The pandemic: is there a great purpose ?

Probably not. It’s meaning is mostly to be found in suffering and acceptance.

How often I wondered what the world would be like if it just stopped spinning for a few days or weeks. Oh, to get off the treadmills and away from routines and obsessions framed as passions.

Be careful what you wish for.

I doubt that the pandemic is an act-of-God. The Great Flood was supposed to have been the last of the great destructions. Most likely, it is simply the direct scientific consequence of a series of human misjudgements. In its roots: well, suffering was there, too. We would likely find poverty, near starvation and human rights issues.

There are levels of suffering.

• the lowest level belongs to the merely inconvenienced, of which I am admittedly one
  • with the benefit of modest savings and a habitually stocked freezer and pantry … and co-incident experimentation with legumes … one can cocoon for weeks; months, even. Proven.
  • I am not deserving, just very fortunate
  • pro-tip:
    • use the LCBO’s on-line order & pick-up service. You skip the lines.

• the highest level: those that die alone … and those they leave behind
  • all the years of leading a good life and sacrificing for the future and others, then to die alone as one of a great number of the tragically genetically unfortunate
  • the idea of fairness gets into our heads via Natural Law but let it go, like childhood. Fairness in life ? : not in real life.
• sharing the high level: those without the merest of defences
  • the third world
  • displaced person camps
  • the lowest levels of class-based societies
  • the extreme have-nots
    • eg., high density Indian urban centres; Brazilian Favelas … it goes on

• the broad middle: includes those that live pay check to pay check
  • one industry booms while another abruptly disappears
  • some say that adaptability is the key. I believe this is true but it brings its own suffering and pain, with or without a pandemic.
    • While I catch myself shaking my head at those who cry for the resurrection of industies of yesterday (coal mining, for example), I know too well how painful change is.
    • an idea for another blog: the role of elders in encouraging adaptation instead of fighting for a return to “normal”
  • suffering begets suffering:
    • the risk of a “second wave” is an obvious and foreseeable consequence of pre-mature easing of physical distancing, regardless of its economic merits for those under the greatest financial pressure

The pandemic has shown our true characters. It has magnified what pre-existed.

• Darwinian comment (in progress)
• Willingness to “physical distance”

low: obligation to share

Acceptance

Adapt

To be continued …