pilots were summoned to Kyiv for training. Vitaliy did not find the training to be particularly unique, but he was a bit surprised when he was asked to fly at night using night vision goggles, something he had not done in a very long time.
On March 26, Vitaliy was partnered with a co-pilot and a flight engineer and ordered to fly to an airfield outside Dnipro. When Vitaliy asked, “Why Dnipro?” He was given no answer, just that it would be a simple mission. It was clear that they had a mission planned for him, but they did not seem particularly keen to share the details, so Vitaliy did not ask any more questions.
The following day, Vitaliy and his crew arrived at the airfield outside of Dnipro. Immediately after landing, Vitaliy once again asked about the mission. The short reply, “You are going to Mariupol,” told him all he really needed to know. He knew this would be nothing like the transport missions that he had flown more than 20 years earlier. This would be a combat mission against a military that was ranked as the second most powerful in the world. The crews that had flown on of the two previous missions were there and they talked Vitaliy and his crew through the map and showed them some videos. The command element then provided them additional details about the mission. They would fly directly into Mariupol using two Mi-8s, deliver supplies, pickup casualties, and then fly out, refueling on the way back.
Soldiers from the Intelligence Directorate explained the mission and briefed the crews with the details of the Russian air defenses. They told the crews that the helicopters would be loaded with weapons and medicine only. Upon landing, they would keep their engines running and have only ten minutes to unload the supplies and onload critically wounded fighters. Additionally, one intelligence officer would ride in each helicopter. This last part Vitaliy found surprising. In all his previous missions, he had never flown with an intelligence officer onboard. He could have guessed possible reasons for such an unorthodox move. Maybe the officer was there to gather intelligence that would be useful for future resupply missions or for the operational fight. Perhaps, he was there to deliver intelligence and directives to Mariupol’s defenders. Maybe he was there to ensure, by threat of force, if necessary, that the flight crew did not abort the mission prematurely. Given the responses that he received from previous questions, Vitaliy thought it best not to ask and thus, he was never certain as to the officer’s purpose.
On the night on March 27, they loaded the helicopter with the carefully manifested ammunition and medicine. But almost as soon as they finished loading, they were told that they needed to carry an additional 200 kilograms of medicine. They had carefully calculated the helicopter’s maximum weight-carrying capacity and were now being directed to carry 200 additional kilograms. Something had to give. They could not reduce the payload, nor could they eliminate anyone from the crew. Thus, Vitaliy decided that their only option was to remove the helicopter’s weapons. They would have to fly defenseless, an extremely risky proposition given a helicopter on the previous mission had been hit by enemy fire. But the crew understood the dire circumstances being faced by the brave defenders of Mariupol. Those fighters were at risk every day. They would only be at risk for a single mission, although that risk seemed almost astronomical.
After loading the helicopter, they had to wait. Like any pilot who has ever flown what had a strong possibility of being a one-way mission, the anticipation killed Vitaliy. He prayed to God, “Let’s make it tomorrow.” Late in the night, the command element told Vitality the mission would go the following day. The command element provided the mission brief which directed the flight path, the exact time and location they needed to cross the enemy’s frontline (so that artillery could create a distraction to cover the crossing), the current enemy composition and disposition to include their air defenses (that included Pantsir-S1 air defense units but not Buk anti-air missile systems), and precise landing spots for each aircraft inside Mariupol’s Azovstal steel compound.
After placing the updated enemy air defense positions on a map overlay, Vitaliy determined the flight path they were given would not work, so he changed it, notifying the command element so that the artillery fires required to support the infiltration would remain synchronized. After completing their mission planning, they went to sleep. After waking up, they made a final call with the ground commander, Lt. Col. Prokopenko. When Prokopenko stated, “all clear,” they knew the mission was a go. Shortly before takeoff, they were given one final instruction: This was not a two-helicopter mission, it was two missions with one helicopter each.
An experienced pilot like Vitaliy knew what this meant. Even if the two helicopters were infiltrating and exfiltrating together, if something should happen to one of the helicopters, the other must continue the mission even if they could help the downed crew. This ran counter to everything he had been trained but he understood that this was one of those rare times when the mission of delivering supplies and evacuating the wounded trumped everything else, including a helicopter and its crew.
Like the previous missions, the flight would be approximately 80 minutes, with half of it over enemy-controlled territory. Vitaliy and his crew flew started in hours of darkness, but it was dawn by the time they reached the sea. Tensions climbed when they crossed into Russian-controlled territory and remained high until they exited nearly 90 minutes later. They flew the first segment under night vision goggles, approximately ten to fifteen meters above ground level. Once the sun began to rise, they were able to ditch their night vision goggles and fly closer to the ground.
Vitaliy saw some enemy positions during the infiltration flight, but the more immediate threats were obstacles such as trees and powerlines. Vitality did not know if the Russians were asleep, confused, or just in awe at a passing Ukrainian helicopter. All that mattered was that Vitaliy and his crew did not receive any fire. The flight was eerily quiet and lacked the chatter Vitaliy was used to when flying transport missions. The only comments made during the flight was Vitaliy asking his flight engineer, “How long to the sea?” Once they got closer, Vitaliy asked him to, “Count it down by kilometers.” They did not even talk when they saw Russian positions. Since they had ditched their defensive weapons, there was nothing they could have done anyway.
Once Vitaliy reached the sea, he flew so low he thought he was touching the water at times. Since the buildings at the Azovstal steel plant stretched many meters into the sky, Vitaliy knew that it would be impossible to miss. But a heavy fog covered the entire coastline, so now he was not so sure. Eventually, he saw the plant’s prominent pipes poking through the fog and felt some relief. As he approached the plant, Vitaliy saw the large power lines, 30 to 40 meters in height, that pilots from the previous missions had described. Vitaliy climbed out of the low sea level flight path high enough to clear the wires and then immediately dove back down into the plant to make his landing spot. It was likely the most dangerous part of the flight, due to being so exposed and vulnerable, during daylight hours right in front of Russian besieging the plant. To make matters worse, this was the third time that helicopters had flown this same approach, so surprise was seemingly lost.
Service member of the Ukrainian armed forces is seen within the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works complex in Mariupol, Ukraine, in this handout picture taken May 7, 2022. Dmytro Orest Kozatskyi—Azov regiment press service /Handout via Reuters
Vitaliy felt relief after he cleared the powerlines and completed the dive, but the mission would only get harder. Vitaliy now had to rapidly identify the exact landing spot within the complex compound and then hit the landing while avoiding the plant’s vertical obstacles that seemed to be everywhere. Additionally, being allowed only ten minutes on the ground, if he landed in the wrong location, he might be forced into leaving before all the supplies could be offloaded or the casualties onloaded. Staying any longer not only risked additional exposure to enemy fire, but more importantly, they only carried enough fuel for a limited time on the ground. If they stayed too long, they would not be able to make it back. Upon identifying the correct landing sport, Vitaliy felt what must have been at least the tenth sigh of relief and then proceeded to land at the exact coordinates he had been given.
Immediately after landing, fighters seemingly appeared out of nowhere and immediately started offloading the supplies. After such a stressful flight, Vitaliy needed a short break, so he stepped out the helicopter and hugged many of the fighters. He remembered embracing one fighter, turning to look at his copilot and by time Vitaliy turned his head back, the fighter was gone. Vitaliy had never met any of the fighters before, but he immediately felt an immense respect and brotherhood for them. With high-risk missions like this that served a common purpose, it is not uncommon for people to feel an intense kinship with people they have only briefly or may have never met and that is what Vitaliy was experiencing.
Once Mariupol’s fighters had off-loaded the ammunition and medicine, they rapidly loaded their severely wounded into the helicopter while its engines were still running. Vitaliy heard one of fighters frantically screaming, “Do it faster!” Vitaliy approached the leader and said, “Don’t worry. Don’t worry. We are here. We will take everyone.” Vitaliy was willing to risk additional time on the ground to get as many wounded out as the helicopter could hold. After the last casualty had been loaded, Vitaliy looked at his watch. They had been on the ground twelve minutes.
After liftoff, Vitaliy pushed the aircraft to its limits, flying it as fast as it could go. During the exfiltration flight, Vitaliy only wanted to know when he was out of enemy territory. They flew directly to a site on the Ukrainian side of the front that had been established to refuel the helicopters—a forward arming and refueling point (FARP) in military parlance. To maximize the carrying capacity of the aircraft, they only carried enough fuel to make it to the friendly lines. Thus, they had to refuel to make it back to the airfield. The fuel consumption for the flight had been meticulously calculated. Vitaliy had spent an extra two minutes at the Azovstal plant, but he knew this was within the small buffer of fuel reserve that had been built into the mission. Once they reached the refuel site, they turned the engines off and felt a huge rush of relief. After refueling, they flew back to the Dnipro site where a massive convoy of ambulances was waiting to evacuate the casualties.
The volunteer fighter
The aircrews were not the only ones willing to risk their lives to get to Mariupol. While Vitaliy’s helicopter was loaded with only ammunition and medical supplies, some of the sorties also carried volunteer fighters to help reinforce Prokopenko’s defense. Ruslan Serbov, callsign “David,” was one such fighter. Ruslan had previously served in the Azov Regiment, Prokopenko’s unit that was currently leading the defense of Mariupol, and as a member of the Presidential Guard unit. When the Russians invaded, Ruslan was living in Kyiv.
At the end of March, Ruslan saw a message in a closed Telegram room asking for volunteer fighters to join the Azov unit in the defense of Mariupol. He had read the news of the Russian attack so he knew that the city’s defenders had been cut off weeks earlier and were facing a much larger Russian force that surrounded the city. Yet, Ruslan did not hesitate despite the great risk. He followed the instructions from the Telegram group and immediately took a train from Kyiv to Zaporizhya where he met Ukrainian intelligence officers and other volunteers. After a quick assessment, he along with other volunteers conducted some quick refresher training. By early April, they moved him to Dnipro to be flown into Mariupol on one of the secret helicopter missions.
Ruslan was likely flown in on the fourth or fifth mission. On the night of his flight, he was so nervous that he could not sleep. He remembers lifting off at 2 AM, April fifth, and the harrowing nap-of-the-earth flight on the way in. He swore the helicopters were touching the water when they flew over the sea. He had given himself a “50/50 chance” of surviving the flight. he figured if the Russians did not get the aircraft, powerlines or trees would. His aircraft included the standard crew—pilot, co-pilot, flight engineer, and intelligence officer—along with three other volunteer fighters and a bunch of ammunition and medical supplies.
After landing, he was immediately assigned to the Azov Regiment’s 1st battalion. A few hours later, they moved him to a building within the Azov steel plant compound and assigned him to stand guard on the fifth floor of the building. The following morning, he observed a small team of Russians moving and immediately engaged them with his rifle. The fellow soldiers in his position told him that he should not have engaged them. They were only sent out to bait the Ukrainians into shooting at them, so that it would give away their position. After giving away their positions, the Russians would launch artillery strikes or use tanks or other higher caliber weapons such as artillery to eliminate them. Ruslan described the Russians using “waves of humans” as cannon fodder. They seemed to care little for the soldiers’ lives and only viewed them as a tool to identify Ukrainian defensive positions.
Ruslan said the fighting was fierce and, at times, desperate. On the evening of May 15, he was part of a squad that was attempting to rescue a wounded soldier in the open between a giant ore pile and the railroad tracks within the steel factory compound. But it was a trap. As soon as they reached the solder, Russians ambushed them with heavy machine gun fire and anti-tank munitions. One of the anti-armor rounds hit Ruslan. He believed it had been fired from a MATADOR 90-mm man-portable, disposable anti-armor system. It was a weapon system meant for vehicles, not humans.
The round hit him in his left leg, severing his foot (he showed us a photograph of his severed foot still inside its boot that a fellow solider had taken the following day) and peppered his entire lower body with shrapnel. It knocked Ruslan unconscious. He drifted in and out of consciousness before he awoke in a dark bunker under the Azovstal plant. The bunker was full of severely wounded soldiers. Ruslan was in immense pain and lacking the necessary medical supplies to treat him, he asked his friend, “Shoot me.” But his friend replied, “Not today.”
The following morning, someone told Ruslan that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had ordered the defenders to surrender in a negotiated deal with the Russians. As happens all too often in war, Ruslan was injured only hours before the call had been made.
