Schrödinger People

Another cycle around our star and we're still stuck in the same rut. Still talking about dealing with uncertainty; about counting your blessings; about stopping and smelling the roses because life is short and it's better to appreciate the small things when a virus can snatch your life away any second should you dare step outside.

Is Omicron deadlier? More contagious? Resistant to Pfizer? To Moderna? How many mutations did you say it had? Does it evade natural immunity? But it doesn't affect your smell? Oh, the symptoms are the same as the common cold? But masks still work, right? Oh, but not cloth ones? 

The noise is maddening. 

Our hyper-mediatized, over-stimulated minds can't think of nothing other than what's in our handheld screens. And at the same time, our hyper-cynical minds won't believe those very same incessant, flickering alerts, either. Somehow our collective mind has entered a sort of Schrödinger-like, superposition state. We both eat up everything that's served out by our screens, and at the same time also disbelief anything that comes out of them. And in the ultimate act of intellectual arrogance, we will go by what our gut tells us. Or at least, we'd like to think so (forgetting that our "gut" might just be mindlessly obeying what the hyper computers of Silicon Valley dictate). But hey, if Trump/Biden/Fauci has told us things that ended up not being true, why should I believe what I'm being told this time? 

You know, "fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice..." 

Who cares that reality is more complex than what our simple minds are capable of comprehending? Who cares that conditions change and that our leaders only have control and visibility over a very limited purview? We elect leaders to foresee the future and act decisively to protect us! We just want clear-cut measures that work, damn it! But we're definitely not sheeple. Just solve my problems for me, please. And tell me what to do... so I can then not do what you tell me (because by God I have unalienable rights and I'm a sovereign individual!) and claim not to trust you. I need to exercise my God-given freedom, because... something about some founding fathers would've wanted it that way. 

You see, we want the cure yesterday. Because we deserve to be saved by the government. And when our leaders deliver it, we... don't want it. Because, my body... my... choice? No? Oh, I get it. Because it was "rushed" and it hasn't been tested on enough billions of people.

Schrödinger people, indeed.

Sometimes I think western hyper individualism can be detrimental to the building of a well-functioning society. But then again, it might just be the barrage of pessimistic assessments about the decay of liberalism that blanket the internet. There's hysteria about it, no doubt, and since we all drink off of the same media fountain, we all get it into our system. Narratives can be a powerful thing. We just might not realize we're just regurgitating somebody else's idea with a minor tweak, claim it as our own, and feel smart about it. We're imitative animals like that.   

And yet. No amount of sacrifice we're making by facing this pathogen with the magic of mRNA is even remotely comparable to the sacrifices made by the generation that faced nuclear annihilation during the Cold War, or the generation that braved a pandemic one full order of magnitude deadlier at a time when science could not save the life of the son of a sitting U.S. president from an infected toe blister, and at the same time also endured a full blown World War. But I guess there's no use in comparing our current situation with one 50 or 100 years ago. Our nature dooms us to compare ourselves with the immediate past. If you come from a place where the biggest threat to your standard of living is Google's decision to limit your free Gmail's storage to 15Gb, well... I'm afraid you're going to really feel the pain of a pandemic that forces you to cancel vacations, stay indoors, and wear a piece of cloth on your mouth. 

Oh, well. If there's any consolation about this year, it is that media's thirst for eyeballs and attention has inured us to the threat of death. The constant reminders of our own fatality everywhere have made us immune to the other pandemic --the one that's arguably more damaging, and definitely more widespread and contagious: the pandemic of fear. By constantly being psychologically exposed to the threat of death, we've become (for good and bad) numb to it. Turns out "Exposure therapy" is a thing, and it can cure phobias. Worldwide media has put us through a very thorough regiment of it. So your fear of dying intubated is (sort of) cured, at the expense of seemingly everlasting emptiness. Thanks, I guess?

But how to overcome that? How to muster the motivation to look past what seems like interminable doom? What's the point in wearing masks, getting the vaccines, boosters, quarantining yourself, when millions of idiots Schrödinger people*, out of sheer spite, arrogance, ignorance (or all of that combined) won't get fucking vaccinated and continue to be the perfect living, breeding grounds for the next Covid variant?

Psychologists recommend finding your "flow". A special place to retreat into and disconnect (at least for a while) from it all. Yes. They're talking about escapism. Board games. Netflix binge. Videogames.  Or... writing a post ranting about it all to let it all out of your chest.

Be safe, and I hope 2022 gets better. Happy New Year.

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*eligible for vaccination and living in places with plenty vaccines