We’re right in the middle of a huge, tectonic process of transformation of our world. At the root of it was what is now known as Covid-19, but the “pandemic” was merely the igniter of some dormant tendencies waiting to explode for some time now. Also, the direction in which this transformation goes may not be the one you think it is.
You probably think that the world is going in the “right” direction, and we will all be rescued by the mighty science. That’s a nice narrative. In many places, it holds. But that’s the danger with partial truths, you never know when the part that is hidden will blow up.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s take it slower.
The Ignition Event
A new virus emerged. Its pathology was mainly the one of a respiratory disease, only more difficult, and with many unknown variables. In the face of the unknown, humanity stopped. A global lockdown was issued, and people willingly self-isolated, until scientists developed treatments. These treatments took two forms: one is symptomatic, trying to minimize the damage while the illness is already developed, and the other one is preventive, broadly known as “vaccine”. It took about 3-6 months until a few symptomatic treatments have been created (some from already existing medicine), and 12 months until a few vaccines, briefly tested, received the green light.
What should have happened at this moment, was a reboot. The world should have been re-started, knowing that we can mitigate the threat.
What happened was very different.
Hijacked On A Different Road
Instead of rebooting the world, those in control pushed it (with very small nudges, in the beginning) in a very different direction. One of authoritarianism and medical apartheid. I know both those words are very strong, and the natural tendency is to step back when you hear them. I agree. I, too, waited a long time until I was sure. This very post was started in June, but I didn’t publish it back then. I preferred to wait, until more developments will appear. Hoping that some of these developments, if not all of them, will contradict my theory.
Alas, this didn’t happen.
The initial nudges became laws, and the reactions to those laws by those who dared to oppose them was soon met with unprecedented force. All in the name of collective health. With an accent on “collective”, and not necessary “health” (you’ll see below where I’m going with this).
At this moment, there is vaccine passport in place in many developed countries. This vaccine passport is not a passive document, one that will just attest that you had a vaccine, or tested negative. It’s an active document, meaning it will grant you access to some parts of public life. Travel is one of them. Another one, more important, is access to a job. There are many places in the world now where you can’t get a job if you’re not vaccinated.
This is not what we envisioned at the beginning of this pandemic. This is not what we thought it will happen. We all believed the official narrative of “just two weeks to lower the curve”. We tried to cope with isolation, with uncertainty, with confusion, believing the world will finally open up as before, once the science will speak.
Science has spoken. But it was already too late. The narrative was already switched, so it included only those parts from science that confirmed its agenda. A new trend was formed, and this trend was so powerful, that it got rid of many common sense approaches.
There is a huge pressure – supported by a majority of the population, right now – in favor of more restrictions, in favor of social segmentation. There is a wave of fear riding through the fabric of the society, in which “the enemy” shifted from the virus, to a certain class of persons, which is suddenly seen as “unclean”. Sounds familiar? Yes, I know. I told you before, I waited months before publishing this and I wanted for it not to be true.
And yet, here we are.
The Real Danger
If you made it so far, you probably already labeled me, or my thought process, based on which side of the “mental Berlin wall” you are now.
If you are in favor of restrictions and vaccine passports, you probably think I’m an anti-vaxxer. Which I’m definitely not, by the way. I do believe vaccines can be helpful to a lot of people.
If you want your freedoms back, then you probably see me as “one of yours”. Which, to a certain extent, might be true, as in I, too, want the same level of freedom (as faulty as it was) that we had before these events.
In both cases, you think that I am either part of the problem, or part of the solution.
In both cases, you are wrong.
My concern is not what is happening now. As weird as it may seem, I am not as worried about what happens now, as I am worried about what will happen as a result of this.
You see, every action has a reaction. That’s how the world works. Every push in a certain direction creates an equally opposing force, in the other direction.
The overwhelming agreement is that we should obey, follow rules, trust the state, shun the unvaccinated and get on with our lives, because we know the truth. But those who are shun, they are not simply disappearing. Those who are forced out will not simply vanish. This is just one of the problems with the magical thinking induced by fear: once the perceived source of danger is neutralized, the danger will pass. Nope. These are not imaginary shadows on the wall, and you’re not watching a horror movie, these are real persons, these are real events.
Not only the source of the danger isn’t the “unclean” part of the population (it’s still the virus), but the pressure applied creates an equally opposing force from those marginalized.
And that’s what worries me. Every time I see more laws, more forceful interventions on the street, I don’t think “ok, they created more order, they displaced the agents of chaos, now we can relax”. I think “ok, they created even more pressure, they are channeling even more energy into that invisible mass of people who are just starting to organize themselves, first clandestinely, like any marginalized population, then publicly, hitting back with an equal force”.
My thoughts are about the next counter-wave. If the one that we’re living now is the global expression of communalism (“communism” would be more appropriate, I didn’t use it because it still carries some ideology behind, whereas this global movement is not based on any political ideology), the next one will be the expression of the most acute tribalism in the history of human kind.
MadMax-style, with the same level of empathy (or the lack of it, to be more precise), with citadel-like cities, isolated and impermeable to outsiders and with a very serious resource problem.
And that’s how a new world is created. Action breeds reaction.
Photo by chester wade on Unsplash
