Brilliant!
The Dunning-Kruger effect explained in the link below.
This also ties up my thoughts on the current state of play. Basically, large tracts of the population have no experience or concept of ‘Sacrifice’. They/we, by and large, for the past fifty years or so have lived a very sheltered and privileged life.
I don’t think it’s any accident that the lowest vaccination rates are in the 20-26 year old age group. That’s not because they’re more aware, worldly or educated, they’re not.
I’m old enough (and proud, and unbelievably thankful) that I’ve lived long enough that I have ‘literally’ lost first uncles to the last pandemic, the Spanish flu, no vaccines back then, people had to band together and look out for each other.
I can remember walking in my neighborhood as a small child and seeing kids in their iron lungs, placed in their garages so they could see the other kids and the world passing by. I also remember standing in line in Corrimal memorial park to get my polio vaccine, so I wouldn’t end up in an iron lung.
I remember being on holiday in Queensland with my family in April 1982. I bought the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine, and I also remember my brother and I discussing an article about a cancer that was only killing gay men. There was no vaccine for HIV, we had to band together as a community, we had to think of others, if not for ourselves.
We modified our behavior, we longed for science to save our friends from dying before our eyes. We sacrificed, we thought of others, and with that came the joy and power of community and even learned compassion for some.
The absolute truth is, I/we, aren’t that important. We get on a plane and think, ‘What if it crashes!’ Well, what if it does, you’ll be in the news cycle for a week at most, maybe a little longer if a reality tv star is on board with you, but, it won’t stop the world, your demise won’t stop the sun rising the next day. In the scheme of things, we’re just a spec of dust, a blip. In a hundred years there won’t be anyone who remembers us.
We’re all vulnerable to the mundane, and we are all mortal.
How many times in a disaster do you hear someone say, ‘I didn’t think it would happen to me, I thought these things happened to other people’. That’s ego, that’s people thinking they’re above the mundane.
It’s far easier for people’s egos to accept and process the fanciful and inexplicable, a conspiracy. It conveniently takes away the need to process and accept that something as invisible to the human eye as germs and viruses can make them sick, and can lead to their death.
Life is random, we ‘cannot’ control it.
‘Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream’.
If Einstein is correct, and also the cosmic law of equal and opposite, then for all the greed and selfishness in the world, there is also generosity and selflessness . . we just need to find that again and nurture it.
It’s really simple, shit happens. We can rail and scream against it, we can clutter our minds with ‘What ifs’, and endless ruminating and distractions of cause and source, or, we can work together, helping each other, but . . as my long life experience shows me, that involves sacrifice, learning to be selfless, and caring for each other as a community.
Can your ego handle that?
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