If possible, I would comment on the Covid 19 outbreak without respect to my religious opinions. I express only my own sentiments about this episode in world history. My chief understanding of the virus outbreak and the response of ‘the entire world’ is that it demonstrates, in a way I have never before understood, how lacking in dignity our people have become at this stage of our cultural development.
A couple of worrying factors: we know very well that this illness, brought on by a virus, does not considerably affect children (usually the most vulnerable); we also know that, by shutting down most businesses, the children are going to pay off the debts which we, the rest of us, are now building up for future times. In addition, our children (and I was once one, with these views) come into this world today knowing that there are too many human beings, and that we consume and ruin too much of the Earth. Effectively, the Covid 19 virus is not something which children need be afraid of; by contrast, they should be aware that the future is being wrecked here in order that the elderly can live on for longer.
When almost every government, and with amazement notice not just the governments, has decided to curtail movement, labour, and things like Church attendance, or public house attendeance, then ask: what is it which made it desirable to ‘stop the world’?
Basically, people (especially the old and sick, and also many younger healthier people) are afraid of dying. The chance of actually dying from this virus are very remote, and yet... And this is the fundamental indication, unavoidable sign, of something which has been developing since, perhaps, the last World War. People believe that being alive is the highest value. It is a case of survival at all costs. In order to prevent any individual from suffering from the virus, society has pretty much shut itself down.
Let us remember that ‘nature’ sent this illness. The Earth, sick of us, to speak metaphorically, has cast a weapon our way to cut down some unfortunates amongst us: I do not discount myself among these (as a premise to be understood, I insist: I myself would submit to death, if it came my way with this virus). And yet, as far as I can see, nobody complains about this shameless cessation of decent living for the sake of, let’s be clear, cowardice. Who has had the human dignity to say, in public, at this time: that ultimately, we all die or fall ill one way or another; that we have generally, from of old, don’t believe that this life is actually ever terminated – but rather that we have eternal life.
Finally, does it not spring to mind how, at a time when human beings and their biomass is greater than the sum of all the other types of life on earth (probably), human beings still cling on to every last breath on Earth? The highest forms of animal life, what we used to call those at the top of the pyramid of life (in terms of predation), have always been scarce; they are lazy, powerful, unafraid, and willing to fight each other for their place in nature. Being at the apex, there is not much space for too many of them. Humans were once like this. Today, as the most successful organism on Earth, we find our peers not amongst the apex creatures, but amongst the lowest tier, high volume creatures: wild rats and pigeons, or seagulls – those creatures which survive expertly, by feeding on the dregs and rubbish of civilisation.
To the vice of cowardice, maybe add the vice of stupidity: do governments, and the billions who have willingly joined in the ‘lock down’ actually believe that such a retreat is going to somehow stop the virus? Nobody believes that it will cure the virus, but we do think that it will disappear, somehow, if we hide from it.That is simply stupid.
That there is barely a place on Earth which has not reacted with lockdown and these vices is an additional and dreadful sign for the future, and what human beings are becoming. All of us together, the same, connected, with the same mind, like hive creatures, termites, etc.