(credit: Fred Walker, via Wikipedia) 

           Corona virus (credit: Dr. Fred Murphy, via Wikipedia) 

Personal Reflections in a Pandemic Time (May 11, 2020)

If the message in the essay below feels true to you, then I hope it also gives you some comfort and some understanding. If the message doesn't feel true to you, please ignore it as the ramblings of an old man prone to mental wandering. 

The Covid 19 pandemic has caused almost all of us to do some heavy thinking. We have time on our hands. Some days, thinking is all you do.

At the front of my thoughts, I have been worrying over why some people I think of as personal friends have fallen for conspiracy theories about this virus. They have become persuaded of beliefs like the one that says the virus was created by military scientists in the U.S. or China or any of half a dozen other countries, and was released into the population, in China or in several countries of the world, to wreck a rival country’s economy, or kill off elderly citizens, or ones whose health is compromised, or to give big governments an excuse to place their citizens under rigid, secret surveillance, or for any of a dozen other reasons. Conspiracies that complicated are unlikely even from first blush simply because they would have to involve so many documents, so much physical evidence, and so many witnesses that they would be impossible to keep secret. 

I don’t believe any of the conspiracy theories. Why? Because the overwhelming weight of the evidence that I have seen from multiple reliable sources, some of which oppose each other’s political stances nearly all the time, supports a much simpler conclusion.

And by the way, in the end, there is almost no belief that I commit to totally. In fact, I view all beliefs as having degrees of truth likelihood to them. Part of the point of the movie, “The Matrix” was that even human senses can be fooled. The hand I see and feel at the end of my arm might not actually be there. No belief is perfectly reliable. They are all just more or less probable.

The most probable explanation by far for this pandemic is that the virus arose naturally in China sometime late last year. That is why the World Health Organization has called it “Covid 19”. Corona virus of 2019. There are many corona viruses out there and new ones evolving every year or two. This latest one is just one more corona virus that happens to be especially virulent for humans. It probably came from an open-air market in Wuhan where many different kinds of animals are sold as food for human tables. The exact story of the virus will likely never be known. This is the case with viruses and bacteria all over the world all the time. There is nothing new in this story.

But it’s the root cause of the willingness of large numbers of people to believe conspiracy theories that scares me. Why do some people fall for a new conspiracy theory every few months? And harder yet, why do they get so tenaciously attached to their pet theories?  

I don’t have the resources to do in-depth research on statistically significant samples of conspiracy theory believers. In fact, I don’t have the resources to do serious research on sociological matters at all. But I do have one small, but useful, resource going for me. Among my friends on Facebook, I have about 100 people whose life facts I know in ways not usual among Facebook friends. Many of those 100 are former students of mine. 

I was a teacher and also lived in the school district where I worked. I was involved fairly closely in my students’ lives, both in and outside of, school. Among those 100 former students who are now friends, around 10 have been really prone to belief in conspiracy theories.

I’m going to go out on a limb here. I hope I don’t hurt anyone’s feelings, but the Covid 19 conspiracy theories are really scaring me. I have formed a theory about people who believe in highly unlikely theories. 

So what is the common denominator among the conspiracy theory believers?

They are nearly all people who have been really hurt by life. Much more than most of us. They’ve come out of relationships in which they were egregiously betrayed. Or physically and emotionally abused. Or they’ve lost loved ones in particularly painful ways. In the case of three of them, they lost a child. A few people I’ve known who are not former students, and who have been through that worst of nightmares, have told me it is the loss that you don’t recover from. You die still grieving. My mind pauses stunned at that thought. Some others who have been through that experience have told me you can go on, but only if you get help. Professional help. 

But to stick to my topic today, what is the connection that I think I see among these pieces of information?

People really hurt – really, really hurt by life – seek at every level to find an explanation. And it becomes a mental habit. What they don’t want to believe is what is probably the real case, namely that the world is a violent, painful place, and it hands out its tragedies in ways that are often random and terrible, but without any order or system. Life is, sometimes, just nuts.

To some friends I really love, I’m trying to say: Maybe, your mom or dad or sister or brother or, worst of all, your son or daughter was just in an unlucky place at an unlucky time. And most of all, I want to say: If you seek, deep inside yourself, for reasons, explanations, understanding, and even culprits on whom you can focus blame, rage, fear, and sorrow, sometimes you aren’t going to find any. Sometimes, as people in my kids' generation say, shit happens. You, the survivor, did not do anything wrong. Neither did the one you lost. Sometimes, tragedy strikes in ways that are just random. You were given a ticket in a bad lottery, and you didn’t even know that you had been assigned that ticket number.

You did not do anything wrong. Nothing you did caused that unbelievable and terrible tragedy. Nothing you might have done was left out by some careless omission on your part. Sometimes, tragedy strikes just randomly. