…Where to begin…
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, this is where I expected to be at this time. However, I do not feel as I thought I would at this time. I thought I was going to begin with some lofty treatise, some epic epitaph, perhaps an impressive bit of prose. But no, it will be just this. General ramblings from the void.
The truth is I’ve not done this before. Not really. Oh, I’ve been on the Internet since 1994, connecting through a 1200 baud analog modem with no graphical interface. I’ve spent ridiculous amounts of time “surfing” the Internet by hopping FTP sites and scouring newsgroups looking for interesting binaries. If you’d like a taste of what one could find back then, check out this site. Don’t worry, the link is not dangerous. Just trippy.
I’ve even used WordPress before. There are a couple webpages floating around out there from old classes I took while at university. Code samples mostly. But those pages were quickly thrown together. Their purpose was simply to get me the marks I desired in my classes. The content may be legitimate, but the formatting and the presentation is embarrassing. I could search these pages out and fix everything, but I prefer to let the past remain the past.
Which brings us to now. Now I write to you. In this place and in this time. Locked at home during the most significant worldwide event since World War 2. Okay, it is debatable whether this pandemic ranks higher than other events that have occurred since World War 2. But certainly it is the most significant health related event since the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. Okay, even that may be debatable if you want to talk about AIDS or cancer. Perhaps this current pandemic is simply what is going on right now. Perhaps it is just what is grabbing all the attention presently.
What little wisdom I wish to impart today is about the current circumstances we all find ourselves in. The significance of this pandemic is not what you think it is. The lasting effects that will carry humanity into the next several centuries is not health related, believe it or not. What is significant with this pandemic is what is being revealed about humanity and human nature.
As may already be clear, I come from a part of the world where consumerism and patriarchy reign supreme. Our economies, our social structures, are all intimately focused on perpetuating and reinforcing consumerism and patriarchy. This pandemic is pulling aside the veil of ignorance to reveal the guts of these structures. It is up to us to take note. Anyone could have looked and seen all of this before the pandemic began. But it was much easier to ignore it and pretend it did not exist. Before, one could go about their life in blissful ignorance of the truth. Actually, many people still do, despite a pandemic occurring around them right now. They blame doctors for doing a bad job of saving lives. They blame the government for the economic collapse. They blame their neighbors for not social distancing correctly, or for believing that social distancing is even necessary.
I’m sure I am expecting too much in this situation. For the revelation will only be experienced by the few. When I was younger, I was taught the three R’s: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. I really don’t know why I was taught such a crazy thing, as reducing and reusing are crippling for consumerist economies. Recycling, now that’s something we can get behind, as it doesn’t stop people from purchasing objects they don’t need. But reducing, people not purchasing as much stuff, and reusing, people extending the life of their stuff, stops people from infusing their hard earned money back into the economy. However, reducing and reusing also reduces the demand for products to be generated, and reusing exercises people’s creativity and ingenuity, both reducing the stress humans place upon their surrounding environments. Had people been practicing this before the pandemic, perhaps it wouldn’t have been so hard to stay at home…
Lots of people have been wondering when the pandemic will be over so they can get back to doing what they were doing before the pandemic began, as if the pandemic is just another fad diet. I agree the pandemic is like a diet, but it is like a proper diet. A proper diet isn’t something you go on for a limited period of time and then get off and return to eating as you did before. That is how people lose 50 lbs, and then gain 50 lbs right after again, with their net loss of weight being nothing. A proper diet means a lifestyle change. You don’t start a diet just to get off it; you start a diet to change how and what you eat, and that change is something you carry with you for the rest of your life. At least, you do if you want to keep the success you gained through the diet in the first place. You can’t go back to eating chocolate bars and MacDonald’s whenever you want, you have to focus on your vegetables and drink your water.
With the pandemic, the situation is the same. We are not returning back to how we did things before. Not unless we expect to reinfect our neighbors and risk killing our loved ones. This pandemic means a fundamental change in how humans conduct themselves. It will require changing how we doing things. It will require a reduction in consumption of products. It will require people to get their hands dirty and acknowledge all that is going on around them, instead of pretending they are in some utopian bubble. Or at least it ought to…