Pausing to Pause
This morning I am reading reports that only half of Americans are taking the COVID-19 forced sequestration seriously. This more or less agrees with my anecdotal observations out here in San Diego. I’m betting that three quarters again of those non-conforming people are doing so out of the extreme need to maintain their lives that are more or less hand-to-mouth and unable to afford a pause to their daily routine of modern-day hunting and gathering. The other quarter (we’re down to 12.5%) are just people who have become immune to mass media messaging and either don’t understand or don’t care to understand. This latter category was much higher a week ago when President Trump was equally a nay-sayer about Coronavirus and its impending impact. I sense that Trump and Fox have managed to right some of their wrongs by changing their broadcast tune, but there are the hardcore that we used to dismiss at the nascent Ted Kaczynskis of the world that were going to stockpile pork and beans and AR15s for the apocalypse no matter what. Those people used to be the crazy fringe we ignored, but can no longer ignore because we have seen them blossom into the mainstream like a budding Coronavirus and “wash through” society in the most harmful manner.
I am struck this morning with the thought that it is unclear whether we have been more changed as a civilized society by the harmful nationalism of the right over the past few years or whether we will be more changed and harmed by the medical fatalism of the apolitical plague that is sweeping the world. Both have had devastating effects and for a while now they have compounded on each other to amplify the harm. Now they are being moderated a bit (regardless if it is too little too late) and the messaging from the White House rings hollow in everyone’s ears about how great a job Trump has done in handling this crisis. We all know better. I say that the 60% who knew who he was were joined by the additional 20-30% who now recognize that ends do not always justify the means and the “Big Picture” is no longer such a bright beacon to rationalize away the stupidity and crassness of the man. Granted there are still the remaining 10-20% that are cut from the same Trumpian cloth as Donald and who refuse to admit they were wrong about him and what and how he was doing it. These diehards are a breed apart who will likely only cave in to reality when it comes to greet them at the door with one of the 2.2 million estimated deaths that we may, unfortunately, suffer.
I don’t even think half of them will likely relent even then, but will say Aunt Bessie was gonna die anyway and it wasn’t no Coronavirus or inaction by the administration that caused it. The other half will have the rudest of awakenings and will cry for their loss and get blood in their eye over the betrayal foisted upon them by Trump and all the rest. They may even realize that their failure to pause as mandated by public health officials contributed to Aunt Bessie’s demise and feel genuine, soul-cleansing remorse. There was a long-shot chance that Donald found that place and was taking pause in his reflections based on his scripted dialogue of the past two or three days. But today I saw, as we all did, that George Conway in his WAPO column was right and that was a head-fake pause by Trump and sure enough, he was back at his ass-hat ways, pontificating and taking credit for the great job he has done. He’s even floated the idea that NOW the world will see that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for the amazing, unprecedented and no-one-else-coulda-done-it job of saving the world from pestilence. Ass-hat in Chief to be sure.
I often wonder if others are plagued by excess thinking like I am in times like these. My tendency is to think most people are forced into thinking about life more when the world goes upside down, but I’m never quite sure because others aren’t as open and sharing as I tend to be with my views. I’m also sure that most would say, “Sure, I’m thinking more, but not over-thinking like you.” That innate aspect of my being is what causes me to pause to consider the hidden truths about pausing.
I think pausing is a very valuable part of life and is helpful to us all if we put it in the right perspective. The action-minded among us might feel that contemplating our navels is counter-productive, but then so is knee-jerk reacting. The deeper the crisis the less knee-jerk we need and the more contemplation is helpful. This crisis is probably as deep and critical as any we have faced in our lifetime. You can liken it to the nuclear annihilation threats of the early 60’s, but those were chess-playing threats, not real-world and naturally random and unstoppable waves. Even WWI and WWII were man-made crises that would eventually be stopped by action and perseverance. Perhaps not since the Middle Ages and the scourge of the Black Plague have we as a species been faced with such a vexing foe. There is no reasoning, no buying-off, no muscling against that can stop this Coronavirus. We can science the shit out of it, but that may or may not not work soon enough or at all. I doubt we have met our match altogether, but it may well inflict a toll on the human race that is, there’s that word again, unprecedented.
Worrying about it (Which I have to admit I did for 40 minutes last night at 3am) won’t help, but thinking it through and staying open and flexible to scientific fact may help. None of us want our plans for 2020 to be completely trashed like they may well be, but we have to play it as it lays, as they say in the golf rulebook. I for one am thinking about how to adjust. I am not cancelling travel plans for later in the year, but I am not blindly expecting them to go forward either. I am fortunate in having moved out to San Diego in a time when we are settled in and comfortable, but my kids are all in NYC and I am here to help them. My friends and colleagues are all over the world, but we are fortunate to live in the great digital age and so long as the broadband does not get overwhelmed (as it seems to be doing in the EU by all the WFM system traffic), I can still do some work if it is available. Right now its about food and shelter for us all. Maslow would be proud. Self-actualization and partying (in whatever form we all define it) are on hold while we stand as strong as we can on the foundation of the human needs pyramid. So take a pause and consider how to spend your still-valuable time while in our collective pause. That’s the best and most we can all do.