Surface and Depth

 Surface and Depth

Last week, for the first time since March, I was able to go to my Tai Chi class in person.  There were only 4 people there; we kept distance and were masked, following the official pandemic protocols.   Even so, being able to do the form along with other people in real time, to talk in person, unmediated by machine, and to simply sense each other’s presence was a poignant reminder of something slightly suppressed but not forgotten and for which most of us long – being in community with other people in the way people were created to be. 

The sudden advent of the virus, the avalanche of change in reaction to it, and the subsequent rapid chaos has made the apparently mutating virus and the responses to it difficult to understand.  Even though we may understand the opportunities the virus has opened by unmasking the need to make social changes, even though we are cognizant of the relationship between the virus and our own part in the increasingly rapid progress of the death of the planet, even though we have observed the continued predilection for war and concern for individual benefit when many others suffer – even though we may be aware of the connectedness of all things, there is something not quite right about the way this virus is being handled.  It is hard to finger exactly what, but the sense is there.

Most obvious is that people are being asked to change their behavior into patterns for which humans are not designed.  Humans were never meant to exist distant from each other, masked as if the other might harm, not trusting and out of fear putting social pressure on each other to conform.  How are we expected to cooperate with each other (such as agreeing to wear masks as a communal practice) if we are told to stay apart, peppered with fear from media, told our very surroundings may make us ill, hampered in communication, and, basically held in isolation?  Fear is being used to make sure the majority comply.    Something is fishy here.   Is fear not the means used to keep populations stable under a quite different kind of government than we have assumed is ours?  So, we have first required unnatural behavior and next, rule by fear.

We hear a lot about staying healthy by wearing masks and avoiding each other, or by frequently scrubbing any available surface.  We hear that we have hope of health because a vaccine will soon be readily available.  It is good to maintain hygiene, and people do need hope even if there are questions about time for testing of new forms of vaccines and questions about related topics such as the effectiveness of related flu vaccines, given that those viruses tend to mutate, too.  However, where is the information on how to strengthen the innate human immunity or to use the plants found in nature for immune support?  They seem mutually supportive approaches with the masking, distancing, scrubbing and prospective vaccines.  Do those in authority not want us to know about those, or do they want us to consider them inferior to the approved and supported approaches?

There is also a strangeness in the response to economic effects created by requiring people to stay apart.   Small businesses are the most effected.  Small businesses are the lifeblood of a free, cooperative, and resilient population.   Yet, which businesses are going under, some perhaps unable to open again?  It is the small businesses; the corporations are somehow getting enough bailout support to carry them through the crisis.   It is the poor and the small who seem to be getting a choice between death by virus or death by economic decimation.  It is though the destruction of existing society (including major social institutions) were a goal, in favor of an order favoring even further the entrenched privileged.    Yes, the social order we have had has major flaws and needs re-structuring; but is the vectoring towards the upper few the direction in which we want the change to go?

Then there is the prolongation of the situation.  Yes, there is the explanation that it is because of the people who would not comply, and because of incompetent political leadership, even because the virus itself is mutating and re-infecting people.   Those would seem to be reasonable explanations, except that it is highly suggestive of scapegoating – the effort to point the finger elsewhere so as to not have to look at what really is.  Notice also that the fear in the media is increasing – the virus is reported to be more and more deadly and contagious, something we need to fear even more deeply, as if we were not already enough afraid.  Yet an equally dangerous, if even more deadly situation is not even being mentioned – the rapid increase in climate change and direct destruction of our planet, as pollution, soil destruction, CO2 emissions, and waste continue.  The response to the virus is even exacerbating them, such as the increased use of single use plastics.

What we are encouraged to trust is communication technology – internet, social media, email, texts, smart phones, and the like.  Marvelous as the technology is, it is certainly not the natural way to be, human communication mediated by machine.  Many, though, have learned to consider it as natural, to even be more comfortable communicating that way than in person.  The attitude apparently is to not question the situation because we have the technology to turn to.  But is the technology as trustworthy as it seems we are supposed to believe?   There are the scammers and hackers which prey upon the users of technology, targeting the unwary and those not up to par on computer security.  They may be criminals, and they may also be those who want to know what we are thinking so that they may target ads to us.  They are the surface.  Artificial intelligence has made it far easier for our life’s data to be collected, stored, and used to entice, manipulate, or perhaps even punish us.  Use of sophisticated technology is being considered to ensure that we all get vaccinated, whether or not we feel the vaccine itself is trustworthy; in addition to being vaccinated, it is proposed that we be tracked.  Ostensibly, the tracking is to ensure vaccine compliance, but such systems are certainly capable of following people wherever they go, watching with whom they associate, what they say, and perhaps what they think or feel.   Is this the society in which we wish to live?

There are more questions than answers.   Yes, there is a virus pandemic, and precautions need be taken.  Even with consensus on that condition, however, there is a sense that more is underfoot than a pandemic.  It is worth paying attention to.  While we are dealing as best we can with the virus and attempting to stay afloat as we navigate the extant chaos, we need also to maintain an awareness that more may be going on than obviously meets the eye.  Maintaining awareness is the price of retaining choices.  May we all learn to touch the deeper consciousness of the gathering forces and processes endeavoring to change our world, so that we may be able to choose between them and grow to realize our ability to use our choices to shape a world in which we wish to live.

Peace, Diane