Its all about me / Its a conspiracy / Its not my problem!
Make you feel very unwell, something akin to feeling like you’re drowning whilst shaking from fever and having a big horrid headache and feeling so exhausted you can't even sleep cos it's too much effort. Or worst case it can kill you;
Mutate into a new and more interesting version (depending on if you’re a virologist or not) and bypass our bodies defences, including those lovely introduced defences called vaccinations.
Now it turns out that pandemics are not new to our wonderful world, they happen quite commonly throughout human history and have the capacity to quite comfortably wipe out a decent chunk of a given population, te Antonine plague (AD 165-180) claimed approximately 5 million lives, the Plague of Justinian (AD 541) managed to account for an estimated 10% of the worlds population and then there’s the good old Black Death (1346-53) which claimed over half of Europe’s population. More recently there’s the Russian plague (1770), the Flue pandemic (1889-90) and the very deadly Spanish Flu (1918-20) which was estimated to claim 50m lives. That’s right, fifty million people died from that pandemic. And then there's the good old Black Death which claimed fifth of a BILLION! Now most of these predate modern medical science, arguably the Spanish flu was following the Great War when resources were low and healthcare was not on everyone’s priority list right. So what about more recently, surely we’ve beaten pandemics and this Covid thing is just a smoke screen by “them” to make us live in fear so we don’t question the removal of our freedoms?
So what am I saying with this, that pandemics are a thing? Yes. Do we have to live with them? Yes. What can we do about it? Ahhhhhhhhhh that’s where we get to the meat of the matter, crux of the problem, the fly in the ointment, the issue of the day (blah, blah, blah).
I posted some time ago about consumer society, happiness in the modern age and how things don’t make us happy. Also I made a brief comment above to the increase in low cost travel contributing to the spread of Asian flu. What does this have to do with a pandemic I hear no-one (except maybe the voice in my head) ask. Well in this modern, instant communication, mass convenience disposal society instant gratification is a thing. Its what most people live by. A friend of mine commented to me earlier today about a person she sat next to (and who shall remain nameless) that complained very loudly about the very poor Wifi signal in a public hospital and how she would have to sit at the other side of the waiting room to get good signal. She wasn’t even getting treatment but was there to support her mother! The idea that it is a basic right to have instant access to what would have been considered science fiction by the majority of the population 30 years ago is fundamentally flawed and wrong. Many people talk about the privilege of being white, being from a rich country or having rich parents or good education etc, but there is a privilege that not many people acknowledge, and it is damaging our global society – the privilege of being selfish!
Thats right, the privilege that seems ingrained into many of our society that if something impacts them in a negative way then it is unfair. That they have no obligations other than to make themselves happy and that no other person counts in their personal world space. That sounds a little far fetched doesn’t it, no-one could possibly be that self-obsessed and selfish? Well ask yourself have you ever used the phrase “why should I do it when no-one else is”? I know I have, and that makes me feel just a little bit ashamed. If I think like that I’ll never make a change, never improve anyone’s experience of living on this beautiful little blue and green rock we call home.
I recently suggested to a few friends that what the climate change movement needs is not to invent newer, cleaner forms of energy or more degradable plastics or reduced emissions from global transport but rather to change our society and consume less. By consuming less we would have to change the way we live, change the basic rights (privileges) that we think we deserve. Personally we got rid of our second car (ooh, big sacrifice) and I chose to use public transport to commute as that is a move in the right direction I thought. More people on mass transport, less vehicles on the road, more efficient emissions! I suggested this to a few colleagues and the response was “well we’d use public transport if it was cheaper and more reliable”. Yes public transport isn’t as easy as personal transport, and yes its costly but a lot of that is because people aren’t using it and our baseline comparison is skewed because we have personal transport and freedom of choice (no timetables). And we return to the heart of the matter, sacrifice or not choosing to give up a right or privilege for the common good. Has anyone noticed how this links back to the pandemic and vaccinations yet, no? Well that’s not your fault, I do ramble a bit. So here goes, if a significant proportion of the population are vaccinated then the virus will begin to die out as it doesn’t have enough viable hosts to replicate itself. So by vaccinating yourself you are protecting the society you live in. You are making a sacrifice for the greater good, by exposing yourself to the incredibly small risk of a side effect from the vaccine. And yes there have been a very small proportion of negatively impacted individuals from vaccination and that is horrifying for those people affected, however purely on a statistical basis vaccination works and is beneficial to all humankind.
So making a small sacrifice for the greater good is not too much to ask is it?
So now I’ll pull all the waffle so far together and explain what I I mean about selfish. I am a human with connections to other humans, my actions affect those humans and then those that they are connected to, almost like a ripple effect. So if I have an awareness and understanding about this connectivity I can then make conscious choices on behalf of the whole about my individual actions! So if I make a decision to act a certain way I am also taking ownership of the ripple effect of those actions, yes? Great, so if we all agree that we’re connected to other humans because we are part of a society then shouldn’t we also take ownership of the ripple effect of our actions (or inactions?).
Take trolling on Facebook as an example. We all agree that Facebook is not only a community but is made up of lots of smaller communities and that by taking part in the grand experiment that is Facebook we are choosing to join a community. Then a member of that community chooses to denigrate, mock, deride, insult, act like a shit on another persons post for no better reason than because it satisfies them in some way. Well then that’s selfish and they own the consequence of the ripple effect. That’s on them! Its an example of instant gratification consumer culture, the quick win to feel good without any consequence. However as Isaac Newton said every action has an equal and opposite reaction, you want instant gratification then you’ll pay for it in the long run. But there seems to be lack of awareness of this selfishness among our society, a lack of understanding that each individual is part of something greater and that sometimes you have to give back to the whole.
Why did I start this post about pandemics? Well, i'd like it of people stopped being shits, thought about others and actually acted in the interests of the whole rather than continually asking "what's in it for me?". There is no magic quick fix to the problems of the world, it's little steps that will change things, because if we enough of us try to make a change, then maybe just maybe things will change.
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