Despite the surrender, Ruslan was not immediately returned to Ukrainian hands. The details as to how the two sides would exchange prisoners of war were included in the agreement. Prior to being returned, the Russians transported Ruslan to the Donetsk Hospital to treat and stabilize him. But Ruslan described the hospital as having only very basic medical supplies and equipment and not much better than the bunker that had been treated in after being injured. Being one of the more severely injured prisoners of war, Ruslan was one of the first to be exchanged. After being returned, Ukrainian doctors were forced to amputate most of his leg due not only to the injury but also due to an infection that had resulted from the sub-standard treatment that he had received.
He later authored the book, Mariupol: The Book of the Brave, that describes his fight in Mariupol. In the eyes of many Ukrainians, Ruslan is a hero. He conducted an extremely risky flight just to get to Mariupol, and then fought for many weeks, against great odds, against a vastly superior foe. Yet, Ruslan is adamant that he is no hero. In his book and in our conversations with him, he stated, “I am not a hero. All the heroes are dead. I was just lucky.”
Conclusion
The story of these missions is not their brazen audacity, but the bravery of the pilots and soldiers involved. The military leadership must have factored the psychological ability of the crews to conduct the operation, because they never allowed a pilot to fly the mission a second time. While having an experienced pilot that had flown the route previously offered immense benefit, they obviously felt that the stress of flying the mission a second time was too great. It was the rare case where it is better not to know what you are up against, because if you did, you probably would not even try. .
Each flight team experienced a similar yet unique experience to that of Vitaliy and his crew. All the helicopters survived the first four missions. The Ukrainians lost their first helicopter on the fifth mission after Russians shot down one of the helicopters during exfiltration. On the sixth mission, the Ukrainians had an Mi-24 attack helicopter fly near enemy air defenses to distract them. Unfortunately, it did not work as the Russians successfully engaged both Mi-8s during exfiltration. Luckily, both were able to crash land into Ukrainian controlled territory. The composition and fate of the seventh mission remains unknown, at least publicly. All that is certain is that it was the final resupply mission.
A Ukrainian soldier stands inside the ruined Azovstal steel plant prior to surrender to the Russian forces in Mariupol, Ukraine, May 16, 2022. Dmytro Kozatski—Azov Special Forces Regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard Press Office via AP
In total, the Ukrainians flew missions consisting of a total of 16 helicopters. They delivered over thirty tons of precious cargo and 72 reinforcement soldiers, and evacuated 64 critically wounded soldiers. They lost three helicopters during exfiltration, but all 16 helicopters were able to deliver their payloads to the defenders of Mariupol.
After the seventh mission, the Intelligence Directorate assessed that it was too risky to conduct any more resupply missions. But by this time, the valiant defenders of Mariupol had helped Ukraine achieve its strategic objective and its first real victory in the war: Ukraine had successfully defended its capital. The last Russian forces withdrew from the Kyiv region on April 6, around the time of the fifth resupply mission.
No doubt it was a difficult decision, but with ammunition and medical supplies running out and no ability to resupply them, President Zelensky saw no other option than to order Prokopenko to surrender. Zelensky knew these stubborn fighters would never surrender on their own and to fight to death with ammunition nearly exhausted served no tactical, operational, or strategic purpose. A surrender would allow these heroes to live and fight another day.
Many know that the defenders of Mariupol held out for an unimaginable 83 days. But few know the story of the seven resupply missions. And while it can never be known how much longer the resupply missions allowed the defenders to hold out, it is almost certain they would not have made it to 83 days without them. Likewise, Russia made most of its gains during the opening weeks of the war. So, it will never be known how significant of an impact the 3,000 fighters had on the larger war by tying up tens of thousands of Russian fighters, but it is reasonable to conclude the impact was significant. At a minimum, it prevented the Russian’s from capturing the city of Zaporizhzhia, at least according to a military statement. In the end, Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov’s secret resupply missions may have been extremely risky, but they were never foolhardy because he knew the capability and will of the Ukrainian people.
The meta for the best guns in Modern Warfare 3has developed considerably since launch, and has evolved significantly since the Feb. 7 rollout of Season 2.
From the get-go, there were a plethora of guns to choose from in the latest Call of Duty because every gun from Modern Warfare 2 was also made available, alongside a host of new weapons. We’re not including those as there are far too many to choose from, and for the most part, the new MW3 guns are stronger anyway.
So if you’re looking to dominate MW3 multiplayer in Season 2, look no further than these 10 guns.
Modern Warfare 3 best guns to use in Season 2
The best weapons in Modern Warfare 3 are as follows:
MCW (assault rifle)
Rival-9 (SMG)
WSP Swarm (SMG)
RAM-7 (assault rifle)
BAS-B (battle rifle)
RAM-9 (SMG)
HRM-9 (SMG)
Holger 556 (assault rifle)
XRK Stalker (sniper rifle)
SVA 545 (assault rifle)
Believe it or not, the MCW is still the best gun in Modern Warfare 3 and has been since launch. It’s the most jack-of-all-trades gun you’ll find, as you can kit it out for long-range engagements — which our suggested attachments below are apt for — or to deal with enemies in close quarters if needed.
However, the list has been shaken up a little with the introduction of some new guns and balance changes through Season 1 and Season 2, skyrocketing the Rival-9 (the best SMG in Modern Warfare 3) into second place. The WSP Swarm isn’t far behind it, though, and the RAM-7 is still a solid assault rifle despite its significant recoil.
The BAS-B is by far the best battle rifle and the optimal choice if you want to engage in much longer distance firefights, while the RAM-9 and HRM-9 were seasonal additions that have quickly found their place in the meta. The Holger 556 is still very strong, the XRK Stalker sniper rifle is the best choice for any marksmen or quick-scopers, and the SVA 545 excels thanks to its ability to shoot the first two bullets almost simultaneously.
(As an aside, for anyone returning to this list from Season 1, the AMR9 and Riveter have both been dropped in favor of the Rival-9 and RAM-9, and the HRM-9 has been added to round the list out to a solid 10 entries.)
Let’s go through our updated selections for the best guns in Modern Warfare 3 one-by-one.
1. MCW (assault rifle)
Image: Activision via Polygon
Kicking things off is the MCW, which is unlocked at rank 44. Modern Warfare 3 doesn’t have real weapon names, so the MCW is best known as the ACR from previous installments. Which is all to day, the MCW is a very reliable assault rifle that is fully automatic, with consistent range, recoil, and damage.
Essentially, with the right attachments, the MCW becomes a laser beam. Any of the heavy barrels do the job — we’d recommend the 16.5” MCW Cyclone Long Barrel — along with any vertical grip, though we found the Bruen Pivot to be the best (which requires leveling the SVA 545 to level 12 first). As for the rest of the attachments, an optic is always a good shout for enhanced visibility, alongside any combination of muzzle/stock/rear grip that assist with recoil control and bullet velocity.
For more on how to kit out this weapon, see our dedicated MCW loadout page.
2. Rival-9 (SMG)
Image: Sledgehammer Games/Activision via Polygon
The Rival-9 wasn’t considered to be one of the best guns in MW3 on launch, but it has quickly risen to the top thanks to its fast fire rate. It packs a huge punch when you get up close and personal. As the meta has developed, running and gunning has solidified itself as a very strong style of play, particularly in Season 2.
Bearing that in mind — that you won’t often be engaging with enemies beyond a few meters away — you want to manage the recoil to an extent while also maintaining the weapon handling and mobility. We recommend the Rival Vice Assault Grip in the rear grip attachment slot, along with the Rival IGS-800 Barrel to deal with most of the recoil issues. Make sure you also stick the 9mm High Velocity ammunition on to deal the most damage.
3. WSP Swarm (SMG)
Image: Sledgehammer Games/Activision via Polygon
Next up we have the WSP Swarm, the second SMG on our list of the best guns in Modern Warfare 3. This gun is seriously powerful, but as you’d expect given its machine pistol form, it has a boatload of recoil. This means it suits a very aggressive style of play, and while the Akimbo attachment may be tempting to dual-wield hip-fire these bad boys, we’re going for something a little more reliable.
Your entire aim should be to reduce the recoil while also not hindering the mobility too much, so look for muzzle and/or barrel attachments that strive toward that goal. Much like the RAM-7 below, the WSP Swarm has a very fast rate of fire, so you can’t go wrong with an extended magazine either. You definitely don’t need an optic though, as the iron sights are absolutely fine and, to be honest, you’ll often find yourself hip-firing — if you can reduce the hip fire spread with any attachments, even better.
4. RAM-7 (assault rifle)
Image: Sledgehammer Games/Activision via Polygon
The RAM-7 was introduced in Season 1 and quickly found itself as a mainstay in the meta. It kicks like a mule but deals some serious damage. As such, you don’t want to kit it out for extremely long range, but it is one of the best choices at short to mid range for an assault rifle. A barrel or muzzle attachment that ideally silences the gun and helps with damage at range is key.
Alongside this, we recommend putting on an extended magazine thanks to how quickly the gun fires, then aiming to strike a balance between mobility, handling, and damage for the rest.
Tweak the attachments until you find the exact fit that works for you, or check out our guide to the best RAM-7 loadout in MW3.
5. BAS-B (battle rifle)
Image: Activision via Polygon
All the weapons in this list are fairly similar: fully automatic guns that are best at varying ranges. The BAS-B is no different. The first and only battle rifle on the list, this is the gun you want to switch to if our MCW build above still doesn’t have enough range for you. It doesn’t fire quite as quickly as the MCW, but each bullet packs way more of a punch, and once you have some recoil-managing attachments on there, you can put a longer-range optic on it, such as one of the 2.5x options.
When you’re in the opening levels of using the BAS-B though, we have just a few recommended attachments. The Bruen Venom Long Barrel is a no-brainer thanks to the range it adds, and the 30-round mag — or the 45-round once you unlock it — ensures you can mow down multiple enemies without needing to reload. We’d also recommend the Ravage-20 Heavy Stock, which you unlock once the BAS-B has reached level seven.
For more on how to kit out this weapon, see our dedicated BAS-B loadout page.
6. RAM-9 (SMG)
Image: Sledgehammer Games/Activision via Polygon
The RAM-9 was introduced at the start of Season 2, and is the newest weapon on this list of the best guns in Modern Warfare 3. It’s another SMG with a rapid fire rate, but the recoil can be managed a little better than the Rival-9 above, so this is better suited for slightly longer engagements. The must-use attachments are the ZEHMN35 Compensated Flash Hider muzzle attachment and the HVS 3.4 Pad stock thanks to how they assist with recoil.
Make sure you equip an underbarrel grip of some description too — our recommendation is the SL Skeletal Vertical Grip — and we found a rear grip also does the job, ideally the Retort 90 Grip Tape. The iron sights are usable here, but if you’d rather equip an optical sight for better visibility, any red dot sight will work.
For more explanation on these attachment choices and details on the best class to use with this SMG, check out our dedicated RAM-9 loadout guide.
7. HRM-9 (SMG)
Image: Sledgehammer Games/Activision via Polygon
The final SMG on the list, the HRM-9 with our build is actually very strong at a slightly further distance than you’d expect most SMGs to be effective. With that in mind, the Sonic Suppressor S muzzle attachment is a godsend as it buffs the bullet velocity, damage range, and it makes you undetectable by radar when firing.
It does mean the recoil control takes a minor hit though, so you want to use other attachments that help bring that back up. Any underbarrel grip geared towards that will do the job — our choice is the VX Pineapple — along with a rear grip and stock attachment. We’d recommend an optical sight here too, though a basic one like the Slimline Pro or Slate Reflector is good enough.
Our full HRM-9 loadout guide has more details on how to best utilize this SMG and the attachments to kit it out with.
8. Holger 556 (assault rifle)
Image: Sledgehammer Games/Activision via Polygon
Next up, we have the Holger 556, which is unlocked at level 37. Now, to be frank, there’s not a whole lot special about the Holger; it’s a reliable, fully automatic assault rifle that isn’t quite as good as the MCW or RAM-7. However, if you remember (and loved) the G36C from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, this is very reminiscent of that.
