I’m Infected and You Are Too
The world is consumed with a virus. Some think a the novel corona virus is the dangerous one. The Big One. It’s said that it will kill a few percent of people along the way, disrupting global economies. And yes, that’s a lot of suffering. So very much! But what I’m consumed by in this moment is a concern for a different virus — it is a virus of the mind.
This virus has infected us all from birth. It tells us that we are separate from those around us. We are separate from nature. We can kill animals and cut down forests indiscriminately. We can pollute and burn anything and everything to fuel our consumption. This virus is the deadliest of all. It has a 100% mortality rate for humans, plants and animals should we extrapolate the pattern and time scale far enough. It is well established in every country and has infected the minds of all but a few mavericks. We have no plan for handling this mind virus. No containment. In fact we feed it every day with our advertising, media and keeping-up-with-the-jones peer pressure. We see it as the solution not a problem. And that is how it is so dangerous. Up is down and down is up.
Endeavoring to cure this mind virus puts you in a camp of radicals. You can be labeled a kook, socialist, anarchist, leftist, a tree hugger. You can be excommunicated from your peer group. You can be booted off the achievement ladder climb and left out of financially lucrative deals.
I am infected with this virus. And you are too.
I find it impossible to escape, to cure, to break its fever. I find that my recycling, biking and farm-to-table activities are like a cooling salve on this festering infection that I have. The virus remains no matter what I do. The salve is more an anesthetic — dulling the pain I know is there that I can’t get rid of; the pain of knowing that my modern life is killing off all the animals, polluting the earth, fouling the skies and ensuring that 100% of us go extinct one day.
This is the pandemic I worry about. It’s killing all of us already.
