Too scared to die to live
Enough now.
They’re talking of kids playing in chalk circles separated from each other when they return to school, wearing masks, having their temperatures taken daily.
This past week, South Africans were appalled to see an infant ripped from his father’s arms because he went to the beach.
We’re living in a simulation. We did this to ourselves.
First, we let China make all our stuff.
Second, we ignored the virus when it came from there.
Third, we lost our minds when it arrived.
Italy had its health system overrun because their country is filled with old people.
New York had all its deaths because they sent their sick elderly into their warehouses known as nursing homes, and suddenly everybody was dying of pneumonia.
Then we set up daily death counts for everybody to follow. We allowed doctors and scientists to run our lives. A terrible idea. It’s time to stop talking about models and all that other superstitious ‘science’. They don’t have a clue what they are talking about. We don’t need to wait for them to admit this. It is obvious. I am sick of the science and death rates and all of it.
Never in the history of mankind have we quarantined the healthy. Yet our kids are not allowed to go to a beach, let alone school, even though it is riskier for kids to cross a road than play with their friends.
We never did this for the TB deaths rampant in our country. Or for Aids. Or for malaria. The troops were never on the street as we faced murder rates equivalent of a war zone.
What happened this time?
Finally the prevailing philosophy underpinning our whole way of life defeated common sense and basic human hope.
This philosophy is simple: Thou Must Fear Death.
According to our modern way of thinking, life is a brief chance to maximize pleasure. In short, everybody must be given the best shot at having the best sex they can.
We don’t build cathedrals for God and for our children. We build retirement homes. We live in longhouses in urban sprawls.
Our lives are not rivers returning to the sea - they are swimming pools made of chlorine sitting in an amusement park.
When the death counts began, we demanded, deep down inside, for our freedom to be taken away. Protect us, Father Government, we prayed. Make us not think of death - death means we have to think of some other Father, some other world. We want this world - even if we have to wrap it in plastic.
Corona means crown. This virus is our king.
We’re as free as we want to be, folks.
We still have a chance to rid ourselves of this meme, this digital Chinese plastic.
Be a Christian, or, if you can’t, be at least a Roman. Memento Mori. Know you will die - no matter what you do.
Then we can go about living again.
I don’t want this virus to be king.
I want to be free. I want to live.
Who’s with me?
I sometimes wonder where we'd be now if the virus hadn't started in China.
Their response was so frightening that it cascaded into our collective psyche. It triggered all the wrong feelings. I expected their initial response to be pretty calculating, if not reasonably rational about the fact that an unprecedented nationwide lockdown would be too high a cost, but they went with it. And that was alarming.
I thought, “They’re doing this because people are dying! This must be serious.” Of course their motives were more nuanced and the response far more draconian than to be motivated by caring for ‘the people’, and it has allowed them ever more control over their population; countries everywhere on the same march to greater control - the next leg in my opinion - centralised blockchain-based CB-issued digital currencies, granting ultimate purview of money flows - China leading the way already).
So we understand some of government’s motive. But why did we, the people, respond the way we did? Why are we gushing over our dear leaders? Why are women in New York reporting an unusual amount of sex dreams involving NY Gov Andrew Cuomo?
When faced with the unknown, we turn to those who might save us. We still do not have all the info on this virus. And that scares the bejesus out of people. Especially because - I don’t think people are responding to this in relation to themselves - perhaps its as simple as - people don’t want to hurt the people they love. In London - we can move around relatively freely. My partner & I went to my brother’s house over the weekend, which went against the rules. I’m happy to run the risk of getting the virus in order to enjoy the freedom of seeing my niece and nephew and give them a hug. But I could never forgive myself if it was proven that I gave it to one of them, and they got seriously sick. Obviously - evidence thus far seems pretty clear that odds are minuscule that this virus would harm them in any meaningful way, so I take the risk - but idea of that is often-times too much for people.
I’m reminded of the line from the Green Mile - “They killed them with their love”.
Perhaps I'm giving people too much credit, but I suppose its the reality I prefer.
I am with you Chris.
Enough of this lunacy now I want my freedom to die from anything, including car accidents, cancer, malari, diabetes, drowning in the sea or falling off Table Mountain!