As always, you’ll want to focus on recoil management and damage output when kitting out the Holger. Find barrel, muzzle, and underbarrel attachments that assist with that, then stick your optic of choice on and you’ll be good to go. It has a higher base damage but slower fire rate than both the MCW and SVA, so bear that in mind when finding the best attachments.
9. XRK Stalker (sniper rifle)
Image: Sledgehammer Games/Activision via Polygon
With its introduction in Season 1, the XRK Stalker took the crown from the Katt-AMR to be the best sniper rifle in Modern Warfare 3, and that’s thanks to its impressive damage and mobility, making it the prime choice for those quick-scopers among you. This is a position it’s held through the launch of Season 2.
Your goal needs to be to improve the ADS speed, re-chambering speed, and sprint to fire speed so you can pull up your gun and one-shot enemies with ease. To this end, we’d recommend having the No Stock stock attachment, alongside the Light Bolt and FT Match Grip. You should also equip an optic that isn’t quite so zoomed in as the default, as you’re unlikely to be sniping at range.
The SVA 545 is the first assault rifle you’ll unlock in the game, so while you’re grinding for the MCW and AMR9, it’s the one you want to be using. As soon as you unlock create-a-class you can equip it, and it comes with one very interesting perk: the first shot fires two bullets, almost simultaneously. This isn’t just the first shot of the magazine though; if you tap fire, you can ensure every shot is a twofer. It’s not overpowered or anything, but it is a nifty trick if you can get the hang of it.
As is always the case with assault rifles, you’ll want to manage the recoil on this, so we recommend an underbarrel grip such as the VX Pineapple, a barrel attachment that can improve the range and damage, and other attachments that support recoil management. It’s one of the only guns in the game with decent iron sights though, so you don’t need to stick an optic on it.
Warning: This post contains spoilers for Madame Web.
Three Spider-Man movies are hitting theaters in 2024, but none of those three movies are actually about Spider-Man—or even feature the friendly neighborhood web-slinger as a character at all. Madame Web, which is now in theaters, is an entry in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, a collection of films that take full advantage of the studio’s ownership of Spidey film rights even as the main character is primarily making live-action appearances in the Disney-owned Marvel Cinematic Universe where Tom Holland plays him.
And yet, Madame Web, like Morbius before it, and presumably like this year’s upcoming Kraven the Hunter and another Venom sequel after it, does have connections to Spider-Man. Madame Web’s connections to Spider-Man are quite explicit, but the film is not seemingly connected to any established version of Spider-Man that viewers might already be familiar with. Here’s a spoiler-filled explanation of how Madame Web fits in the complex, well, web of Spider-Man movies.
There’s no Spider-Man, but there is Peter Parker (kind of)
Johnson, decidedly not an elderly lady, in Madame WebCourtesy of Sony Pictures
Madame Web’s title character is a woman with the power to see the future who is a blind elderly woman in the comics and is played by Dakota Johnson (neither blind nor elderly) in the movie. (Her comic book origin story and background are hardly required reading for this heavily reimagined version of the character.) A paramedic living in New York City in the year 2003 rather than the present day—which is important—Cassie Webb becomes involved in the world of superheroes when she starts getting visions of the future. She must attempt to save three teenage girls played by Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O’Connor, and Isabela Merced from being murdered by a man named Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), who has connections to Cassie’s dead mother from her days researching spiders in the Amazon before she died (as infamously referenced in the movie’s trailer). Ezekiel has dreams that these three teens, who will become B-list Spider-Women characters from the comic books in some future, will kill him unless he kills them first.
Spider-Man does not exist in the world of Madame Web—or, rather, he doesn’t exist yet. Cassie’s best friend is Ben Parker, Peter Parker’s famous father figure. As played by Adam Scott, this Ben is not quite Uncle Ben yet, but his sister Mary (Emma Roberts) is pregnant with Peter. (The woman who will become Aunt May is alluded to as somebody Ben’s started seeing but is not named or seen, and Peter’s dad Richard is similarly unseen, as he’s away on business.)
The movie ends with Ezekiel’s final confrontation with Cassie and the three teens while Mary is giving birth. The bad guy nearly blows up the car that they’re all in while Ben is driving them to the hospital but Cassie saves the day—and in doing so saves the future Spider-Man. Ben, the man who will eventually raise Peter and teach him about great power and great responsibility, is present for Peter’s birth. Peter’s name is conspicuously, deliberately, never clearly said in the movie, but we all know that’s Peter Parker.
When one of the teens notes that Ben’s going to have all the fun of having a baby without any of the responsibility because he’s an uncle rather than a father, Cassie quips that she wouldn’t be so sure of that. It’s a fun little nod to his future, but it also implies that Cassie knows that Peter’s birth parents are going to die. Grim!
Presumably, in 16 or so years after the end of the movie, baby Peter Parker will have grown up and he’ll get bit by a radioactive spider and Ben will be murdered, leading to his crime-fighting career. Never mind that, according to the fiction of Madame Web, there might already be four spider-themed superheroes already active by the time Peter comes of age. All of the Spider-Women characters (Julia Cornwall, Mattie Franklin, and Anya Corazon) gained their Spidey-like powers through different, unrelated means than Peter Parker did in the comics. But, all of them were so clearly inspired by the original Spider-Man—both in fiction and in reality—that it feels a little odd to have them fighting crime in costumes that resemble Spider-Man’s.
The future version of Spider-Man, Madame Web suggests, will grow up in a world where his uncle was nearly killed by a villain with spider powers wearing what essentially looks like an evil Spider-Man suit. In Madame Web’s world, Spider-Man—the original Web-Slinger—is derivative. But that doesn’t matter so much because Madame Web is functionally in its own continuity.
Madame Web is not connected to the MCU or any other Spider-Verse (…kind of)
Ezekiel (Tahar Rahim) in Madame Web.Courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment
Having Peter Parker appear in the movie but as a baby is hardly the most egregious shoehorning-in of Spider-Man in one of Sony’s Spider-Man-less cinematic universe. The trailer for Morbius features shots of the title character walking by Spider-Man graffiti that is not actually there in the final film and was inserted just to stir up false hope that Morbius would have a real Spider-Man connection. (That film’s post-credits sequence brings the MCU’s Vulture into the Morbius world, and he seems to have a grudge against Spider-Man despite there being no evidence that he really exists in this universe.) Spider-Man doesn’t seem to exist within the world of the Venom movies but the titular Symbiote knows who he is thanks to multiversal connections, and Tom Hardy’s character briefly travels to the MCU due to the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Madame Web is different because it implies that Spider-Man will indeed exist in this film’s universe, as the film is set in 2003 and Peter Parker has been born. However, while the film’s choice of time period makes it conceivable that it could act as a prequel to another established Spider-Man spin-off universe, the facts don’t quite fit. It’s certainly not part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (which, again, is owned by Disney rather than Sony, the studio behind Madame Web). Dakota Johnson is not running around a world in which Captain America and Tony Stark exist. There’s no evidence that Madame Web or the three Spider-Women—none of whom have actually obtained their superpowers by the time the film ends—exist in what would be Morbius or Venom’s past, but there’s not really any evidence they don’t exist, either. That makes Madame Web functionally a standalone film regardless of its theoretical potential to be a prequel.
And yet, technically Madame Web is part of the larger Spider-Man cinematic multiverse—which is set to continue with a third Venom movie and a Kraven the Hunter film in Sony’s films, another animated Spider-Verse film, and there’s talk that Tom Holland might return for a fourth Spider-Man film in the Disney-owned MCU canon. Madame Web doesn’t directly connect to any other Spider movies, past or future, but it easily could. Between Across the Spider-Verse (which featured a live-action cameo from a Venom actor) and Spider-Man: No Way Home bringing Andrew Garfield and Toby Maguire’s Spider-Men into the MCU’s continuity, there’s lots of precedent for any and all Spider-Man content to be just a multiversal portal and a crossover away from being canon. So, while Madame Web doesn’t have any real connections to any other Spider-Man movie, it’s not not connected to them. You don’t need to have Madame Web’s ability to see the future to understand Spider-Man movies, but it would certainly help.
The U.S. Senate on Tuesday passed a $95.3 billion military aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan after a rare all-night session. While the bill’s passage marks a win for the Biden Administration after months of GOP resistance to the $60 billion intended for Ukraine, the bill faces a steep hurdle clearing the Republican-controlled House. That resistance is threatening to undermine what has defined America’s role in the world—and our national identity—since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared us the “great arsenal of democracy” in 1940.
A Ukrainian friend and classmate recently asked me why any American joins the military when they’re surrounded by Mexico and Canada, two countries that pose no threat of invasion. As a U.S. Army veteran, I found this question funny at first; the likelihood of our neighbors attacking never crossed my mind, let alone factored into my decision.
It then got me thinking. Why isn’t that something I ever considered? Why do so many Americans decide to put their lives at risk by joining the military when there hasn’t been a war fought on U.S. territory in over a century? There are practical explanations like pay, healthcare, and tuition benefits, but when service members are asked why they joined, “patriotism” and a “sense of duty” rank at the top.
This sense of duty is tied to serving abroad. Members of the military aren’t alone in their motivation for international service. Private citizens in America donate more money overseas per capita than any other nation. The very identity of the U.S. is rooted in the belief that when we perceive a global injustice, it’s our responsibility to intervene, and crucially, that we’re capable of succeeding when we do.
This belief is anchored to World War II, when America first emerged as the world’s premier superpower. We established our global position by declaring it our moral imperative to prevent fascism from consuming the world and using our unparalleled resources to make that happen. It’s the era we proudly return to most frequently in pop-culture, films, and television. We’ve affectionately named those who lived through the period the “greatest generation.” This is the American ideal we’ve clung to ever since, built on three foundational pillars: a clear moral cause, the hubris to believe it’s our responsibility to act, and the unmatched resources needed to realize our vision.
Many of our geopolitical efforts since have maintained the same facade—superior resources and the cross-continental exertion of our will—but have lacked the clearcut moral raison d’être behind them. Our misguided nation-building efforts in Vietnam and Afghanistan, and our invasion of Iraq based on the false pretense of WMDs, all underscore a lacking sense of purpose. The war in Ukraine is different. An outright evil Russian conquest has killed tens of thousands as Moscow seeks to dismantle democracy and reassume hegemonic control of its neighbor. Ukraine isn’t asking for manpower, just the means to fully repel an invasion that has captured nearly 20% of its land.
While traveling across Ukraine last summer with a nonprofit aid group, the sight of a small town in eastern Ukraine hammered into me the indiscriminate nature of Russia’s onslaught. Two kids rode bikes in the decimated town center. One boy told our group of volunteers what each surrounding building once was—apartments, a hospital, a town administrative office—and where he was when Russian artillery rained down. His family survived. Many of his neighbors did not. European nations are providing crucial assistance to hold Russia at bay and avoid their own similar fate, but to stop Russia’s advance and maintain its sovereignty, Ukraine needs military resources only the U.S. can provide.
But we are at risk of abandoning Ukraine, and with it, our NATO partners. Donald Trump’s “America First” ideology permeates the far-right argument that supporting Ukraine puts “America last.” Matt Gaetz’s “Ukraine Fatigue Resolution” claims aid packages are “weakening United States readiness.” Rand Paul asserts that there is “no end in sight” to the war and that we can’t afford to support Ukraine in an ”endless quagmire.” JD Vance concedes we must “accept Ukraine is going to have to cede some territory to the Russians.” If these lawmakers want to make America great again, could their fatalistic rhetoric stray further from what defined the “greatest generation”?
The rationalizations for opposing further aid have been refuted time and again; we’ve provided less than 2% of our massive federal budget, and a majority of the money designated for Ukraine in fact stays in the U.S. Our support has helped Ukraine deplete a significant portion of our longest standing foe’s materiel and personnel, without the loss of one American soldier. What’s most alarming about Republicans’ resistance to Ukraine aid is not the tired financial arguments, it’s the defeatist resignation that the U.S. is no longer willing and able to step up when we’re needed.
As the world approaches a boiling point and U.S. interests become increasingly threatened in the Middle East, Europe, and the Asia Pacific, demonstrating unwavering commitment to our allies should be a no-brainer. Yet Republican lawmakers have played political games to block aid packages, and nearly half of their voters now feel we’re giving Ukraine too much support. Russia appears content to suffer casualties, biding its time until Ukraine exhausts the means to defend itself.
