We are experiencing a pandemic. An epidemic of global scale, that is. But, mind you, this is not the only pandemic we’re experiencing. I’m sure that 99.99% of the people reading this right now have no idea that we were experiencing an epidemic before Covid-19 too. It’s not conspiracy, it’s not something hidden, it was in plain sight this entire time: it’s a HIV epidemic. It has a growth rate of up to 25% in some African countries and WHO declared this situation a pandemic before Covid-19. And yet, nobody talks about it.
So, if there was already a pandemic unfolding before, Covid-19 cannot be a “black swan”, from a factual point of view.
What makes it a “black swan”, though, is people’s reaction to it.
A Surprising And Toxic Approach
States are responding in a medieval way: let’s close the gates, so the plague doesn’t come in. Let’s keep everyone inside, so the plague doesn’t spread. And for what? For a disease which, as serious as it is (I’m not downplaying it) has a spreading rate lower than measles.
What’s even more puzzling is the support those measures are gathering from unsuspecting, “concerned” citizens. In a silent tour de force, democracy was replaced in less than two months with an emergency state almost global, a process in which not a single bullet was fired. On the contrary, this switch was begged for by people who implored to be quarantined, stripped from some of their most fundamental rights, like the right to free movement and the right to work, and who are continuing to expect this state to last indefinitely.
If you came here for yet another conspiracy theory, that would be a good moment to leave. Because I’m not heading that way.
The main cause of this unthinkable situation is not a conspiracy, it’s something more profound and way, way more real.
It’s Human Nature
The vast majority of people isn’t interested in facts. The vast majority of people is interested in comfort and predictability. A huge force is holding them together, stuck in this oblivion, unable to get out of this invisible box and assess a situation for what it is, not for what they fear it might be.
This force is attachment. Attachment to the concept of certainty. Attachment to a promise that is merely fulfilled, but which makes them feel immortal, invincible, protected. The promise of safety enforced by an external actor. A government. Somebody with authority. Somebody who has all their shit together and who keeps promising he will protect their lives.
Blinded by this false promise, people became allergic to uncertainty. They can’t understand a world in which there is the slightest danger of dying (yet, ironically, death is the only certainty we really have). They will give up everything they have, in exchange for protection.
And with that we get to the real root of it: people are seldom thinking, they’re merely labelling. They don’t take the time to assess, they just browse through their hard-disks until they find a suitable label for the current situation.
In this case, the label is “fear”. They project this label unto the entire situation, without looking at the details, without trying to understand the processes or to make logical connections.
From the moment they rushed to buy toilet paper before buying food (showing a surprising lack of understanding of the cause and effect process) to the times they are keep begging governments to maintain the lockdown for as long as possible, they are throwing labels on top of labels on top of labels, without a single logical process. They think the lockdown state will cure more people. It won’t. It can’t. More hospitals will cure more people. More money spent in health research will cure more people. More doctors will cure more people. Not more politicians.
The vast majority of people is confined, while a certain part of the social machinery, the state, is still “working to protect its citizens”. How dystopian is that? How upside down?
And yet, people choose to live their lives upside down every day.
Thinking involves the risk of being wrong. Labelling is safe: somebody else came up with that label, so it’s safe to use it.
Well, safety in the absence of freedom is useless.
