With some regularity, events happen that wake us up to
the crude reality of our collective fragility. Now it’s a new virus. Seven
decades ago, it was the ideological viruses of nationalism, extremism, and
racism, which mutated into a fierce strain of intolerance that killed tens of
millions of us. That was our most recent wake-up call to our inescapable
collective weakness, when the science we adamantly touted as our ticket to a
glossy future turned its back against us, producing increasingly sophisticated
death machines, when the old trick of invading others excused by our racial or
mental superiority backfired in its most tremendous scale yet.
The pile of forgotten lessons has
been growing ever since. Our collective oblivion of the dangers of nationalism
and intolerance, coupled with a renascent belief in progress whose most
aggravated victim is the very nature that sustains us, has brought back a
conducive scenario for another spree of mindless absurdity: reckless leaders,
unrestrained economic speculation, a shrinking pool of natural resources,
debilitation of global regulating bodies, nuclear heads in the hands of
extremist regimes, and indifference — lots of it.
Viruses have their own cycles
which, apparently, have little to do with the cycles of human societies.
Collective fear of a new virus, the containment without precedent of daily
lives at a global scale, will serve as an effective reminder of our shared
fragility and, hopefully, will flatten the curve of the cycle of our collective
absurdity.