My late father, who died at the age of 90, and thus had seen human beings at their worst, often said to me and to my baby boom friends, "What this society needs is a good depression." I was just awakening from a not usual for me afternoon nap today when this parental pronouncement came unbidden to my foggy brain. Dad also added that he wouldn't likely be here when this happened for him, a second time. I just expected, well, hoped, that I wouldn't be here when it happened either. But Bill Maher, that paragon of progressive virtue is apparently happy now that the frenzied governmental action in closing nearly everything a society needs to thrive has upended the lives of its people. The non-celebrity people I know, and one of which I am, are looking at having their life savings eradicated by the cure that is worse than the disease.
I still don't get it, but I know I am lousy at math, and I just don't get nearly and probably martial law where fewer people are being fatally affected than with a yearly flu. Any reason that people die is sad, warrants our compassion. But there is this odd aspect of things in the over the top handling of this denominated pandemic that seems to have the implicit idea that if the whole world is put on lock down, no one will die anymore. Which brings the line from Moonstruck to my mind, spoken by the character played by Olympia Dukakis: "I just want you to know no matter what you do, you're gonna die, just like everybody else."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBWxqcvH7Dk
So, when do we open up again for business as a free society? If more people die, will everything stay on hold until other people's lives, literally and figuratively, are ended? Or are we waiting for no one to die? That, of course, is impossible. And now, when we have our yearly flu, that at one stat in 2017 killed 80,000 people in the United States, will we have an annual "Safer at Home" mandate closing down everything again?
I find myself filled frankly with a multitude of conspiracy theories about what is happening. And here's the thing, I no longer think that any of them are remotely crazy. I am terrified at how easy it is to give up freedoms, well, not give up, find oneself shamed into accepting what is not necessarily logical for fear of being labelled an outlier, a person who does not fall into line with the unproven but firmly expressed positions of those who decline any debate.
I had a really dark thought pop up these last weeks. It is not worth living this way. I wonder whether the powers that be realize the oppression of minds, body and souls for which they are arguably responsible.
One other thought, not sure if it is positive or not. . . .about the newest concept "social distancing". I have always been one of those people not big on hugging, and other physical greeting. Over the years if someone approached me, I responded in awkward kind. But now we are mandated to keep six feet or so between us. I wouldn't mind keeping some version of that reactivated constraint on social interaction. I wouldn't mind staying with a courteous bow and smile once we go back to whatever in this world passes for normal.
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