Much of the world still believes the U.S. is a force for global peace and stability. In the hospital recovering after Russian artillery shells landed near his trench, Yurii, a Ukrainian soldier and newly minted grandfather, told me last August that American backing matters “because we feel that we are not alone, that truth is on our side.” Ceasing support for Ukraine would not just spell a moral and geopolitical failure, it would serve as the final straw, officially pronouncing the death of the American mythos we have clung to for generations.
One of the hallmarks of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is its unpredictability. Flares come and go, often with little rhyme or reason. Especially for people with moderate-to-severe IBD, most conventional forms of treatment—namely prescription drugs—are not enough to prevent flares or symptoms entirely.
In an effort to better control their IBD, many people with the condition turn to complementary and alternative treatments, also known as “CAM.” Definitions of CAM vary, but it usually includes herbal medicines or supplements, mind-body techniques like meditation, and Eastern medicine practices such as acupuncture. By some estimates, up to 60% of IBD patients have attempted to treat their condition with one or more of these CAM approaches. A broader definition of CAM could also include lifestyle adjustments revolving around sleep, stress, diet, or exercise—many of which have been embraced by gastroenterologists and other IBD clinicians.
While there was a time when most doctors would have discouraged CAM approaches to IBD, experts say that’s no longer the case. “People don’t necessarily tell their doctor because they feel it may not be welcome news, but I think many doctors are more open to it than people would think,” says Dr. Joshua Korzenik, an IBD specialist and gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He says IBD care providers understand their patients’ need to explore CAM treatments, and he doesn’t discourage them. “As much as the medicines we have are amazing, they have their risks and side-effects,” he says. “We all want to find something in the alternative realm that is effective with very little toxicity.”
Despite the huge interest in CAM treatments for IBD—among both patients and their care providers—a lot of these approaches have not been thoroughly studied. “For many of these alternative treatments, the data just aren’t there for or against them,” says Dr. Joseph Feuerstein, an IBD researcher and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “This is why a lot of doctors don’t bring these up with their patients,” he adds. “They’re not going to recommend something without sufficient evidence.” However, some CAM approaches are supported by solid research. Others appear to be at the very least safe, and may be worth a shot. “It’s important to bring these up with your doctor,” Feuerstein says. Many IBD specialists will have some familiarity with the latest CAM research, and they can help patients identify safe and evidence-supported options while avoiding those that may be risky—or just a waste of time and money.
Here, you’ll find a breakdown of the most popular or promising CAM treatments. From acupuncture to yoga, here’s what the latest science has to say.
Supplements, botanicals, and herbal therapies
Humans have used botanical medicines for thousands of years, and experts say there are multiple herbs and botanicals that have shown promise for the treatment of IBD. “Probably the best studied with the most good data is curcumin, which is found in turmeric root,” Korzenik says. Research has found that curcumin has potent anti-inflammatory effects, and that it can significantly reduce disease activity among people with IBD, particularly those with ulcerative colitis. “I’ve had a lot of patients use it and have success,” Korzenik says. Chamomile, Indian frankincense, and wheatgrass juice are some other botanical treatments that research has found to be safe and possibly beneficial among people with IBD. Exploring these (with a care provider’s supervision) may be worthwhile.
Cannabis is another plant that has undergone a lot of scientific scrutiny for the treatment of IBD. “Marijuana comes up a lot,” Feuerstein says. “Crohn’s is one of the conditions that can qualify a person for a medical cannabis card, though long-term safety and efficacy studies are lacking.” Some research comparing marijuana cigarettes containing THC (the psychoactive substance in cannabis) to a THC-free placebo found that smoking marijuana with THC led to significantly more symptom improvements. “Trials show improvement in symptoms and subjective disease severity, and anecdotally I can say patients tell me they feel better,” he says. “That said, the studies have shown consistently there is no improvement in healing or underlying inflammation.” In other words, cannabis seems to help manage IBD symptoms in some people, but it is not treating the underlying disease. (Due to the lack of safety data, Feuerstein says he does not specifically recommend this treatment to his patients.)
Probiotics and prebiotics are another hot area of interest, both among researchers and IBD patients. These are substances that may support the growth or spread of healthy gut bacteria. Probiotics are themselves packed with “good” bacteria, while prebiotics are foods or supplements that provide sustenance for healthy bacteria. “I think that, conceptually, probiotics and prebiotics make sense,” Feuerstein says. “The problem is that it’s not one-size-fits-all.” Each type of probiotic or prebiotic is different, and so each may act differently in a given person.
There’s now a mountain of research showing that the community of microorganisms that live in the human gut—often referred to as the gut microbiome—is critical to the health and functioning of the gastrointestinal tract. These microorganisms also help regulate inflammation and other aspects of immune functioning. However, experts today have only a very hazy grasp of what a healthy microbiome looks like, and using probiotics or prebiotics to alter the microbiome in ways that can treat IBD appears to be a highly individualized process—meaning what works for one person may not work for another.
Feuerstein also says that supplement quality control and consistency is a major issue. “You could buy a type of bacteria that studies have linked to benefits, but depending on the manufacturer, two products could be completely different,” he says. “These products aren’t regulated by the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration.]” It’s also not clear whether benefits people derive from these products are durable or curative. On the other hand, research suggests probiotics and prebiotics are relatively safe. “What I tell people is if you’re going to try something like this, talk with your doctor first and try it for at least three months,” Feuerstein says. He also recommends sticking with one product to improve the odds that what you’re giving your gut is consistent. “Changing your microbiome takes a commitment, so you have to give it time to work,” he adds.
Not long ago, Western medicine tended to treat the mind and body as separate. Diseases of the gut were thought to have little to do with the state or health of a person’s mind. But thanks in part to work on the connection between psychological stress and physical illness, medical science now has a greater appreciation of the interrelationship between mental and physical health. There’s good evidence that psychotherapy and other forms of mental health treatment can help people with IBD. Likewise, many clinicians now recommend therapeutic mind-body practices for these conditions.
“Stress seems to play a huge role in IBD,” Feuerstein says. Stress can contribute to inflammation and microbiome disturbance, research shows, and periods of high stress can trigger IBD flares. “We encourage approaches that can help people control stress.”
Research has found that many popular mind-body techniques for stress reduction—namely mindfulness practices (including mindfulness-based stress reduction), yoga, tai chi, and breath work—are all associated with quality-of-life improvements among people with IBD. “One yoga class of 90 minutes per week has a significant impact on the course of the disease, as well as on symptoms,” says Dr. Jost Langhorst, professor and chair of integrative gastroenterology at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany.
Acupuncture also has a fair amount of research supporting both its safety and efficacy among people with IBD. “It’s something we use, and we know it’s something we can add on top of conventional medicine to help people improve their quality of life and control their symptoms,” Langhorst says.
The role of diet and exercise
At Langhorst’s clinic, he and his colleagues prioritize a “multimodal” approach to IBD care. That means they attempt to treat IBD with a range of therapies that target not just the gut, but also the patient’s overall health and well-being. “These are conditions that can be influenced by a lot of lifestyle factors,” he says. “We know that strengthening a person’s overall health makes a big difference.”
To that end, he says that improving a patient’s diet and exercise habits is something he and his team often prioritize. “Diet is of enormous importance,” he says. “We know things like ultra-processed foods or high portions of red meat, sugar, or alcohol contribute to a higher burden of disease.” However, offering very precise dietary advice can be tricky. Most dietary guidelines for people with IBD recommend “limiting” the items Langhorst mentioned, but they stop short of offering more specific recommendations because the truth is this is going to vary from person to person. “We tell everyone to avoid artificial sweeteners as they can cause diarrhea, but in general it’s hard for us to identify diets or food that are triggering a person’s flares,” says Harvard’s Feuerstein. “Until we know more, it’s probably best to eat a healthy balanced diet versus any specific fad diet.”
Exercise comes in for many of the same hedges and caveats. Every expert recognizes its benefits, but offering very specific recommendations is tough based on the existing research. A 2019 research review in the journal BMC Gastroenterology summed up the state of the science quite well: “Exercise interventions in IBD patients can be assumed to be safe and beneficial for the patients‘ overall-health, and IBD specific physical and psychosocial symptoms. But there is still a high demand for more thoroughly conducted studies.”
There are many treatment options that fall into the CAM bucket. While all of the remedies mentioned above are supported by research, there are plenty more that could ultimately prove to be beneficial—or bogus. How is a person with IBD supposed to navigate this space? Experts say that asking for your care provider’s help is the best approach. Not only can your care team help you identify safe and potentially helpful complementary treatments, but they can also steer you away from things that may be dangerous.
“Everyone in my field is getting away from this picture of IBD where you come in, you take your medications, and that’s it,” Korzenik says. “We’re all looking at the broader context of the disease and the effects of reducing stress, getting more sleep, getting more exercise, etcetera.”
Finally, experts stress that if you’re going to attempt complementary treatments, they should truly be complementary. In other words, don’t abandon the medications or other treatments your IBD care team has prescribed. “For people who want to do something more for themselves, in addition to the standard medical therapies, I think conceptually a lot of CAM make sense and are worth exploring,” Feuerstein says. “Just be sure to bring them up with your doctor.”
“You are allergic to your oral chemotherapy,” explains my oncology team at a recent appointment. “We are going to try a newer drug,” I am on my fourth attempt to find an oral treatment suitable for both my body and my cancer, so that I can maintain a remission that took three years and a stem cell transplant to achieve. “We want to get ahead of it before it gets ahead of us.” In my headphones, Weezer achingly croons, “Say it ain’t so, your drug is a heartbreaker.”
Since being diagnosed with phase three chronic myeloid leukemia in 2017, finding oral chemotherapy that my body agrees with has been a turbulent experience. While these targeted therapies are often considered a more humane method of leukemia treatment, they have almost always brutally interrupted my life. From bouts of nerve pain lacerating through my limbs, leaving me agonized and frozen in place for days on end, to medically induced pulmonary hypertension, to muscle spasms knocking heavily against old bone marrow biopsy sites making daily tasks feel near impossible, every new prescription almost always felt like my cancer and my body were teaming up to say, “Nice try, but absolutely not.”
In 2020, thinking I had discovered an “out,” I believed a stem cell transplant could cast out my cancer permanently. To be worthy of such a “blessing,” I fashioned myself into the perfect patient: tracking symptoms, pouring hours into meticulous research, maintaining “positivity” through chemotherapy and radiation, performing physical therapy, becoming a solitary island to avoid COVID-19, and jumping through exhaustive hoops to “move on” from the terrible thing inside me.
Three years after a transplant, I am still here, four failed oral chemotherapies later, standing before the gaping mouth of a familiar hell, being handed yet another drug, so “all the good work” of the last six years will not go undone. No one treating me considers what it means to actually live through all this. It is easy to prescribe a drug because the enemy is always cancer. In their eyes, if I say “no” to treatment, I am saying “yes” to dying; I am saying “yes” to the enemy in my blood.
In her seminal bookIllness as Metaphor, Susan Sontag notes that we have historically witnessed the polemical function of cancer to describe what is diabolical. From the “war on cancer,” equating cancer treatment to a “battle” intended to pulverize “invasive” cells, to Trotsky calling Stalinism “the cancer of Marxism,” to John Dean explaining Watergate to Nixon as a “cancer within close range” when discussing the presidency, the disease has been a means of invoking anger, disgust, and paranoia. It has been a means to contextualize what is evil and in need of extermination.
When musicians such as Hozier sing, “When that part of you was ripped away, a grip taking hold, like a cancer that grows… I know my heart would break,” cancer is the agent of despair. When bands like Rage Against the Machine belt, “The rungs torn from the ladder, can’t reach the tumor, one god, one market, one truth, one consumer,” cancer is the barometer of capitalism Cancer remains a vacuous abyss. Yet this mystification continues to obscure the realities felt most by patients—that its metaphors inform our experiences and there is little thought of how we, as patients, wish to live with dignity and illness.
