Why Are We Hastening Our Own Demise?
From Cheering on Global War To Ignoring COVID, We Need A New Collective Narrative To Survive
This has been a very sobering weekend for the world, and the collective musician’s community.
The well-known and immensely popular drummer for the Foo Fighters, Taylor Hawkins, passed away this past Friday. The somber news has been reverberating on the internet all weekend. Even more tragically, initial toxicology reports from the autopsy indicate multiple substances were found in his bloodstream. This is not official, just leaked information. It isn’t a secret that Taylor, being human, struggled with drug addiction. Sympathy and condolences have been streaming out to the band via social media outlets and continue to.
I was browsing my Facebook page, and also was shocked to see that the very talented Drummer and Bassist for the iconic band Talking Heads, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, miraculously survived a head-on car crash about two weeks ago. Chris expressed his gratitude to the Ford Motor Company for “building a car that protected us from getting killed”. A completely ironic endorsement considering how cars are typically marketed. Ms. Weymouth is dealing with some more severe, but not life-threatening injuries, so best wishes for her and her husband to heal as quickly as possible.
One of the most iconic and influential bands of my generation, Genesis, officially gave its last performance. The well-known solo “faces” of Genesis, Phil Collins, and Peter Gabriel, who had parallel and separate solo careers apart from the band were both in attendance. Gabriel did not perform and remained seated. Phil Collins, a dynamic performer, vocalist, and unsung drummer, also, ironically, remained seated due to health issues. For people my age, their icons, their music, their cultural references are disappearing, never to return. An inevitable fact that won’t change.
If there is nothing else I have absorbed from the forced accumulated wisdom of growing older, it’s the fact that life is incredibly short. At some point past the age of 60, I FELT this in a completely visceral sense, as reality. Prior to that, I largely thought it was a trite, throwaway philosophy. It had vague meaning at best. In your youth, your perception of time is that a few short years felt like EONS of time, for me, particularly in High School. Somewhere past the age of 40, time seemed to compress and speed up, events that occurred decades prior felt, simultaneously like five minutes ago and centuries.
Life, then, should be valued.
So in terms of world events, why are so many people, in a bizarre psychosis, perpetrated by the media and government, cheering on their own demise?
The low-level psychic disturbance that’s rumbling in the background of our lives is, in fact, increasing awareness of the possibility of our collective demise.
Being born directly into the Cold War era, my earliest memories were the 1960s equivalent of the 2000’s active shooter drill: Ducking and covering under the desk as a signal was broadcast over the school’s Public Address system to presumably avoid incineration and death from the pressure wave of a nuclear bomb. The contradictions and insanity of nuclear war survivability are probably best exemplified in the brilliant Stanley Kubrick Film “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”. The complete IRONY and INSANITY that any living human being could love the instrument of their own demise, was, until now, largely theoretical.
If seeing that film isn’t enough to make the point, another 1960s era corollary, portraying the existential crisis of Nuclear War minus the dark comedy, and fully serious in its portrayal and implications, check out “Fail-Safe”. The technology may have changed, but it’s clear that even decades later, the overconfidence and reliance on technology and communications is misplaced. It’s easy for the officer in this scene to smoothly assure the visiting dignitary that plugging in a faulty module will address a problem in communication. Jack Lemmon, as a pilot that is flying blind, on course to drop a bomb on Moscow, can’t see or know that his “Go Code” is a mistake. The entire fate of human existence depends on him.
Once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, people, especially in my generation, felt an immense sense of relief, the “Cold War” was no longer a hot threat, the existential crisis, or so we thought, was subdued enough to become far less of a threat and more of a distant memory of a less civilized time.
True Confession: I voted for Joe Biden, and felt that, despite the opinion that he was an exceptionally flawed candidate, he at least couldn’t do as much harm as a continued Donald Trump administration would. Trump lowered the bar significantly, Biden merely had to step over it, and instead, he apparently tripped and dragged it along.
Thanks to an increasingly bellicose tone, and parading around Eastern Europe in some sort of underserved ceremonial triumphalism, Biden is, with increasingly dangerous rhetoric, dragging the US and the world into another moment of existential crisis.
He literally said, in an unscripted moment, that Putin needed to be removed from power, and cooler heads at The White House immediately countered with a “clarification”, that Biden didn’t mean what he said, (???) despite the fact that it was an incredibly clear declaration with little room for ambiguity. The most disturbing part, for me, is how a largely unempathetic group of people, if Twitter is any indication, cheer this on.
