May of 2020

I originally posted this writing to facebook on May 8th 2020. I’ve since deleted facebook, but at the time this post got shared over 100 times which really surprised me. It was liked a few hundred times and had maybe a hundred comments. People near universally agreed with my view. I think this was just slightly before really strong “mass formation”, as Mattias Desmet would call it, grew into full force. In later months I made very similar posts and got fierce disagreement and very little support. I can’t be sure, but I got the feeling that a lot of people perhaps secretly agreed with me, but did not dare click the “like” button.


I felt compelled to throw some thoughts out there. These are just my opinions. I don't expect anyone to necessarily care or agree or anything else. Just thinking out loud. I think that fear is a worse disease than any virus. And I think that letting go of that fear is the real path forward. Life is not safe and never will be safe. We are born with a promised death sentence after all. Human beings have evolved alongside viruses and every other type of deadly force imaginable for hundreds of thousands of years. In recent decades televisions and computer screens have brought the horrors of the entire world directly into our living rooms and I think that it warps our perception of things. All they tell us is bad news and more often than not it's also been sensationalized to some extent or another. I think that the unintended consequences and side effects of our attempts at forced control over this whole virus situation will outweigh the good that is done. Your neighbors who want to reopen their small businesses so that they can feed their families and try to avoid certain bankruptcy are not your enemy. Your neighbors who want to wear masks and quarantine themselves and keep their distance are also not your enemy. Is it just me, or does it always seem like the news wants us to see each other as opposing forces and pit us against each other? All of that left versus right bullshit. I don't buy it. Perhaps they want us distracted from the staggering amount of bailout money that the largest corporations just made off with? Or distracted from the fragility of the US dollar and how they create this bailout money out of thin air? The true enemy that I see is fear itself and the loss of freedom that comes as a result of that fear. People need to be allowed their basic natural born freedoms to decide for themselves how much or how little to be safe. Everyone views and values life and death differently. It's completely immoral to impoverish a population by forcing them to all move at the speed of the most fearful among us - just the same as it would be completely immoral to force an entire population to have to move at the speed of the most carefree among us. One single approach does not work for everybody. No one should ever be forced into quarantine and no one should ever be forced out of quarantine. We need that basic freedom of choice. Is it worth destroying the livelihood of millions of people in order to extend the lives of thousands of people? That's kind of the big question. And nevermind "saving" a life. We all die in time. There is no saving. There is only extending. No one has the ultimate correct final answer to huge ethical questions like this. I don't think there is a correct answer. That's why the best option we've got is to simply let go of control and allow the free choices of billions of people to unfold organically. That is freedom. Freedom for individuals and families and businesses to choose for themselves what's best for them. We should be free to be as cautious as we want and we should be as helpful as possible to each other by use of our own free will, but we cannot force safety onto others. Forcing safety onto people against their will is a dark road to take. Freedom is typically never fully recovered after events like this and the overall trend through the decades has continually been towards a high surveillance safety obsessed Orwellian dystopia unless we decide otherwise and choose to be free. How much of this ridiculous social distancing mania will remain even after this virus is gone? A "new normal"? I'm not buying what they're selling. What kind of over sanitized safety and distancing obsessed school system are kids going to have to return to? Our immune systems strengthen and grow from exposure to viruses and bacteria and from exposure to all other natural elements of the world. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. That's how our biology works. I think that carrying on down this path of obsessive overcontrol is unwise. True human freedom is rare in the history of the world and it may be the single most important thing in life worth fighting for. Someone always comes along promising safety from the dangers of life in exchange for trading away a little bit of your freedom. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book. It always has been and always will be a bad deal. Anyways, just my ramblings and opinions. Cheers.