Because of the societal implications that accompany cancer, I subconsciously regarded myself as a bad person. I viewed my diagnosis at 23 years old as a rightful karmic debt, or a curse from a God who was choosing to forsake me. On Instagram, a stranger sent me a message implying I had to be “so hateful” to have such a lethal illness residing in my bones. Leukemia ushered in a host of thoughtless comments where family and strangers alike mourned my existence even though I was—and am—very much alive. Over a phone call, my estranged grandmother laments, “We had such high hopes for you. Now look at you,” implying my cancer had made me a lost cause. It became clear to me that if I wanted to be treated with a shred of empathy by anyone around me, I would have to completelyembody the antithesis of every negative stereotype people maintained about cancer. In their eyes, if I performed goodness almost to the point of being a caricature, my virtuousness meant I deserved to live.
As a fat, Black, queer, non-binary person, I have never been afforded romanticism. But cancer quickly made me into a one-person circus, foregoing my own identity, emotions, and fears to embody the complete opposite of whatever negative implications illness carves into everyone’s psyche. Cancer patients, especially Black patients, have to navigate a healthcare system where we are demanded to perform being a “good patient” in order to receive proper treatment. I have been forced to code-switch to sound white, or fragile, or non-threatening. On days my fatigue and chronic pain have felt unbearable and surreal, I have had to cast myself as kind because my symptoms alone did not make me human enough. I have overcompensated by appealing to the moral sensibility of medical professionals in order to be taken seriously; for my loved ones not to be disgusted by my illness and by association, me. To echo Sontag, “Nothing is more punitive than to give a disease a meaning, that meaning invariably being a moralistic one.” Cancer has become such a universal touchstone, that nearly everyone has been impacted by it, but almost no one knows how to confront it wholly and humanely.
Particularly in the U.S., we live in a society that benefits from reducing the complexity of illness to the false notion that health is a personal responsibility. It casts a shadow, deflecting us from confronting the sociopolitical realities that genuinely contribute to the health, livelihood, and treatment of not only cancer patients, but sick and disabled people as a whole. And to confront this reality head on, it is important to consider how the medical industrial complex, which every cancer patient navigates, has swelled in size because its foundation is built upon centuries worth of experimentation, murder, and exploitation of Black people.
Medical ethicist Harriet A. Washington’s book, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, illuminates health as a function of oppression. There is a historical precedence for this: In the 19th century, doctors like Samuel Cartwright pathologized enslaved Africans’ rightful desire to escape bondage into psychological disorders like “drapetomania” to justify slavery as a corrective necessity, enacted by plantation owners for Black people’s well-being. Since then, health has remained at the helm of a political strategy to oppress marginalized communities through the continual, intentional falsification of data. Consider the Tuskegee Study, the U.S. Public Health Service’s attempt to “prove” Black people were a “syphilis-soaked race” by withholding treatment. Consider, too, that “…between 1992 and 1997, New York City’s New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) and Columbia University’s Lowenstein Center for the Study and Prevention of Childhood Disruptive Behavior Disorders conducted research studies that sought to establish a link between genetics and violence.” These predatory studies were conducted in an ultimately fruitless effort to correlate young Black and Brown boys with extraordinary violence–coincidentally at the same time as Joe Biden’s introduction of the Crime Bill in 1994.
This intentionally subversive propaganda has always pitted Black people at odds with a mythological notion of “health,” further fueling racist malpractice, negligence, and violence by the medical industry. The tangible outcomes are evidenced in statistics like the maternal mortality rates of Black women being “2.6 times higher than those of white women,” according to a CDC study in 2021, or COVID-19 infection rates, estimating that “…in the U.S., Black people were 3.57 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than white people.” The outcomes of this egregious disregard have also manifested in my life: In 2017, I stumbled into a Los Angeles emergency department, unable to walk without assistance, with symptoms like vertigo, bruising, a distended spleen, and compromised vision, and I was nearly denied care because I “looked like a drug addict.” In actuality, my veins were inflating with 666,000 cancerous white blood cells.
I admit surviving cancer has not been a dignified process. Frantically attempting to live in “goodness,” I felt as though I was Icarus falling to the bottom of an ocean. I believed that if I, alone, did everything “right”—managing my medications and treatment plan without assistance, assigning a “greater purpose” to my diagnosis, turning the meaning of life into a frenetic ode to productivity and workaholism, and ignoring serious warning signs of physical, mental, and emotional burnout—then I would achieve health as a reward: a “well-earned” invincibility. Now, I have a grounded clarity that I, and other cancer patients, have consistently been failed by negligent,willfully violent systems that demand a culture of silence and spectacle-making of survivorship.
I am no longer interested in self-blame as self-empowerment. I am interested in naming what the powers that be refuse to address that, as disability activist Patty Berne wrote in her working draft manifesto Disability Justice, “we are in a global system that is incompatible with life.” Illness does not render me invalid or worthless, nor should I be denied understanding and self-determination. I refuse to live up to standards where I must barter all my self-regard for the bare minimum. I can no longer force myself to overlook larger systems playing critical roles in intentionally failing, neglecting, and impacting our health and our communities.
At the follow-up to my recent appointment, I relay to my oncology team that, at this moment, I have no interest in treatment. At this moment, it is a measured risk I am willing to take in order to buy some moments of repose. Call me hysterical, but I am incredibly lucid as I enter an autonomous wilderness of finding adequate support in all parts of my life and embracing interdependence. Call me the bad patient who listens to my body, who knows on a cellular level, I require a sabbatical from an industry mainly invested in profit over livelihood. I do not have a death wish; I want to live—just not like this. Embracing life with cancer and other disabilities does not mean I must forgo myself. If that means my leftover cancer cells become more resilient, if that means undoing all that “good work,” well, it was “good work” that was done unsustainably.
I am a cautionary tale, if you will, but being a cautionary tale does not make me a lost cause. I did not just believe myself to be a star, like Icarus; I am one, and fatigued, asking neighboring constellations for a burst of light. If I do fail, then I fail, but know that none of it is failure to me. It is not a war waged against me; I did not beckon some wake of vultures: cancer is an illness, and my body is just a body. There is no meaning. There is no metaphor.
At the age of 12, I experienced female genital mutilation (FGM). This is a generations-old practice in my community in rural western Kenya. It is believed to mark the transition from childhood to adulthood. After a girl is cut, she is considered a woman. She is often married shortly afterwards.
But as we mark the International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM on Feb. 6, we must reflect on the sad truth that it is not just something that happens in faraway countries like my native Kenya. It has been documented in 92 nations. It happens everywhere, from Africa to Asia, Europe, Latin America, and even the United States.
Both FGM and child marriage are rooted in gender inequality. At their core is a belief that girls and women are inherently less valuable and capable than boys and men. We are meant to stay home and be traditional wives and mothers. So our worth is measured not by our own talents, dreams, and potential, but by the number of cows and the bride price our family will receive in exchange for our hand in marriage.
I did not want to be cut. But even more so, I did not want to be a child bride, to go live in a stranger’s home, to live a life full of chores. I saw the hard life that my mom lived, that most every woman from my community lived. But, at school, I had women as teachers. They wore nice clothes and lived what seemed to me to be a glamorous life. A life of freedom. A life of their own choosing.
I wanted to be like my teachers, which meant continuing my education. I knew what I had to do: convince my father to break off my long-standing engagement to let me stay in school. Once girls in my community are married, they are forced to drop out of school to take care of the household and start a family. If I didn’t do something, that would have been my fate, too.
Sadly, FGM gave me leverage. If I stood my ground and refused to undergo FGM my father would be embarrassed before the entire community. So, I told him that I would agree to be cut and abide by one culturally significant practice, but only if he broke off my engagement and let me continue my education. He agreed.
FGM is a traumatizing experience. There is no anesthesia. You are told that it will make you a woman and that you cannot cry. You show how brave you are by going through it. Your clitoris is cut. You bleed. Some of us faint. The risk of infection is high. Those of us who survive have difficulties giving birth, suffer from cysts and pain, and we carry psychological trauma for years.
To date, many of the efforts to end FGM—while well-intentioned—have lacked the sophistication to successfully end the practice. Take, for instance, the public commitment that Kenya’s then-President, Uhuru Kenyatta, made in 2019 to end FGM by 2022. While the commitment was a positive development, it failed to tackle the root causes that perpetuate the practice.
There is a better way, one I pursued as a survivor.
In my home village of Enoosaen, I created a school for girls in 2009 that takes in students starting in fourth grade—which is just before the age when girls in my community are cut. As a condition of enrollment, parents must commit that their daughters will not undergo FGM or be married off as children.
I knew that a school could be a powerful force for change. I could ensure that the girls in my school received the support and resources to carve out a different, more fulfilling future for themselves than the one that tradition dictated. I could ensure that they were specifically taught about sexual and reproductive health, including the dangers of FGM and that it is illegal in Kenya. I could create a similar curriculum to be taught in other schools—for both girls and boys. And as an education leader and a trusted local, I was in conversation with the broader community: parents, elders, chiefs, and religious leaders—consistently prodding them to understand why FGM needed to end, and encouraging them to speak out and change the minds of others.
It has been nearly 15 years since my school first opened. Our long-term, community-based persuasion is working. Some of the most entrenched supporters of FGM have turned into some of our greatest champions.
But perhaps the biggest impact comes from witnessing the success of the girls who have gone through my school and are now young adults in the community. You see, our intervention was not only about FGM. It was a long-term investment in the holistic needs of our girls. We offered the best academic instruction possible, and we took care of all of their other needs: food, physical and mental health, scholarships for further education, professional development, and more. Today, they are role models that are changing even more minds.
My hope is that we can scale and replicate this approach not just in Kenya but around the world. But to do so organizations like mine need more funding and assistance.
When I was a girl, FGM, child marriage, and a life of chores was our only option. Today, the girls who have gone through my programs are proving that a girl does not need to undergo FGM to get married and be embraced by the community. There are other, far better options. And the successful lives they lead—these are educated, employed, capable women after all—inspire a new generation of young girls and their parents to think differently. Their example is catalyzing a collective realization that FGM needs to be left in the past and that there is nothing a girl cannot do if only we invest and believe in her.
All around us seems to be conflict. The Global Conflict Tracker lists 27 conflicts around the world today; a sample of 1,490 leaders polled by the World Economic Forum said the biggest societal risk this year was polarization; and even Taylor Swift has been targeted for fear she’ll endorse President Biden and sway the 2024 election. Why can’t we just all get along?
Surprisingly, we do. Humans are almost ant-like in the scale and range of our cooperation and conflict of all kinds are less frequent and devastating than they were in the past. We take it for granted but we should be amazed that people from so many diverse places across the globe can live, work, and even commute on crammed trains and planes in peace. A plane full of chimpanzees who didn’t know each other would be a plane full of dead and maimed apes, blood and body parts strewn through the aisles, as primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy reflected in her widely acclaimed book, Mothers and Others.
The mechanisms that sustain cooperation are now well understood. The most ancient of these is “inclusive fitness,” or cooperation among family and small tribes through shared genes. Ongoing cooperation for mutual benefit, or “direct reciprocity,” is the basis of friendships and networks. This mechanism, too, is ancient and found across the animal kingdom. Mutual benefit reaches our extended networks through reputation and shared norms—the basis of cooperation among those who share religion, politics, and other group memberships. This is a uniquely human form of cooperation facilitated by our ability to gossip and keep track of everyone around us, even strangers.
But there are always risks of conflict, both large and small, breaking out. Fortunately, the science of cooperation reveals what it takes for mere tolerance to become friendship and comity. For them to truly become us.
Here are 3 lessons:
1. Competition helps us discover mutual benefit
Ultimately, cooperation flourishes when people expect to get more by working with many others than by themselves or in a smaller group—a maxim so ubiquitous across all facets of life that I call it the “Law of Cooperation.” That doesn’t mean all groups achieve this optimal scale. When we start a company, form an alliance, or try to make peace with an enemy, we don’t always know in advance the reward, if the other party will do their part, or if they’ll be fair in sharing the reward. Cooperation depends not only on actual rewards, but people’s expectations. So many groups are trapped by historical grievances, false beliefs about the other side, or what can be gained by working together. It is competition that breaks us out of these suboptimal traps.
In the 11th century, most trade was facilitated by known locals or based on trust through family ties. But competition led to experimentation. Groups like the Maghribi Jewish Traders tried creating mechanisms of sharing reputations and informal community enforcement. Their experiment succeeded in expanding cooperation to an extended network of trust and trade beyond family ties to those throughout the Mediterranean, from Spain to Sicily to Egypt and Palestine.
