What´s Next? 13

First, one of my many pet peeves, Gentle Reader. This regards people who don't seem to realise that we are in a pandemic.  Now they could be just plain dumb or uninformed, or young, or old, or stupid, or selfish, or self-absorbed, or simply innocently distracted.  Who only knows?  But it is a nuisance trying to maintain a safe distance from some of these idiots.  I don't mean while outside, where the naturally circulating fresh air makes transmission less likely, but in stores and restaurants and coffee shops and suchlike.

Sometimes I speak up, but usually I just try to remain vigilant myself.  I often put on a mask, but it doesn't protect me, just the often unaware people around me.  The other day I saw inside a popular bakery-cafe one older woman coughing into her hand instead of her elbow, and who only knows what she was going to touch after, for anyone else to pick up her lovely germs.  Then there was another woman, middle aged, groping and touching her face in a mode that seemed almost autoerotic.
Today in a small grocery store I had to constantly swerve around one customer who didn't seem to know where he was or what he was doing, then in a cafe there was this fellow running his probably not very clean hand along the self serving area to illustrate a point to his companion.

I could go on, but I won't.  For me, what a lot of this touches on is how unprepared a lot of us still seem to be to responsibly deal with this state of emergency we are all living in.  And of how equally unprepared most of us will be as we eventually emerge out of this pandemic.  Right now, many are relearning the words to  Kumbaya.  But it has to be also acknowledged that we are a generation irreparably corrupted by the greed, cynicism, materialism, narcissism and pathological self-interest that has been ruling this world over this half century.  Everything from the Me Generation to rampant neoliberalism and voracious and unbridled global capitalism and international corporatism have been almost like an unconstituted conspiracy to undermine and destroy and otherwise disembowel us of  every single redeeming trait of our highest humanity.

We all want a new world.  Many are talking about making a new world.  But we are forgetting one salient principal.  First, in order to have a new world, we have to be prepared to work long and hard at making a  new world  And in order to equip us for so daunting and monumental  task, we also have to start becoming new people:  less selfish, less individualistic, less self-focussed, less greedy, kinder, more loving, more communitarian, more generous.  Nothing is going to change, Gentle Reader, until we do, and this means you and I.  I like the word repentance, which is to say, turning away from the selfish and destructive path we are on and taking on a new identity, of people with loving hearts and ready to put our hand to the great task that awaits us.