Scott Ritter, the former Marine Corps military analyst, best known as a weapons inspector for the United Nations during the Iraq War, is as conservative a voice on military matters as you could get. He unequivocally states that Biden is “mad”:
“Our President calls for regime change in Russia the same week he promulgates policy that embraces preemptive nuclear strikes in non-nuclear situations. His administration is planning on deploying Dark Eagle hypersonic missiles in Europe later this year. A madman rules America.”
There are multiple examples of people, from the media to foreign policy think tank “advisors” that are unified in intoning the insane mantra “More weapons more planes” as if, somehow, the extension and enlargement of war will be a positive thing, instead of what it actually is: Flirting with disaster and the end of human existence.
Watch this propaganda film, full of ludicrous “tips” to help you survive a nuclear attack, presumably with few consequences. The same mentality exists in the politicians and media pundits, like reasonable psychopaths, in repeating the need for “limited” nuclear strike capabilities.
This extremely complex geopolitical danger zone is worrying enough, but add to that, the insanity of dropping funding for testing, vaccines, masks, filtration, and overall, simply pretending COVID is no longer relevant or worth being concerned over. For a country that is allegedly concerned, depending on the context, with the sanctity of human life, the latest move from Congress to fund the war, and deliberately turn their backs on COVID, is more of an example of mass delusion and psychosis than a healthy approach to governance.
It’s sad, unfortunately, to see, again, so many people cheering on the “freedom” of maskless existence. People are happily celebrating the return of “normal” and packing themselves into crowded indoor spaces, whether it be bars and restaurants or indoor concerts smiling and taking cheek-to-cheek selfies.
The stupidity and folly of denying and ignoring COVID will soon be evident, if not already, and made even more confounding and chaotic because the data and metrics we formerly counted on won’t be there.
Make no mistake, The Omicron BA.2 variant is here and will be spreading. More insidious, it appears, if sources I read on Twitter are correct, that this variant” hides in a “stealth” mode of non-typical symptoms for COVID, focused on the upper gastrointestinal systems of the body.
“We have to deal with the fact that the “before times” aren’t coming back. Ever. 2019 is gone. This is 2022, in the middle of a worldwide and ongoing pandemic. It is magical, and false, to think that we can just go back to “normal”. We must adapt and learn in order to live.
Covid is still here. It is infecting people at increasing rates, causing short and long-term harms, and people continue to die across the globe. It won’t go away if we stop testing and pretend it’s not there.
Don’t listen to any public health office or politician who says Covid is over. They are wrong. My colleagues and I see Covid patients every single day at work. Wastewater sampling clearly demonstrates that the next week is happening right now.
Removing simple Covid protections like mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and gathering limitations is initiating a new wave of infections. Doing this shows we have learned absolutely nothing in the last two years. Covid doesn’t cause waves, our policy makers do.
Spread the word that the pandemic is not over. Do simple things to limit how many people the virus hurts. Mask up and use a good one (N95) if you can. Promote and get vaccinated / boosted. Promote better ventilation. Stay home if you are sick. Have empathy and protect others. “
As you can see, this warning is from a Canadian doctor, isn’t just a problem in the US, the entire Western world is in some sort of mass hypnosis/mass psychosis denial.
The warnings from China, as opposed to being emulated, are, instead, mocked:
“Editor's note: Keith Lamb is a University of Oxford graduate with a Master of Science in Contemporary Chinese Studies. His primary research interests are China's international relations and "socialism with Chinese characteristics." The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.
Why are we unable to grasp even the basic lessons from recent history? Overall, looking at COVID-19 responses, China's methods have proven to be among the most successful. When COVID-19 broke out, swift lockdowns saved millions of lives; grassroots resident groups instantly manned checkpoints in and out of large residential areas, checking temperatures, and apps tracking COVID-19 swiftly followed.
Residents were not cowered into their homes and it wasn't the humanitarian "hell-scape" made out in the Western press. Even before official restrictions came into place, residents voluntarily isolated en masse. I can say this with confidence because I was in China, not just in one province but three.
When it comes to COVID-19 deaths per million, China's loss is three, compared to the U.S. at 2,989 and the UK at 2,393. Thus, when it comes to protecting life, the words "horror" hardly applies to China yet, not learning from even recent history, as China now battles new outbreaks of COVID-19, using its "dynamic zero-COVID-19" strategy, this is precisely the sort of language the Western corporate press is using. Even in more measured reporting where language describing China's strategy as "brutal" and "extreme" is not being used, China's COVID-19 strategy is predicted to bring economic woes.
There is no doubt, in my mind that there are reasonable, empathetic, compassionate voices out there that care about humanity actually thriving and reject the forced narratives of the “new normal”.
We can only hope that those voices soon become dominant in a “new narrative” before it’s too late.
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