Perceived mutual benefit is why trade between two countries reduces the probability of war. You don’t want to fight with your factory, unless you have another factory. Similarly, the sharing of knowledge empowered cooperation during the Industrial Revolution. Industrialization and tapping into a vast new energy source in the form of fossil fuels led to large factories, the expansion of education to create a workforce for those factories, and educated workers forming coalitions and companies to compete for the spoils.
2. Cooperation undermines cooperation
Corruption and civil conflict are often thought of as a puzzle but they are less puzzling than well functioning institutions and peace. Corruption is often the oldest, most stable form of cooperation—the ties that bind us into families, friends, and networks—relabeled as nepotism and cronyism. My colleagues and I experimentally demonstrated how the possibility of “direct reciprocity”—in effect bribery—undermines well functioning institutions and how cultural exposure to bribery can increase its prevalence. In the West, these can often manifest as lobbyists, special interest groups, and revolving doors. The most effective anti-corruption strategies are those that undermine these cooperation mechanisms—such as banning revolving doors and creating cooling off periods—to undermine alliances and prevent people from cooperating to undermine the system.
In The WEIRDest people in the world, Joseph Henrich argues that the Catholic Church’s banning of cousin marriage and other reforms to European family practices that began in the 4th century undermined European tribes and created the modern nuclear family. This in turn weakened nepotism and set the stage for non-family corporations and more successful liberal democracies in Europe. The values created by that shift, such as individualism, are spreading worldwide through education, urbanization, and jobs that take people away from their families.
3. Perceptions can create reality
The U.S. economy is currently booming, but there is a lag on the rise in consumer sentiment. The perception of a deteriorating standard of living—unsurprising given high interest rates and price increases on a range of goods, from essential items and services to homes—have triggered zero sum perceptions. Our zero-sum psychology leads us to believe that there is not enough for everyone. This in turn causes people to rely more on their immediate networks at the expense of others, increasing political divides. Regardless of reality, even the perception of zero-sum conditions can create that zero-sum reality as people choose not to work with one another.
Well intentioned attempts to help us get along or redress past injustice can further divide us by reifying subgroups at the expense of a larger group. The ethnic and racial boxes we tick for college, scholarship, and job applications reify categories such as African American, Asian American, Latino, and white. These categories are choices. They mask other possible unifying groups. Does a wealthy non-white child of immigrants, such as former Harvard president Claudine Gay, the daughter of wealthy Haitian immigrants, have more in common with Black Walmart workers who might tick the same box than affluent White colleagues? Is focusing on ancestry and ignoring other forms of privilege the best way to close racial wealth gaps?
Evolutionary theory and experimental evidence reveals that race is not a natural category. We evolved alongside people who looked like us. And social categories we create and reify affect perceptions of who is them and and who is us. When combined with zero-sum perceptions, this is a recipe for polarization and conflict.
The science of cooperation reveals that we can get along, but that it’s easy to slip backwards into conflict. The danger today is that because the scale of cooperation is now in the hundreds of millions, if not billions, the consequences of potential conflict is higher than it’s ever been. By revealing the win-wins through cooperation for mutual benefit, by undermining rather than reifying subgroup differences, and by talking to one another across our divides, we remind ourselves of what we share and what we can achieve by working together.
In early January, Ukrainian drones blew up a gas terminal near St. Petersburg. In December, Ukrainian operatives even managed to set off explosives on Russian railway lines deep in Siberia, hundreds of miles from the war. We’ll see more of these attacks inside Russia as fear rises in Kyiv that Ukraine is running out of ways to put Russian forces on the back foot on the battlefield.
The attacks are more a sign of Ukraine’s fears than of its strength. After hundreds of thousands of casualties and the displacement of millions of people, President Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals have new reasons to doubt the staying power of the Western support on which a Ukrainian victory, in any form, will depend. Aware that voters in America, its key military ally, and Europe, both a military and financial backer, are increasingly conflicted about whether Ukraine can ever evict Russian invaders from their trenches and recapture the 18% of territory they occupy, Kyiv is rightly worried.
Even if Congress approves more military aid for 2024, this will probably be the last package from Washington until after the November election. If Donald Trump wins, Ukrainians know he will drastically cut aid. The outlook in Europe is only slightly better. German budgetary problems, growing Hungarian opposition, and a lack of E.U. leadership will make it hard to fill the gap in military help from Washington over the medium term.
In the meantime, as Vladimir Putin shifts Russia’s economy onto a war footing, Ukraine knows it must mobilize and train hundreds of thousands of new recruits. Kyiv is considering mobilizing 500,000 additional troops. Even if that proves possible, it isn’t sustainable in a war against an invader with a much bigger population and economy. That’s why Kyiv is fast becoming more desperate. It’s doing its best to scale up its domestic defense production, especially of drones for the battlefield and for hitting targets inside Russia.
That’s where the danger grows for those not directly involved in the war. Zelensky is already taking bigger risks to turn the war around and maintain his political standing at home, including more aggressive attacks against targets inside Russia and occupied areas of Ukraine. It means a higher likelihood of targeted killings of Russian officials connected to the war, and frequent strikes with drones and missiles in Crimea and on Russian military and economic infrastructure, possibly including oil and grain facilities on the Black Sea that could again disrupt global markets. New attacks are also likely on the Kerch Strait bridge, which links Crimea to the Russian mainland. That, in turn, would provoke more intensive Russian attacks against Ukrainian cities. Any of these attacks—and there are many possible targets—risks a retaliation from Putin that brings NATO more directly into the conflict. Neither Russia nor NATO wants that expansion, but wars take on a life of their own, particularly with one of the key players—in this case, Zelensky—becoming a wild card to watch.
Recently, my mother, who escaped Hungary as a young teen in 1943 as the Nazis were closing in, called me from her home in Jerusalem. She was quite agitated, asking why even Israel’s loyal friends seem to be promoting compromise on issues fundamental to its security. She begged me to speak to anyone and everyone I know, from community leaders to elected officials.
As the world marks Saturday, January 27, as the annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it is clear that my mother needs no such day. The question the Jewish people must be asking is who will benefit from a day in January, 2024, designated to remember the Holocaust?
The Holocaust deniers, including President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, many Western nations’ preferred steward of Gaza for the day after the war, and Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose country funds Hamas and the other armed groups attacking Israel and its allies on multiple fronts, will not benefit from it. They cannot commemorate something they claim never occurred.
The United Nations, which at the initiative of its Israeli delegation designated the day back in 2005 to build Holocaust awareness and prevent further acts of genocide, now deploys the lessons of the Holocaust against the Jewish people. The U.N. has yet to condemn the explicitly and admittedly genocidal acts of Hamas against Israel on October 7 while its International Court of Justice is trying Israel for genocide in Gaza. If this is the result of remembering the Holocaust, we Jews would prefer they forgot about it.
Jews surely don’t need this day. Many of us have been remembering the Holocaust every day since that dark day in October. The Holocaust is why we do not use the word “unprecedented” to describe the monstrous and unspeakable acts of cruelty committed in Be’eri and Kfar Aza, the blind hatred that drives others to destroy us even if it destroys them, and the apathy of the nations of the world who – with the notable exception of the United States and a few others – are either supporting evil or standing silently by.
For my mother, for me, and for many Jews, the Holocaust is the precedent, the comparable, the question that, since the Hamas massacres, bewildered and frightened Jews have been asking themselves and anyone who will listen. The Holocaust is why we have no naivete about the tunnel builders, hang gliders, and missile launchers who, in their unflagging genocidal pursuit of the Jews, continue to dream, plan, rearm, and reorganize. It is why we in the U.S. are so frightened by the violent tone of the ubiquitous pro-Palestinian protests and by the intimidation of Jews on campuses. We have seen this all before and shame on us if we allow ourselves to forget and fall prey once again to the empty promises of those masquerading as peacemakers and to the assumption that in the Western civilized world of course Jews will be safe.
Everyday since Oct. 7, my mother is reminded of and haunted by the delusions of her grandparents and more than a dozen uncles and aunts who naively chose not to join her parents’ escape to Palestine as the Nazi menace spread, only to be turned to ashes in Auschwitz. She often muses aloud about how my father, of blessed memory, a Holocaust survivor, would process October 7th in Israel, October 8th in Harvard, and October 9th in the UN.
But let us not cancel Holocaust Remembrance Day. Let us mark it with those who have traditionally been our friends and supporters in government and the arena of public opinion, those people we have brought year after year to Yad Vashem and other Holocaust memorials, who have wished only good for the Jewish people but who see our situation from the outside.
Although they have done much good for us, and still do mean well, it has now become obvious that they cannot possibly see the current realities as we do. These friends are now wavering, running out of patience, understandably shaken by the devastating images from Gaza and by their desperate desire to bring the hostages home, hoping against hope—as do all good people—for the imminent arrival of the blessings of peace. It is for these reasons they are urging Israel to stop the war short of achieving its critical goal of decisively destroying Hamas and its terror infrastructure.
There is a classic Jewish teaching that warns us against judging others until we stand in their place. Things look different from the sidelines than they do from the battlefield. Holocaust Remembrance Day is an opportunity for American and allied leaders and citizens to stand in our place and see Hamas, the United Nations, the ICJ, certain protestors and university leaders, and a long list of others through the eyes of Jews, the survivors of the Nazis and the Jew-haters of each and every generation, experiencing once again an all-too-familiar existential threat. To see them through the eyes of my mother.
It is also an opportunity for these allies and friends to stand in the places of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and President Franklin D. Roosevelt and of the leaders and press of the free world who failed miserably in the 1930’s and 40’s. It is the current generation’s opportunity, to do it right, to act decisively against evil by living up to the commitment made by Churchill on February 9, 1941: “Give us your faith and your blessing, and, under Providence, all will be well. We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.”
That would make Holocaust Remembrance Day 2024 meaningful for everyone, even my mother. Maybe she would finally feel like people are listening, learning from the history she lived, and will take the right actions now.
International law should restrain military aggression, help punish wrongdoers, and provide some guidance to conducting warfare ethically. In Ukraine and Gaza, international law seems to be doing none of these things. And yet these conflicts still underscore that international law is what we have and, more than ever, strengthening it must be a moral and political priority.
International law is omnipresent in public discussions of Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza. Everyone—from world leaders to the press to ordinary people on social media—speak about a state’s right to self-defense, the need to ensure war crimes are not committed, and to guarantee the jurisdictional reach of international courts when they are. Given how much international law is discussed in the context of war, we expect it to constrain its reality. But, for three reasons, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza appear to demonstrate the weakness of international law.
First, these wars have caused unimaginable horrors but world leaders have co-opted the language of law to defend them. Russia has offered legal justifications for what is evidently a war of aggression, which threatened Ukraine’s survival and has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainians, wounding and displacing many more. Israel, in contrast to Russia, has a plausible claim to be acting in self-defense. But it continues to violate the laws of war in its response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that left 1,200 people dead. Israel’s military maintains the legality of attacks that destroy hospitals, schools, and places of worship—attacks that have killed at least 25,000 people, most of them women and children. Military operations that are causing catastrophic starvation are argued to meet the rules of conducting warfare. The reality of these wars seems to suggest that international law legitimizes rather than limits violence.
Second, the International Criminal Court (ICC)—created in 1998 to hold to account those who committ war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide—prominently investigates but has not punished wrongdoing in these conflicts. The second anniversary of the Bucha massacre—which saw hundreds of Ukrainian civilians tortured, raped, and killed—is approaching but none of the perpetrators been brought to justice. The ICC’s unprecedented step of issuing an arrest warrant against a sitting head of state that is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council has barely inconvenienced Vladimir Putin. The ICC’s Prosecutor Karim Khan has spoken out against Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack as well as Israel’s use of force in Gaza. Yet the prospect of arrest warrants has not prevented indiscriminate attacks against Israel nor by it. Israel has moreover failed to meet its obligation to allow humanitarian relief into besieged Gaza. Hamas has failed to release the hostages. All of this has fueled a belief that international law is impotent.
