It is not my purpose to advance that theory nor to debunk it, although I will offer some meta-level comments. First a brief overview. They observe that the infrastructure, technology, and legislative framework for martial law has been in preparation for many years. All that was needed, they say, was a way to make the public embrace it, and now that has come. Whether or not current controls are permanent, a precedent is being set for:.
- easy dating Baoding China;
- V. Central Africa.
- dating personals near Athens Greece?
This is juicy material for conspiracy theories. For all I know, one of those theories could be true; however, the same progression of events could unfold from an unconscious systemic tilt toward ever-increasing control. Where does this tilt come from? For millennia, civilization as opposed to small-scale traditional cultures has understood progress as a matter of extending control onto the world: domesticating the wild, conquering the barbarians, mastering the forces of nature, and ordering society according to law and reason.
Finally, the social sciences promised to use the same means and methods to fulfill the ambition which goes back to Plato and Confucius to engineer a perfect society. Those who administer civilization will therefore welcome any opportunity to strengthen their control, for after all, it is in service to a grand vision of human destiny: the perfectly ordered world, in which disease, crime, poverty, and perhaps suffering itself can be engineered out of existence.
No nefarious motives are necessary. Of course they would like to keep track of everyone — all the better to ensure the common good. For them, Covid shows how necessary that is. To rework a common metaphor, imagine a man with a hammer, stalking around looking for a reason to use it. Suddenly he sees a nail sticking out. He inhabits a worldview in which hammers are the best tools, and the world can be made better by pounding in the nails. And here is a nail!
- Katanga: Tensions in DRC's Mineral Heartland?
- Briefings | The Economist.
- dating events man in Yanji China?
We might suspect that in his eagerness he has placed the nail there himself, but it hardly matters. When the tool is at the ready, an opportunity will arise to use it. And I will add, for those inclined to doubt the authorities, maybe this time it really is a nail.
Theodore Sindikubwabo, the brutal Rwandan despot who thanked militants for slaughtering Tutsis
In that case, the hammer is the right tool — and the principle of the hammer will emerge the stronger, ready for the screw, the button, the clip, and the tear. Either way, the problem we deal with here is much deeper than that of overthrowing an evil coterie of Illuminati.
- dating meetup near Boise City United States;
- singles online dating Nanning China!
- latino dating sites in Rawalpindi Pakistan?
Even if they do exist, given the tilt of civilization, the same trend would persist without them, or a new Illuminati would arise to assume the functions of the old. True or false, the idea that the epidemic is some monstrous plot perpetrated by evildoers upon the public is not so far from the mindset of find-the-pathogen.
Katanga: Tensions in DRC's Mineral Heartland | Crisis Group
It is a crusading mentality, a war mentality. It locates the source of a sociopolitical illness in a pathogen against which we may then fight, a victimizer separate from ourselves. It risks ignoring the conditions that make society fertile ground for the plot to take hold. Whether that ground was sown deliberately or by the wind is, for me, a secondary question. I wish a lot more people would embrace not knowing. I say that both to those who embrace the dominant narrative, as well as to those who hew to dissenting ones. What information might we be blocking out, in order to maintain the integrity of our viewpoints?
Millions of others are in the same boat. Most would agree that a month without social interaction for all those children a reasonable sacrifice to save a million lives. But how about to save , lives? And what if the sacrifice is not for a month but for a year? Five years? Different people will have different opinions on that, according to their underlying values. Or I might ask, Would I decree the end of human hugging and handshakes, if it would save my own life? I am grateful for every day she is still with us. But these questions bring up deep issues.
What is the right way to live? What is the right way to die? The answer to such questions, whether asked on behalf of oneself or on behalf of society at large, depends on how we hold death and how much we value play, touch, and togetherness, along with civil liberties and personal freedom. There is no easy formula to balance these values.
It has especially impacted childhood: as a young boy it was normal for us to roam a mile from home unsupervised — behavior that would earn parents a visit from Child Protective Services today. It also manifests in the form of latex gloves for more and more professions; hand sanitizer everywhere; locked, guarded, and surveilled school buildings; intensified airport and border security; heightened awareness of legal liability and liability insurance; metal detectors and searches before entering many sports arenas and public buildings, and so on.
Writ large, it takes the form of the security state. Other cultures had different priorities. They allow them risks and responsibilities that would seem insane to most modern people, believing that this is necessary for children to develop self-reliance and good judgement.
DR Congo's small Tutsi community targeted by anti-Rwanda hostility
I think most modern people, especially younger people, retain some of this inherent willingness to sacrifice safety in order to live life fully. The surrounding culture, however, lobbies us relentlessly to live in fear, and has constructed systems that embody fear. In them, staying safe is over-ridingly important. Yet all the while, we know that death awaits us regardless. A life saved actually means a death postponed. Failing that, modern society settles for a facsimile of that triumph: denial rather than conquest.
Ours is a society of death denial, from its hiding away of corpses, to its fetish for youthfulness, to its warehousing of old people in nursing homes. All this is inevitable given the story-of-self that modernity offers: the separate individual in a world of Other. Surrounded by genetic, social, and economic competitors, that self must protect and dominate in order to thrive. It must do everything it can to forestall death, which in the story of separation is total annihilation. Biological science has even taught us that our very nature is to maximize our chances of surviving and reproducing.
No hospital records are kept on whether patients die well. That would not be counted as a positive outcome. In the world of the separate self, death is the ultimate catastrophe. But is it? Consider this perspectiv e from Dr. Some of us might rather be held in the arms of loved ones at home, even if that means our time has come…. Remember, death is no ending. Death is going home. When the self is understood as relational, interdependent, even inter-existent, then it bleeds over into the other, and the other bleeds over into the self. Understanding the self as a locus of consciousness in a matrix of relationship, one no longer searches for an enemy as the key to understanding every problem, but looks instead for imbalances in relationships.
The War on Death gives way to the quest to live well and fully, and we see that fear of death is actually fear of life. How much of life will we forego to stay safe? Totalitarianism — the perfection of control — is the inevitable end product of the mythology of the separate self. What else but a threat to life, like a war, would merit total control?
Against the backdrop of the program of control, death denial, and the separate self, the assumption that public policy should seek to minimize the number of deaths is nearly beyond question, a goal to which other values like play, freedom, etc. Covid offers occasion to broaden that view. Yes, let us hold life sacred, more sacred than ever.
Death teaches us that. Let us hold each person, young or old, sick or well, as the sacred, precious, beloved being that they are. And in the circle of our hearts, let us make room for other sacred values too. To hold life sacred is not just to live long, it is to live well and right and fully. Like all fear, the fear around the coronavirus hints at what might lie beyond it.
Anyone who has experienced the passing of someone close knows that death is a portal to love. Covid has elevated death to prominence in the consciousness of a society that denies it. On the other side of the fear, we can see the love that death liberates. Let it pour forth. Let it saturate the soil of our culture and fill its aquifers so that it seeps up through the cracks of our crusted institutions, our systems, and our habits.
Some of these may die too. How much of life do we want to sacrifice at the altar of security? If it keeps us safer, do we want to live in a world where human beings never congregate?
China steps up investment in Congo as war in east continues
Do we want to wear masks in public all the time? Do we want to be medically examined every time we travel, if that will save some number of lives a year? Are we willing to accept the medicalization of life in general, handing over final sovereignty over our bodies to medical authorities as selected by political ones?
Do we want every event to be a virtual event? How much are we willing to live in fear?