The World Is Changing

We often discuss how the 'world changed' after a moment in time.  Pearl Harbor, 9/11, WW1 & 2, the Industrial Revolution, the internet, they all had large impacts on life and the world.  Even looking back on my relatively short life, and so much is different in my world now from when I was a kid.  I mean cell phones for one, that has transformed every bit of life from how we shop to how we travel to how we entertain ourselves.  The internet was once an obscure network used by the military and universities, now it reaches into all but the deepest darkest corners of the planet.  9/11 changed how we traveled and what we thought of the world; it changed how we felt as Americans.

The world is changing now, but on a scale I'm not sure we've seen in a long time.  People are dying, over 115,000 documented deaths as of this writing, probably double that if you believe even half the stories you hear from China, Iran, Italy, and others.  Many are dying from lack of resources to treat other illness or sickness.  How many more will die from suicide or mass unrest as food and work shortages drag on?  In the US we've never had this high a number of people unemployed, and all that happened in a month.  The stories about lines at the food banks are astounding.  Grocery store shelves are bare at the same time farmers are dumping raw goods because the market can't absorb them fast enough anymore.  1/3 of homeowners can't pay their mortgages right now, an obscene number can't pay rent.  How long before all these shuttered businesses can't pay their rents and then those landlords can't pay their loans?  We're on the brink of a massive property market crash that no court system could keep up with, even with all the robo-signing in the world.  Where will these people go then?  And what will that do for our attempts to squash a virus if we can't keep exposed or contagious people sheltered away from the populace?  I will go on about the pitfalls big government all day, but this is a situation where you need big government, but I'm not sure any government in the world can handle keeping this ship afloat.

I don't think any of us realize exactly how big this is.  We spend our days posting meme's on Facebook and arguing over whether it is really worse than the flu, but we're not actually seeing what's going on.  I'm not that old, but I've never even heard of a flu season that when it hits an area, swamps the hospitals like this.  Hospitals aren't even admitting most people, only the really sick and even then they can't keep up.  The flu doesn't destroy entire families of healthy people who snuck out for a get together.  The flu doesn't spread silently amongst those with no symptoms.  When people die from Covid-19 its brutal and intense but all the first hand accounts in the world don't mean anything if our local hospitals are empty.  Its hard for our brains to believe what we can't see.  It's why Faith in a higher power is so difficult, we need concrete proof and even then it isn't enough.  The conspiracy theories are running amok right now and I imagine many of those people will go to their deathbeds never believing any of this was real.

I read an article the other day about how this is a Darwinian moment for America, and its the sad truth of it.  It will come down to the haves and havenots.  Those that have housing and those that don't.  Those that were lucky enough to be in jobs that are either deemed essential or critical, and those that don't.  How do you plan a career for where you want to be if there is a pandemic?  No high school guidance counselor talks you through that.  I keep seeing posts about privilege and how this whole pandemic affects people differently depending on their level of privilege.  Unfortunately that's true, and that's how its always been.  The poor is always impacted worse than the wealthy.  The plague killed off huge swaths of the serf population but that led to the eventual end of the feudal system.  I'm not saying its okay for the poor or sickly or unlucky to die, not at all, only that there could be huge world changing impacts we have yet to realize.  While its overwhelming, its important to keep our eyes open to see what is going to be coming through our society, because something will.

The future rarely turns out how we expect, and certainly no one expected this year to turn out the way that it has.  Who would've thought we all would've experienced the collective hallucination that is Tiger King?  I mean would that show have been half this popular had it been released at any other point in time?  I mean what is even going on in most of it?  Its no Oscar winning documentary that's for sure, but it certainly has given us all a break from reality, which isn't that part of the point of any good story?  When reality gets too real, sometimes a good book, show, or movie is exactly what we need, and sometimes there is nothing wrong with retreating.