Finally, across these two conflicts, the discussion of international law is inconsistent and in tension with common-sense ethical judgements. Despite the obvious differences between the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the Biden Administration has equated sending arms to both Ukraine and Israel as part of a global struggle between democracy and autocracy. The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has condemned Russian attacks against civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, almost in the same breath as expressing steadfast support for Israel as it destroys the last working power plants in Gaza and renders the Strip almost uninhabitable. Uncritical support for Israel fuels the charge, widespread in the Global South, that the West invokes international law only to constrain “the rest.”
When legal arguments follow political rather than ethical considerations, as the Biden Administration and European allies are doing, can law still help us make sense of the world? Ukraine and Gaza have created a crisis of confidence in the project to constrain war with international law, but dismissing it outright would be a grave mistake.
For starters, it is crucial for us to understand the purpose and scope of international law. International law does not prohibit all actions that we rightly consider abhorrent. It can’t because war cannot be waged without morally unjustified violence. If law prohibited all morally unjustified violence, it would make waging war impossible, and war would revert to being a much more dangerous law-free zone. Neither can international law “end impunity” in war, as the creators of the ICC unwisely promised. Wrongdoing pervades war, war pervades geopolitics, courts must be selective, and punishing people for violations takes time. Crucially, in domestic societies, we think of legal accountability as worthwhile even if it does not deter wrongdoing in the first place and criminals are not brought to justice. The first remedy to the crisis of confidence in international law is a more realistic understanding of what law can do in war. Law cannot turn war into anything other than a violent moral catastrophe. But international law can and does make war less awful than it would otherwise be.
That is certainly the hope many had for South Africa’s case with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of violating the genocide convention in Gaza. While the ICJ fell short of ordering a ceasefire in its preliminary ruling on Friday, it did determine that the charge of genocide was not implausible and ordered Israel to provide aid to Gazans. Whatever one makes of the ICJ ruling, it is a mistake to forgo law’s ability to prevent some morally unjustified violence because it fails to prevent all or even most of it.
A realistic understanding of international law’s limits and an appreciation for its achievements are not enough to overcome this crisis of confidence. International law needs to be strengthened. That means making international law a political priority in wartime and ensuring aid and diplomatic support are contingent on compliance, regardless of which state is skirting their obligations. Moreover, when bad actors co-opt the language of international law, they need to be called out more forcefully, whether friend or foe. When countries abuse law to justify illegal conduct, the appropriate reaction is not to dismiss the law, but to point out its misuse.
It is becoming more obvious to everyone that international law cannot fulfil all the roles most would expect of it. But the growing interest in international law also indicates an area of rare agreement: Law is relevant in war. We must build on this agreement because war without law is no alternative at all.
There are few things better for us than regular rest. Whether it’s breaks during the day, hobbies that take our mind off work, weekly sabbaths or annual vacations, routines that layer periods of work and rest help us be more productive, have more sustainable careers, and enjoy richer and more meaningful lives.
Too often, rest gets a bad rap in our always-on, work-obsessed world. It’s also the case that learning to rest well is actually hard. Why is that? And how can we rest better?
Americans has long been known for our industry and ambition, but until recently, we also recognized the value of rest. The Puritans had a famously strict work ethic, but they also took their Sundays very seriously. In 1842, Henry David Thoreau observed, “The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure;” a decade later he wrote, “A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book.” Post-Civil War captains of industry didn’t rise and grind, according to business journalist Bertie Charles Forbes: “No man goes in more whole-heartedly for sport and other forms of recreation than” industrialist Coleman du Pont, while Teddy Roosevelt “boisterously… enters into recreation” despite a busy public life. At the same time, union organizers, mass media and entertainment, and the parks movement democratized leisure: rest became a right, enshrined as much in college sports and penny arcades as in labor law. Richard Nixon, during a campaign speech in 1956, predicted that “new forms of production will evolve” to make “back-breaking toil and mind-wearying tension” a thing of the past, and “a four-day week and family life will be… enjoyed by every American.” Together, these sources paint a vision of American life in which work and leisure are partners in a good life, and “machines and electronic devices,” as Nixon called them, created more time for everyone.
But in recent decades, the world turned against rest. Globalization, the decline of unions, and the rise of gig work are factors that have created an environment in which people and companies feel compelled to work constantly The CEO, for example, who steadily worked his way up from the mailroom to the corner office has been replaced by the 20-something genius who makes billions by disrupting the system. Technology lets us carry our offices around in our pockets, and makes it almost impossible for us to disconnect from work. Even the blue-tinted glow of our screens and late-night traffic noise can have a measurable impact on the quality of our sleep. Add raising children and managing family schedules, and Thoreau’s “wide halo of ease and leisure” sounds great, but ultimately, impossible.
Early in your career, it’s easy to believe that passion and youthful energy are inexhaustible. But at some point, family demands, a health scare, or the passage of time forces you to find ways of working that rely on experience rather than raw energy, are more sustainable, and let us run marathons rather than sprints. Not everyone successfully makes the transition. But in studying everyone from Nobel laureates and emergency room nurses, I’ve found that people who are able to do the work they love for decades, rather than burn out in a few years, share a few things in common.
For people who have control over their daily schedules layer periods of “deep work,” as Cal Newport calls it, and “deliberate rest,” time to both recharge and let the creative subconscious examine problems that they haven’t been able to solve through hard work. Many great scientists, mathematicians, and composers have daily routines in which they work intensively for a couple hours, take a long break, then work a couple more—and those four or five hours give you enough time to make steady progress on your work, and come up with some new, unexpected ideas.
People in high-stress, unpredictable jobs can’t depend on such routines; but the most successful at dealing with the challenges of work rely on two other things: First, they have good boundaries between work and personal time. Second, they have serious hobbies—everything from quilting, to rebuilding classic cars, to running marathons—that are as absorbing as their work. This “deep play” illustrates another important point: the best rest is active, not just passive. We often think of “rest” as involving a bag of salty snacks and a TV remote, but working out or playing piano actually recharges your mental and physical batteries more effectively than binge-watching that hot new show.
Long-term studies reveal another important rest hack. Taking annual vacations boosts your happiness, improves your cardiovascular health, and helps you age better compared to colleagues who chain themselves to the office. (You’ll also be more productive and boost your chances of promotion.) Vacations and sabbaticals can also be an incubator for new ideas. Lin-Manuel Miranda started toying with the idea of a musical about Alexander Hamilton after reading Ron Chernow’s biography on vacation. “It’s no accident that the best idea I’ve ever had in my life—maybe the best one I’ll ever have in my life—came to me on vacation.” Miranda said in 2016. “The moment my brain got a moment’s rest, ‘Hamilton’ walked into it.”
So let’s say you take rest seriously, recognize its importance for their health and performance, and calculate that a more disciplines, measured approach to work will pay off in the long run. How can you get started?
For many, it begins at work. Reducing distractions, becoming more efficient at tasks you can control, and automating routine duties can create time in your day for short breaks that recharge your batteries, and make it easier to maintain clear lines between work and personal time. Better planning and prioritizing will also mean fewer late nights and avoidable crises. Doing this with colleagues amplifies the benefits. Companies that adopt four-day workweeks succeed because they redesign their workday to give everyone more deep work time, less time in meetings, and fewer interruptions.
Next, find your deep play. If you have a hobby you’re passionate about, you’re more likely to make time for it, and feel good about doing it. If you already have a favorite pastime that was crowded out by work, you have permission to take it back up. If not, look for something that offers satisfactions as rich as work when it goes well, but in concentrated doses, and in a completely different environment (outdoors and physical if you work in an office). You can’t think about clients on a surfboard.
Take your vacations. Shorter, more frequent vacations are often more restorative, because they’re lower-stakes than once-in-a-lifetime expeditions, and a drip-feed of anticipation, escape, and recovery is better than one big hit of happiness a year. The only bad vacation is the one you don’t take.
Finally, play a long game. It may feel like a waste of time at first but layering periods of work and rest in your day, your week, and your year help you work more consistently, more sustainably, and to a higher level of quality. We’re fascinated by youthful genius and overnight success, but immortality-level accomplishment often comes later in life, after decades of steady work: Margaret Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale when she was 45; Charles Darwin was 50 when he published The Origin of Species; Duke Ellington made his immortal Newport Jazz Festival appearance at 57; and JRR Tolkien published The Return of the King at 63. Deliberate rest, woven into your days and life, acts as a mainspring and regulator, giving you more energy, more ideas, and more time for good work and a good life. In today’s always-on world, few things are harder to do than rest. But few things are more worthwhile.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looked angry. He railed in a Jan. 18 press conference against Israel’s enemies, the media, and critics of his leadership of the war against Hamas. He was particularly defiant about reports that the international community, including Western and Arab countries, is advancing a comprehensive plan to end the war based on a long-term horizon for a Palestinian state and political resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conflict is “not about the absence of a state, a Palestinian state,” he practically snarled, “but rather about the existence of a state, a Jewish state.”
Netanyahu sounded almost desperate. No matter what has happened on the ground since Hamas’ blood-drenched attack of October 7, the Israeli public has so far shown no indication of forgiving him.
Most countries tend to rally behind their leadership during wartime. But from the first Israeli polls in October to the present, attitudes towards Netanyahu have been abysmal.
Before October 7, Israelis were angry with the ultra-nationalist, right-wing government (elected not even one year earlier), for its plans to crush the independence of the Israeli judiciary. With colossal weekly demonstrations all year, strikes and massive public disruptions, poll after poll showed that the government had lost its parliamentary majority. By September, Netanyahu’s coalition was regularly getting just 52-54 seats in surveys, compared to 64 in the elections of late 2022 (out of 120 in Israel’s parliament).
After the Hamas attack, the bottom fell out. Most polls show the coalition scoring in the mid-40 seat range, including the regular tracking survey for Maariv newspaper published Jan. 19 , conducted by the pollster Menachem Lazar. In that survey, the original coalition got 44 seats and Likud, Netanyahu’s party just 16, half of the 32 it won in the last election. It’s the second week in a row that Likud has scored so low, but all surveys show the party with just 17-20 seats.
But people aren’t punishing just the coalition or just Likud. Israelis are furious at Netanyahu personally. When asked which leader is more suitable to be prime minister, the long unrivalled polling king has slid to a distant second place. In mid-November, 41 percent chose Benny Gantz in a Maariv poll, a former military Chief of Staff who became an emergency partner in the war cabinet. The 25 percent for Netanyahu was his lowest rating to date. Recently Netanyahu has recovered slightly, to 31 percent– but 50 percent now view Gantz as more suitable to lead. In all polls, such as Israel’s Channel 13 in December or any others who ask the question, over 70 percent of Israelis want Netanyahu to resign – between one-quarter and 30 percent want him to go right now, even during the war.
Why? The Israeli public has reached the same conclusion as almost every political observer about the prime minister. From late October through to mid-January, weekly surveys among repeat respondents by the Agam Institute at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University show that a majority, about 56 percent of Jewish Israelis, think Netanyahu is bringing his personal political consideration into his conduct of the war. (If Arab citizens of Israel had been asked, the average would be higher.)
And in a striking finding, the Agam Institute found that the portion of people who hold Netanyahu solely responsible for the disaster of October 7th actually doubled, from 17 to 35 percent among Jewish Israelis. Combined with those who hold him largely responsible, nearly three-quarters see him as the culprit for Israel’s failures that day.
If the surveys prove out, Israel’s longest serving prime minister will exit office on his own petard. Historically, when Netanyahu feels under the gun, he seizes on the same themes Israel is under existential threat; Israel will be annihilated if opponents have their way (whether political competitors in elections, or the U. S. President seeking a two-state solution); and his favorite theme; that he alone can prevent the certain destruction
The Manichean threat has kept in power for the better part of 15 consecutive years. Politically eulogized more times than commentators can count (including here, by me), the man always pulls a political Houdini-escape act to get re-elected despite criminal indictments for corruption and any number of lesser scandals.
But the threat he warned that only he could prevent was realized, and on his watch. “This time,” say those who predict his downfall, “there’s October 7.” There’s also the aftermath. A traumatized public felt abandoned by a government unprepared for the emergency. In recent weeks, anti-government demonstrations have even returned to Tel Aviv, a growing sideshow to the larger protests demanding that the government do more to get Israel’s hostages released. Even Netanyahu’s emergency war cabinet minister, Gadi Eisenkot, a former chief of staff (and newly-bereaved father to a fallen soldier), criticized Netanyahu’s promises to release hostages through ongoing fighting as an illusion. Netanyahu seems to be losing the last remnants of his credibility.
