They say timing is everything…
Just as I get ready to fire up my blog…a pandemic comes along to drive isolation. Just when people look to each other for help and support, a novel virus introduces itself to the world, spreading rapidly and driving draconian measures to contain it, including quarantine at a massive scale. Just when hundreds of millions need transparency and honesty—as well as competency—from leadership, we find leaders who care more about their own interests and choose to project an impression that everything’s okay.
Sounds like it’s about the right time to get busy with this unblog.
If you’re not paying attention to what’s happening with the coronavirus, you’re not preparing for what is becoming increasingly clear—this is nothing to phuck around with. It’s that simple. Especially if you’re among the vulnerable demographics. So, what do you do?
Stay at home! As much as possible. For real, this is the most effective essential thing you can do. Isolate. Pull out those books you’ve been meaning to read. Binge watch a series, or catch up on your Oscar’s offerings.
You could start writing that book you’ve always wanted to write.
The media has already adopted a term for this tactic—social distancing.
Gotta admit…that sounds better than isolation. It’s got the word social in it, so it implies having just a little bit of fun. But then, we drop the distancing word in there, and all the fun in social evaporates. This is the opposite of social. This is the shutting down of social. This is asking society to be something it’s not, and that is aloof. Time to not care about the things that we cherish most and if you’re not doing anything better, how ‘bout a nice long look inside. We’re gonna have lots of time to reflect. Why not be constructive with that largess of awareness, look at some of the beliefs we hold so dear. It appears the virus maybe something of a ‘great equalizer’, as it ignores social structure altogether in its victims.
And let’s face it, the quasi social organization known as ‘government’, that appendage to society that devours our freedom, that obsolete approach to a social agenda, is not going to play Calvary on this crisis. They are a repulsive collection of low-sparkers who don’t relate to society as a whole and have already demonstrated their incompetence. If you want to survive this pandemic, you better take control of the situation now, as much as you can. And make the hard decisions that mean life or death.
What I expect to be interesting is to see what happens to the communal structure of our civilization. How will communities respond? We have seen the fabric of society rent by the advance of technology and an attitude of ‘every man for himself’ has replaced communal compassion and understanding. We have watched the country slide into incivility and abuse. Things are so bad…
And along comes the novel caronavirus. And now we're putting out fires...with gasoline.
I don’t think social distancing is such a bad thing. It reminds me of the old school disciplinarian approach to problem solving: The classic time out. Time to make ourselves stand in the corner and think about what we’ve done.
