Our society views the human being in the image of the machine. Perhaps that is why so many have accepted the lock-down without much fuss.
To such a view-point, locking-down the entire world until the virus burns itself out is an obvious solution. In fact, if it saves lives this is the only moral thing to do.
Now a machine can be isolated from other machines and put on stand-by indefinitely, and then re-booted again to operate just as normal, as if nothing had happened. A human being, however, cannot. And we are about to witness the consequences of assuming otherwise.
For the reality is that we are not machines, and to someone who sees that civilisation is fundamentally held together, not by the machinery of bureaucratic rules and armies of police forces, but by real-world relationships between individual people, all supported by a myriad of common customs, traditions and mutual agreements, will see in concepts such as social distancing and the indefinite suspension of the right to assembly something far more sinister than anything a virus could cause.
To such a view-point, locking-down the entire world until the virus burns itself out is an obvious solution. In fact, if it saves lives this is the only moral thing to do.
Now a machine can be isolated from other machines and put on stand-by indefinitely, and then re-booted again to operate just as normal, as if nothing had happened. A human being, however, cannot. And we are about to witness the consequences of assuming otherwise.
For the reality is that we are not machines, and to someone who sees that civilisation is fundamentally held together, not by the machinery of bureaucratic rules and armies of police forces, but by real-world relationships between individual people, all supported by a myriad of common customs, traditions and mutual agreements, will see in concepts such as social distancing and the indefinite suspension of the right to assembly something far more sinister than anything a virus could cause.
Spreading FEAR plays into the Ahrimanic impulse.
ReplyDeleteThe task of humanity is to challenge this.
Thanks for reminding us.
Thank you Owen, yes, I have personally found this whole crisis particularly useful in identifying and confronting fear. It's been a huge gift for me in that respect.
DeleteWell said. I think that those ultimately responsible for (especially) social-distancing are perfectly well aware of the inhumanity of what has happened, and is being sustained - and the intent is exactly that isolation will permanently move people towards regarding themselves as mere ego/I-less animals (at best); or (since humans are, after all, *social* animals - as even the most Dawkins-esque materialistic biologists affirm) preferably have us self-identified as mere 'biological machines' (as if both ego and astral were non-existent). So this is not merely inhumane, but anti-animalic!
ReplyDeleteThanks Bruce. You've articulated exactly what I was driving at.
DeleteIt dawned on me today; social distancing is apartheid by another name.