We don’t have a packaged remedy for this pandemic. In the early days of the one we just experienced, we sold quite a lot of products that boosted the immune system. Everyone, it seemed, was interested in whatever defensive support they could get, even as the world we knew changed and we volunteered to isolate.
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This pandemic is different. Not only do we not have a packaged remedy, it doesn’t exist. Worse, the world seems to have lost its intolerance for it and has accepted it as a normal condition. As a result, it is spreading quickly. I am speaking about the world-wide pandemic of raw hatred. We as a society are so far down this road. This hatred is now well beyond vitriolic outbursts – our fellow humans are regularly acting on this hatred with unspeakably vicious and malicious acts against other humans. They feel good about it, too, boasting and posting about this behavior, often in real time as it is playing out. And, we still don’t seem to care enough. Because of its prevalence today and how quickly it has spread once unleashed, we have to admit that this cruelty has always been there, latent but still alive in the blood and festering. It was kept reasonably under the skin for a long while, perhaps by social norms, decency or protocol. What we now know is that this latency certainly wasn’t due to any acquired genuine or healthy respect for one another. If it were, it couldn’t have vanished so quickly and been replaced with this scorn we are witnessing. Now that it’s unleashed and circulates unchecked in the company of others similarly affected, we see it growing exponentially, feeding on itself, gaining belligerent strength as it spreads. Gone now is any hope that we can turn the clocks back to a time of decency; a societal reset so to speak. This pandemic of hatred blinds its hosts from seeing anything other than what prejudices, biases, contempt and ugly rage their echo chambers reinforce. There is no space, no time to consider differences and make an effort to understand them, let alone accept them. That would require an effort to look beyond one’s self-righteousness. There does not appear to be any willingness to do so. So, what can we do? This is usually the point in these articles where I posit some thought-provoking questions for us all to consider, providing an opportunity if one chooses to look deeper into ourselves to answer the questions individually. At this time, though, I find myself only shaking my head and worried that this could worsen, as unimaginable as that once seemed. The words I draw on were uttered often by my mother at a different time and under far different circumstances, but so descriptive now – “sometimes I wonder and other times I just don’t know”. |