So,how’s that gallows humor holding up?
The thing about being able to laugh at impending doom is it helps you remember how good you actually have it. Now, I understand that this situation is a gut punch to just about everyone, but like everything on this planet it's happening on a spectrum. The situation is quite serious, and yet it is also in its way a game with a variety of available camera angles. If you're playing with the default settings, you've had a life of following the usual game arc, which usually happens as we bounce between polarities:
Unexpected existence
Childhood with love or without
Education or lack thereof
Career of passion or survival
Pairing up based on childhood trauma or healthy patterns based on respect and love
Coping mechanisms as occasional or dominant activities
Deficit mindset or expectation of abundance
The laws of thermodynamics apply fairly well on a personal level as well, so up to now a vastly disproportionate number of us have been sort of dragged along with the lot we got cast in early life, playing out the echoes and expected meanderings. “The poor stay poor, the rich get rich, that's how it goes, everybody knows."
This bleak cynical abandon is what the system relies upon. You know what happens to people who get rid of literal parasites? Their frenetic cravings for junk are replaced by genuine rediscovery of the foods they enjoyed before they became hosts. Their digestion works again, they become vibrant and they start to remember who they really are as they come back to a life that they no longer share with a gut full of vampires. I ran my digital mouth enough last post about parasitism and politics, no need to retread that here. What's important here is that compliance is voluntary, and dissent is available.
Hundreds of years ago, societies based their years on the planting cycle. Rather than January, the new year was closer to the Spring Equinox. It was the return of life to the world after the cold and barren winter. Resurrection was a theme, see also Easter. And above all, the sense was one of potential. New crops, new bounty, new possibilities for growth of all kinds. And here we are, being pushed into a new world on what used to be the new year. COVID-19 began as a rumor, mutated into racist memes about questionable soup, and enjoyed a stay in the denial buffer America depends upon for psychological survival at the end of empire. I'm guilty myself of a few hard eye rolls, I mean the timing, right? Always a crisis, right on schedule, just in time for elections. But it hovered and cast long shadows and then arrived home in a big way.
The schools closed and we got that because there's no better playground for microorganisms (besides perhaps a pediatrician's waiting office). Parents who used school as respite are being forced to come to grips with the reality that they do indeed have human beings to love and care for. Then two weeks became a month, and that became "see you next year." Families who never really trusted public school are getting their feet wet with home schooling, while leaning on relatives or friends and passing the hot potato of what work remains to keep income going and the bills paid. Families who already did all these things ahead of the curve are having a moment for a well-deserved smirk. Single parents are basically crucified and the usual relief valves are quite firmly closed at the moment. Take a minute and think about the people whose world went from hard to impossible overnight.
Almost all our jobs suddenly sent us home and those of us lucky enough to be able to do things virtually were met with future shock that quickly gave way to gratitude. We are allowed to be a little snarky at how easily some of these things could have been done all along, but the point is that we can still work and provide, even if for many of us that means constant risk. It's my worry that people may find their jobs aren't there when we're all ready to back to normal.
The reality is there may not be a normal to go back to. Many people have already felt the axe, victims of big corporate layoffs or small business deaths, both of which came without warning. Health care workers are asked to take risks every day, especially at the hospitals that have become ground zero. I live in a town whose population is dominated by seniors and students in equal measure, but I haven’t seen them change much despite the screaming statistics. What I have seen is a flurry of signs go up all over town with messages like "TAKE OUT ONLY" or "BEER TO GO" or the especially poignant "WE ARE STILL OPEN." I've seen people lining up, with social distancing enforced by tape and increasingly loud signs. People have stopped mobbing each other for toilet paper, but we're all getting used to waiting our turns to get stuff you can actually eat. I haven't seen this kind of civility since preschool, frankly. I hope we can keep it up, but I also wonder how long it'll be before the roads become the exclusive domain of the police. It’s hard to know how to feel about it, however essential it may be.
I won't say "we told you so," but the dark dystopian spirits we've celebrated in fiction are being invoked into the verge of reality. A terrified public is the wet dream of the techno-dictatorship which has quietly grown around our love of gadgets and soft life and denial of the costs of living in a bubble. The fears that some of us have carried for a generation are coming to pass. If we play from 1st person perspective only, we will see the world as threats to be destroyed and resources to be pillaged. We will thereby surely be drawn into becoming self-serving, predatory remote agents of the system that is so desperate to maintain itself. We will bring on the dark end we fear. In that way, the paranoia is the virus.
If we, however, switch to the overview, perspective will bring empathy and strength to the scared. We can band together like the leukocytes that serve as the boots on the ground in our immunity wars, we can subvert the last gasp of the fear-based world and assist the world to return to a health unknown for centuries. Learning to switch between bird's eye view and first person is a skill we will all need, and if you can dwell in both, you'll be an incredible asset to yourself, your family, and your fellow humans.
For some, this has been a true boon, which I'll talk about next time. For now, what I want to explore is what we can do to help each other, because we are being forced into the collaborative effort which was once the hallmark of our species. Pray for eyes to see and ears to hear, and let your incredible brain become an engine for assistance. Get your house in order, and then look for ways to help. If you can do it through work, do. If you are called to reach out creatively, get on it. If you crave direct action, get your hands dirty (but wash them!). Some part of you is essential, so get to know yourself and honor your gifts by sharing them. Ask for help, and give it freely when asked of you. Educate yourself on the skills you didn't think you'd need, while the web is there, in case it isn't someday. Network, physically, with people around you so the neighborhood isn't a prison. Do you have a surplus? Share it. Do you MacGuyver your way through life? Teach us how to do it too!
This is the moment, and now is the time. More on that next post. Big takeaway: You will either spend the next months petrified by fear or empowered to live as you have longed to for years. I think you know which one I'll recommend. A few simple ideas:
Be aware, but remember that media is prone to infection by agenda and tends to insulate. Become the media, if you can! Show us your story.
Be safe, but don't be quick to give freedoms away. As we learned from the now-eternal “War on Terror,” total security is a dangerous myth.
Be strong, but stay tender. Be kind, but start with yourself. You can't serve if you’re a husk.
Dream. We can already hear a new world inside the dying body of the old one, but it has to have a way to get here. Find your role in that.
Take care but take control. Don’t let the fight or flight circuit rob you of your sovereign will and power to shape your own reality. The black iron prison is about to collapse, and a lot of energy will be spent making it seem like we have to build it bigger to survive. That's a trap.
In the cultures we have dismissed as primitive, boys are pushed into manhood by enduring something akin to death and coming out stronger. Women, of course, are pushed into womanhood not only by pregnancy and childbirth but by enduring the slings and arrow of being female on a world run by emotionally crippled boys pretending to be men. But this time, it’s all of us, and right now. After centuries of quiet desperate obedience, humanity is finally being collectively initiated into adulthood. There will be a vast trial by many ordeals, and some will crumble, and some will fall, and some will emerge reborn with a new consciousness and role to play. The phoenix waits as the flames are fanned.
The apocalypse is actually happening. What will you do to make it work for you, and what will you do to help your neighbors, friends and maybe a few former enemies in the still-unimaginable aftermath?