Last week, I was defending humanity against those who seem to feel guilty about living and want everyone else to feel the same. This week, I’m wavering.
You see, I always want to believe that humanity is a reflection of the above. That everyone here is here to learn and that they, being human, have the right to make mistakes. When it comes to Mother Earth, I do not see Her as a small furry kitten the neighbors abused needing my care but rather as a duality of good and (from our perspective anyway) bad. Like the two sides of the Moon, Mother Earth can give on one hand of Her bounty and yet strike you down the next with some affliction. As I said in a previous article, She is after all the creator of flesh eating bacteria, Pirrana and spiders, amongst other things.
But this week, as the world goes crazy over Coronovirus, I find defense of my fellow men and women harder. The term sheeple come to mind. I’m not even going to bother to go into detail – I think we have all seen it. But ‘toilet roll’ might be one lasting impression of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.
For me, the biggest thing is how people these days think they know it all. They have a belief and they will defend that belief with fury even when the facts clearly show them to be wrong. It simply doesn’t matter. It is all about feeling and belief now. Facts and expertise – rubbished.
Today, I saw how life sometimes gives you examples. I had been telling people here that face masks are ineffective. Or rather, I had been telling people that WHO, CDC, the US Surgeon General and even the Daily Mirror would you believe, have said that face masks are ineffective. There are many reasons for that – the virus is 2-3 nanometers large and by comparison to the gaps between fibers in your facemask, it is like walking down the Champs Elysee for the virus straight into your gullet, secondarily, once wet, the face mask is a health disaster and needs to be replaced, it needs to fit properly and well and anyway, the virus gets in through the eyes so unless you have a hazmet suit, you are wasting your time. Now, if you are sneezing or coughing then it is worth wearing as it will stop you throwing droplets 4 meters around you. But that is it. Well, for trying to help people I have been told to go back to my own country by one nice man and then later, I helped break up an attack on a man and his children by an angry mask-wearing mob. Yes – I get the message dear Fates….. shut up and leave the sheep alone. There is no point trying to reason with idiocy and stupidity – yes, I know that sounds bad and that is where I started…..
I sometimes find it impossible to defend these people. Yet, they have the right to be ‘idiots’ and karma will eventually set them right.
I’m not claiming to be perfectly enlightened myself. In some ways I am as blind and as idiotic as any of those that make me despair. I smoked for 40-years – a sure sign of an idiot if there ever was one, for example (apologies to all smokers….but you all know it isn’t a good thing to do).
Then, I realized something. If you ‘love’ one another. If you love humanity and humans. You have to love the idiots too. You have to defend everyone’s right to be an idiot because that is our right – and only way to learn the lessons that we must all learn.
Another thing I learned is that fear is a much larger emotion that I had ever understood. And people do a lot from fear. Fear drove much of my life and I suspect it drives the herd mentality as well. Indeed, I think those that control use it to control. We are all afraid of something….. and so we are no different. We are humanity – we are all flawed and we are all carrying burdens that no else understands.
Maybe in the end, I’m the idiot for not realising that sooner? And maybe that is why, in the end, forgiveness and letting go is the only way…