Diary 12
Monday, March 30th
One of the things that we’re all up against right now is the lack of reliable information. So let’s just think about that for a moment.
Humans create an identity for themselves in many ways; these are not trivial. Let’s list them: we see ourselves as people with preferences; with friends and connections; with jobs; and within a culture or society that we hope is more or less stable. We also have belief systems, whether they be political or religious.
The current situation has undermined all of these seriously.
We may know who we are when we wake up each morning, but because we can no longer do much shopping we have had to curtail our preferences in ways that, for many people, are important. For many people getting up, choosing clothes, getting ready for the outside world, and then getting into one’s car to go and do things – all these represent rather important rituals of self-recognition.
We are locked down, so we cannot structure our days in the same ways we did before all this. We cannot go out to our usual activities.
We cannot see our friends or connections easily. Electronic media is a great help, but it isn’t quite the same.
Many of us now have no jobs to go to. This is a heavy below for most of us in the USA, where jobs are part of our identity. Since this also means that some people have less money than before (who am I kidding? – we ALL have less money than before), the hit to self-esteem can be huge.
As for the benefits of a stable culture, that seems to be teetering. Surely it has not yet collapsed, but the sense is of some folks in some parts of the US doing one thing and those in another part of the US doing something very different in response to this virus. This is a direct result of a leadership vacuum. No one in power is taking responsibility. The President may hold briefings every day, but they are wildly contradictory (and anyway, most people don’t believe him).
Belief in a political or religious structure that makes sense is, consequently, not very strong, with allowances made for small pockets of those who think they have ‘the answer’.
The virus has stripped away many of the comforting illusions of our time. No wonder so many people are scared.
What we can do, though, is replace the things we’ve lost with a sense of the basic decency, even the heroism, of so many of our fellow citizens. The people who continue to work in dangerous situations (doctors, nurses, even those running food stores), and do so knowing that they are at risk, are an inspiration to us all. Let us not give in to fear and panic based on the latest sketchy information from demonstrably unreliable social media. That’s such a helpless way to use our energies. Let’s recognize the nobility of our fellow humans, and face this challenge with courage and intelligence.
And above all else, let us mobilize our patience and our love.