And yet, elections are nowhere in sight. If they turn out to be a year or more away, today’s polls will be out of date. By then, October 7 may seem to Israelis less of a threat than the words “Palestinian state,” a phrase that, to some Israelis, carries the threat of another October 7, but worse. After his belligerent words, Netanyahu may have told Biden that he’s not foreclosing the idea of a Palestinian state entirely. But to Israelis, he will insist that preventing one is a matter of survival.
For the many Israelis who feel this way, “existential threat” is not just Netanyahu’s campaign posture; it’s simply how they view reality. If no one in Israel makes the opposite case – that the lack of Palestinian freedom, the boot of Israeli occupation on their neck for decades nurtures ongoing cycles of violence forever, Netanyahu might be more convincing than his opponents would like to believe.
Food foraging seems to be all the rage these days. Travelers can set out to forage in forests and oceans for unique culinary experiences, gradually coming to appreciate how much the natural world has to offer. Foraging, at its core, is about sensory exploration. Its pleasure comes from noticing new tastes, shapes, or textures that we would ordinarily overlook and inhabiting a state of mind that is open to surprise. This seems logical when it comes to enjoying food and drink, but our work shows that our five senses can do much more. They can also support greater mental health.
In one of the largest neuroimaging studies of formerly depressed patients, we observed that negative emotion robs people of their ability to sense—it literally turns off the sensory parts of the brain. In the absence of sensation, brain networks for self-judgment and rumination run unfettered—a neural recipe for worry and hopelessness. The solution may lie in focusing the foraging lens inward and exploring our internal sensory world, a technique known as “sense foraging.” By activating sensory parts of the brain, we can disrupt habitual self-judgment and rumination by giving our thinking minds new information to consider.
One of the brain’s most basic functions is to take random and noisy input from the senses and repackage it in ways that create order and meaning for us— which raises the question of how much of the input is dictated by someone else, whether a boss, a social group, a media company, or an advertiser. The good news is that you have a say in what you attend to, regardless of what others have in mind. Even on a busy day, peppered with distractions, your senses are still available for exploration. Our studies show that you can reclaim where you want to focus, rather than leaving your mind at the mercy of the attention economy.
Just by spending more time engaging in sensation, you can strengthen the attention pathways for that kind of awareness. By looking for how familiar and seemingly static sensations might really be made up of lots of changing parts, you are getting better at moving past only seeing what you expect to see or relating to your body in the same way. Our research shows that when you are practicing using your 5 senses, you are probably activating parts of your brain that tend to be neglected. If you keep activating these regions, you will start to form new neural pathways, literally changing how your brain is structured. The more time you spend in sensation, the more neuroplasticity will make sensation available to you, like adding a new friend to your contacts list.
But what happens when you set aside the familiar names we assign to sensations and treat them instead as dynamic forms of energy being received by our bodies? Because energies such as light or sound have their own ebb, flow, and time signature, you can be more fully immersed in sensation by focusing on these particular features.
Change and movement in seeing
Find a wide, open space to look at. (A window will do if you’re indoors.) Take a moment to have a look around you, up and down and left and right. Now select one object in your field of view, near or far, and start to focus on the visual elements that stand out to you. For example, if you see a tree, notice any movement, parts that are darker and lighter, smooth and rough patches, contact with the ground and asphalt, symmetry and asymmetry, shadow and sunlight, and whether these elements stay the same or change in any moment. You might also notice the urge to name what you’re looking at (bark, branches, trunk, leaves), but try to resist. Try to experience these objects in a purely visual way. The first thing you’ll notice is that shifting your attention out of worrying and into sensing take a bit of mental efforts. Once you do it, however, you will find that sensing in this way helps to quiet the mind and puts the worry aside for a spell.
Change and movement in touching
One of our most common but commonly overlooked sensory experiences comes from contact with our clothing. For a moment, focus on the fabric touching your skin, the feel of each different texture. Do you notice places where there’s tightness, bagginess, roughness, or softness? Do these sensations stay the same or do they change when you walk or sit? Focus on the experience purely through your tactile sense and remind yourself that there is no problem here that needs to be solved. Compared to worry, curiosity and exploration can release us from searching for concrete answers and solutions that worry often demands.
Change and movement in hearing
Whether indoors or outside, stop for a minute and just listen to the sounds around you. See if you can notice how sound is layered, with the loudest and most familiar sounds coming through first: traffic, voices, running water, doors opening and closing, phones ringing. Then listen for sounds that are below that layer, perhaps your knapsack bumping against your body, your breathing, fingers touching a cup, or cutlery on a table. Notice the qualities of each sound, whether it’s near or far, intense or subtle, continuous or intermittent, surprising or expected. Notice also the space between one sound leaving and another arriving, as well as those moments of silence, when there is no sound at all. Try to stay with the qualities of the sounds themselves instead of labeling what you’re hearing. Sensing allows us to stay squarely in the present and this works against the tendency of worrying to pull the mind into the future.
Change and movement in smelling
Find five things around you, some familiar and some unfamiliar, and really smell them. These things could be coffee grounds, a bath towel, cooking spices like cinnamon, ginger, or curry powder, a bar of soap, boiling water, potting soil, your underarm, wet leaves. This time as you inhale, instead of putting a label on the scent, see whether you can describe its qualities, and whether it changes or stays the same over time. Is the scent intense or subtle, does it arrive quickly or slowly, does it register surprise, is it continuous or intermittent, does it fade into another scent or stay the same throughout? Do all the scents trigger memories or recollections for you, or only some? When we worry, we lose touch with our bodies, moving quickly into imagined scenarios, what if’s, and other mental conjuring. Using our senses to explore and investigate something as simple as smell brings us back into our bodies.
Change and movement in tasting
The next time you’re going to have a snack (maybe eating one or two things instead of a meal), see if you can make time for this exercise. Instead of naming any of the primary tastes, simply register a taste or tastes as present and describe its/their qualities and whether they change or stay the same over time. Is the taste intense or subtle, does it arrive quickly or slowly, does it register surprise, is it continuous or intermittent, does it fade into another taste or stay the same throughout? A mind carried away by worry often means that activities going on at the same time are performed on “automatic pilot.” Sensing tastes and textures helps us recover from automatic pilot and be more present with what we are doing.
After any of these exercises, it might be a good idea to check in with how you’re feeling. Having extended some of your sensory bridges, did you have any experiences that surprised you or were unexpected? How did it feel to let new information in? Was it exciting or perhaps a bit anxiety provoking as you entertained the unpredictable nature of your senses? Regardless of whether you enjoyed the experience, did anything open up for you in terms of how you responded to your sensations? Did you change your mind about your preference for a smell or taste? Did you experience your body or the world around you differently?
It is also totally okay and maybe even a good sign if you aren’t sure what to take away from these experiences—by sensing the world on a moment-by- moment basis, you are getting a taste of what it’s like to value change over certainty. In this way, sense foraging can be an antidote to worry because, unlike worry where we are searching for certainty, this practice points us in the opposite direction. It can be deliciously unsettling to value the uncertainty of sensation in a world that valorizes certainty and action. Recognizing that sensing is not the same thing as thinking is all that you need to get started.
To be a Muslim in an increasingly militant Hindu India is to feel alienated and dejected. There may be 200 million of us, but Muslims are being made invisible in India today. It’s not safe to be a Muslim in parts of North India, and certainly not safe to look like one in several others.
Only one conversation dominates village chaupals and city squares these days. It is the loud, triumphant announcement of the Ram Temple consecration, the Pran Pratishtha, or “establishment of life force,” of the Hindu deity on Jan. 22 in Ayodhya, at the exact same spot where the Babri Masjid stood from 1527 to 1992 when it was brought down, brick-by-brick, by karsevaks, or “faith volunteers,” drunk on hardcore Hindutva. The policemen and the State stood aside as the mosque was reduced to rubble. More than 2,000 people died, most of them Muslim, in communal riots in various cities in the days that followed. It was never restored, though the Supreme Court in its 2019 judgment called the demolition an “egregious violation of the rule of law.”
Hindu fundamentalists climb the dome of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya to demolish the structure on Dec. 06, 1992. Sondeep Shankar—Getty ImagesPeople take part in a demonstration to observe a “Black Day” on the 27th anniversary of the demolition of Babri Mosque in Delhi, India on Dec. 06, 2019. 2019 Anadolu Agency
Now a grand temple dedicated to Lord Ram is being readied atop the ruins of the mosque. Hindu nationalists have justified this based on the shaky claim the Hindu god was born there, and that Muslims had destroyed an earlier Hindu temple when the Mughals ruled much of India from the 16th to the 19th centuries.
In the weeks leading up the Ram Temple inauguration, calls like Jab Mulle kate jayenge, Jai Shri Ram chillayenge, “When Muslims are killed, they will call out Victory to Ram,” are being heard.
Within India’s government, there is nobody to speak for Muslims. For the first time since Independence in 1947, there is no Muslim cabinet minister or even a Member of Parliament in the ruling party. There is not a single Muslim Chief Minister in any of India’s 28 states, and Uttar Pradesh, where Ayodhya is located, is ruled by a saffron-clad Hindu monk who does not extend even polite Eid greetings from his social media handle.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, center, with Governor Anandiben Patel welcome artists dressed up as Lord Rama, Sita, and Lakshman during Diya Deepotsav celebrations in Ayodhya on Nov. 11, 2023.Deepak Gupta—Hindustan Times/Getty Images
In recent weeks, a new fear, palpable albeit defying definition, can be perceived among Muslims across Delhi and the states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, and Madhya Pradesh in north and central India. Everywhere there is a saffron surge and in-your-face aggression of Lord Ram’s devotees. In Delhi, a long motor and bike rally with beaming worshippers was interspersed with cries ofJai Shri Ram as they made their way past the medieval India Ghata Masjid, just a few feet off the historic Jama Masjid. The afternoon Muslim call for prayer was lost in the din of Jai Shri Ram by triumphant saffron-clad Hindu devotees atop bikes, trucks, and jeeps.
The more upscale Khan Market was similarly awash with saffron bunting and Ram dhun, or “devotional song,” beamed from a public speaker when I visited. Attendance at the neighboring Pandara Road mosque was reduced to a trickle, with worshippers preferring to pray in their homes.
Elsewhere too, this unique brand of aggressive Hindutva in cities, towns, and villages across northern India compelled Muslims to stay home. In Uttarakhand’s Dehradun, imagery of Lord Ram draped over the old Clock Tower from top to bottom. It is the same state where Xs were made outside Muslim shops in Purola township. Many moved out due to fear. Some returned, but others didn’t.
People look out of a balcony as a procession celebrating the upcoming Hindu Ram Temple in the northern town of Ayodhya passes by in the old quarters of Delhi, Jan. 16.Anushree Fadnavis—Reuters
In western Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut, small traders and businessmen were putting travel plans on hold while I was in the city in early January. Many canceled their train bookings on the advice of family elders. Weddings stood postponed or celebrations minimized.
In the upmarket Gurugram and Noida, satellite townships near Delhi where I live, a display of swords, paintings of a muscular Lord Ram, and celebrations leading up to the deity’s consecration have been driving Muslim residents into their private spaces. The usual salutations of Namaskar and Good Morning in the early hours of the day have given way to cries of Jai Shri Ram.
Meanwhile, Muslim students have been subjected to taunts. At times the excuse is their Muslim beef eating habits. Others it’s their “Pakistani” identity; in many a young mind in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India, an Indian Muslim is not an Indian, and doesn’t belong here.
A woman Muslim journalist who went to Ayodhya to cover the temple consecration tells me she felt compelled to wear a Hindu bindi, and has considered coming back before the ceremony next week. It’s this feeling of alienation—even fear—that is a Muslim’s constant companion. A Muslim today feels hemmed in and alone.
India’s Muslims have been going through a long and intimidating winter since Modi and his Hindu nationalists took power in 2014. When he attends the Ram Temple inauguration on Monday, the fear we have is that it only gets worse from here.
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