As a species, we are facing a global pandemic. Spend just a few moments reading the news feed and one is bombarded with mind-boggling numbers of disease spread and death rates. Despite all of the technological advancements we’ve made as humans, we realize in real time just how vulnerable we are as persons to this primitive, invisible adversary – coronavirus.
Like other viruses and bacteria, COVID-19 is an ancient foe to the living and is part of a problem that has existed since the beginning of life on Earth. It is neither good nor evil, it doesn’t think nor feel, it doesn’t discriminate. Talented first responders, equipped with the most modern tools and advanced training, find themselves battling nature itself. This is the reality of emergency response and one of the major stressors for those called to serve others in their time of need.
In today’s modern society, technology has advanced in ways that would be unimaginable to the average person just a few decades ago. For the emergency services, such technological advances include smart community policing, computer aided risk decision making, and intelligence-based response matrices spanning homeland security and public safety professions. The uniformed professions have access to facial recognition software, real-time hazard monitoring, and interior thermal imaging capabilities. Firefighting and personal protective equipment is increasingly thinner and lighter than it has ever been. Ballistic fibers have advanced to the point where they are becoming fabrics weaved into clothing.
Less-than-lethal weapons allow for the subduing of out-of-control suspects in a way that doesn’t take a life. In addition, drones and rovers deliver scene updates, real-time atmospheric monitoring, and panoramic views of a situation.
However, as we progress as a species, we still must face the fact that the reptilian brain exists and Mother Nature is in charge.
Responders know this first hand, having to balance their existence in a modern world yet dealing with primal behaviors. During their time off, first responders must exist as just another member of society, yet because they cannot un-see what they have seen, they must do so knowing what it’s truly like behind the curtain.
They will eat with family members and friends. They will function in the daily modern mundane, walking among regular people whose experiences yesterday were a far cry from the responders. The reality is responders are constantly dealing with the ramifications associated with the poor behaviors and decisions of others. For example, with all of the development and opportunity we have, such as advances in marketing and public education, people are asked to just practice social distancing and wash their hands to stop the spread of a virus, and yet many are incapable of doing that.
You see, no matter how much we triumph as a species, we seemingly keep one foot firmly planted in our primitive past. On a daily basis, first responders navigate our regressive behaviors in situations of violence, bad decisions, and cruelty; a concept as old as Cain and Abel. They play witness to our primal realities when fighting fires or responding to disasters.
First responders live in a modern story yet continuously operate in primitive narratives, witnessing our fragile, animal selves. This is the juxtaposition of modern and primitive, a psychological tightrope the responder must navigate. On one side, they live in a world where medical research is on the cusp of 3-D printing of biological tissues and organs, and scientists are creating pallet-pleasing “meat” in labs from the cells of animals. In addition, automobile engineers are fervently working on self-driving, autonomous vehicles. At the same time these scientific and medical engineering advances are occurring, the scientists and physicians from the World Health Organization tell us to just stay home when we are sick, and we seem to have a hard time with that.
An accomplishment that both changed medicine and how we view living organisms occurred within the last 20 years when scientists successfully mapped the human genome, In that same time frame, more than 500,000 people died globally from terrorist-related incidents.
IBM’s WATSON, an artificial intelligence system most famous for wiping the mat with human contestants on the television game show Jeopardy, is changing the way research is conducted. WATSON can do in minutes what teams of brilliant researchers can’t accomplish in months. However, on this past St. Patrick’s Day, we had a hard time getting people to stay away from the pubs or avoid large gatherings.
In 2020, we now have images of black holes, and immunotherapies that battle cancer. As a species, humans have never been so advanced, and the rate of technological change is rapid and speeding up daily. Today, astrophysicists are studying the existence of organic matter on asteroids.
Nevertheless, according to the latest NFPA statistics, firefighters respond to more than 355,000 residential structure fires averaging 2,500-plus deaths and 11,500-plus civilian injuries. The vast majority of these deaths occur in structures lacking operational smoke detectors, a device that costs less than $10 - or two venti mochas at Starbucks.
In 2011, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched a Mars mission that involved landing a rover, named Curiosity, on the fourth planet in our solar system. The journey to Mars was just shy of 35 million miles when the planet was closet to Earth. In 2012, Curiosity found traces of an ancient water source on the red planet. The very same day NASA launched the mission, police officers, firefighters and paramedics in both Pennsylvania and Kentucky responded to murder-suicides involving family members. As we as a species explore other planets, some of us back on earth still behave as hairless chimps.
In no way is any of this written to make light of tragedy or the situation we now find ourselves in. Instead, this is about identifying this fine line first responders must walk. Within this modern society of broadband internet access and facial recognition software, the uniformed professions bring those who serve into dark places where they face the primitive realities of human behavior and natural disasters.
Society then demands that these individuals emerge from the primal and exist in the modern. This is the same situation we find with members of the military. We ask them to enter a world of chaos, violence, and sacrifice. We order them to spend time navigating the unthinkable in faraway lands. Then we demand they come back into modern society with all of its first-world perks and problems as if the experience never happened. What could go wrong?
Military and first responders alike have experiences that cannot be undone, and they have to see and do things unfamiliar to the average citizen. Each experience shapes their worldview. Navigating cruelty, trauma and loss, and having to deal with individual behavior that stems from the reptilian brain, builds upon the responder’s psyche, and they must carry these occurrences beyond their shift.
As COVID-19 spreads, each of these individuals, the cops, the firefighters, the paramedics, will finish their shifts and head home. They will live in the modern world for a while with all its interesting marvels and inventions. Then they will go on-duty again. They will use modern tools and advanced equipment all while responding to primal events.
Leaders within the emergency services have an obligation to recognize this reality and discuss it openly with their responders. For most of us lucky enough to be alive in today’s modern world, it is one of amazement and awe.
Even in the face of a pandemic, we as a species have never had it better than we do right now. However, for the responder, experiencing the underlying primal behaviors and occurrences of nature in its purest form or mankind at its worst takes its toll. These guardians have a desire to serve, they understand and accept the nature of the work, yet most are seemingly unaware of what it is doing to them psychologically.
Psychological health is key when it comes to responders being mentally resilient and experiencing post-traumatic growth vs. post-traumatic trauma, and today it matters more than ever. Current research tells us that the mentally healthy responder exists in part because of a strong sense of belonging, thus the reason why leaders must cultivate a community of responders so that those risking it all can have a place to feel safe.
This community is a tribe of extraordinary individuals willing to navigate tragedy, and we are witnessing this in real-time. They need a place to take off their armor and let down their guard. This community needs to be a supportive place of understanding, consisting of people who simply know what it’s like to be an active participant in the primitive realities associated with being human.
