I'll share some passing thoughts here. This is of course at the possible risk that our coming AI overlords might find this text once I'm safely uploaded into the HIVE MIND cloud that we're all destined to accept as our future utopian heaven(s).
While I try to avoid being uniquely or collectively magnetized (lest I find myself living in a cave or conversely codependent on a group of emotional teenagers that I just call "the band" or "fam"), I suspect I typically come down on the side of what one might call 'personal liberty' or 'autonomy' or "I'm OK, you're (going to be) OK". Ie, if I'm OK and You're OK then we can agree on the need for Autonomy and Freedoms (or Rights). The crux there for the polarized seems to revolve around what choices & rights are the *most right*, but here we're still at least making choices that are arguably informed by some narrative versus another.
Slightly past this point of "We're both OK" there's this perception of a third entity that intrudes on our personal and shared spaces...Or one might want to start concerning oneself with how much the Experts and Administrators can take away our "autonomy" ) in making choices on our behalf. I'll just add in that when I break a leg or have a nasty infection, I'll gladly abdicate enough control over to a medical professional to mend the issue, as these seem to be things that are well within the wheelhouse of modern medicine and the "Science" that it uses. I ironically note where I once ceded control to a cashier when they were attending a cash register, and curiously find these larger companies happy to allow me the 'choice' to retake my control over the human labor involved in self-checkout. Perhaps the parable there is we should be informing our oligarchs about any potential labor/cost savings when it comes to personal liberty...
In any case, if we find we have move somewhat further to "I'm NOT OK" but "You're OK" (I'm in the 'vulnerable population' with multiple co-morbidities perhaps, or maybe I just had a *really* shitty childhood) then I might react negatively to your presence even if you're OK, because I clearly am not. So there's something to be concerned with, and I--or those responsible for my health and safety--will take immediate reaction. This I think is how we typically responded to situations like this in the past, at least in the more "western" countries where most of us live. The main difference in the past was how much we exercised *choice* or *autonomy* ourselves versus abdicating (or allowing) that responsibility to others by "virtue" of how incapable we were of meeting those needs.
China & Japan etc have seen masks for a few years longer now. It might be introduced into the discussion that this was in tandem with a large number of previous "health concerns" related to a long string of SARS/MERS/etc, which seem to crop up in western & US domestic concerns with a rather curious timing. All sardonic winks to the use of situations like this by politicians, experts and petty tyrants aside, it does still make perfect sense that an expert (whose scope of expertise might be limited to one or two fields) would be making decisions with tunnel vision in extreme situations, and that alone *might* explain a good percentage of what we've seen this year at least in response to the Covid-19 "Pandemic".
if "I'm OK" and "You're NOT OK" then it might perhaps be prudent to take steps to mitigate my exposure, because maybe you're just not OK. So let's stand 6 feet apart, and discuss how Masking helps, as does better awareness and improved access to education and resources and so on. It's curious that there seems to be a fair bit of response in arenas that have nothing to do with viral transmission where this *perception* plays out. By this I mean the "social media" virtual arenas with little chance for personal contact, yet this seems to be where a lot of this is playing out.
Narratives behind everything from Cancel culture (you're not ok so you need to be CANCELLED) run their course there, all the way down to just 'cleaning my list of toxic people' on a social media platform (ie, reinforcement of the echo chamber effect). Well this, was where we were the last 4-5 years I think, up until this occurred this year. Just clean my list, remove unwanted news & information portals (be they a full website or just a lone human "portal"). Some do this in the name of the Meritocracy and Individual Achievement, some in the name of Democracy and Community, and most are just there reflexively passing all the memes and content along in stream of consciousness fashion hardly noting the narratives that are taken on board in the process.
Now we have a situation that seems to--as well as anything in the past--define a line of demarcation for anyone that is (as the huffington post would put it) given to Xenophobia in even the smallest degree. Which is to say, unless you're truly a Saint in human flesh, there might just be some people out there you (I/we) disagree with and so we might just feel like treating them as if they are "NOT OK" even though clearly I (you/we) are VERY "OK" (extremely, unassailably and assertedly OK).
If "I'm NOT OK" and "You're NOT OK" then all bets are off, we might as well pack it in and resign ourselves to mobile devices, webcams and future enhanced 'prosthetics' to collectively jack-in to the HIVE mind and accept the position for which we are Bee-ing 'divinely tempered' (or maybe just 'groomed' by the other side of divinity). Or better yet, just accept that
We’re not going back to normal (MIT Technology Review)
Anyway, as this discussion is being done to death on social media and in most of the relationships around me, I can skip much of that and point to the discussion above for covering most of the bases. To add some data points that rarely see people mentioning, here are some things that occurred prior to or were known before December 2019.
- The arrest of a Harvard professor in tandem with 2 (Chinese) assistants, plus the Chinese virologist now on asylum here in the US, versus the narratives of it being *only* a "China Virus" or "European Virus".
- The use of civil unrest by parties that *seem to be* either Racist White Nationals (Boogaloos & Proud Boys) or BLM+Antifa "thugs", and certainly have now intermingled both. This is at a time when civil unrest was *already* present in many nations around the world, and the 'knee on the neck/back' incident was something that occurred in 4-5 nations within a 6 week span of time. I find that rather ... curious.
- Event 201 was held by Johns-Hopkins, Gates Foundation & World Economic Forum as a "pandemic exercise" in October 2019 that discussed little to no actual medicine, and was largely about "coordinating the messaging" between media outlets, governing administrative bodies and private companies in the health & technology sectors. Why the WEF and not WHO/CDC?
And this is just for the 'covid' lockdowns, we haven't touched on the Riots, potential for Arson mixed with Climate Change and other polarized *reasons* for the extreme fires we've seen on the West Coast US (and last year in Australia, before that in Brazil.....and again here on the West Coast....) nor the upcoming vaccine which will either be here JUST BEFORE or JUST AFTER US election cycles, or possibly "within 2 years", or possibly even (as with AIDS and other Fauci initiatives) we can just still be strongly in support of "believing Science will some day find the answers" as we sit here trying to "flatten the curve" for 15 days---or until a vaccine comes to save the day (whichever is longest?)
Another observation, before many of the bombings we had under the 'war on terror' over the last 2 decades, there were 'training exercises' by emergency preparedness and disaster response groups & administrative bodies (from the respective country/state/etc). In tandem with this, there were also a number of routine busts that focused on individuals (generally at the high school or early college age where individuals were deemed "vulnerable") where the only caliphate presence was provided by the FBI & law enforcement who secured the 'score' of the final arrest. I will again loop back to the point above about how we now have groups who can easily be targeted as the 'source' of the 'real violence' at protests, and while many of the arrested are immediately released (which shows how much of a political theater this Live Action Role Play (LARP) really is) there's enough chaos for the politicians on both sides of the isle to point and say "I have the answer!" all in time for elections.
Anyway, for anyone who read that tl;dnr thanks... I thought I might chime in with my own personal take on our current status for the inflection or 'bias point' from this "Cosmic Mirror" (of Novelty Convalescence) versus Fundamental Liberty that we find ourselves in. Feel free to respond with salient & coherent viewpoints as possible, and leave the programmed narrative responses for social media platforms where they're most easily encapsulated as prepared "meme" messages that you simply need to repost to signal your bias and/or virtue.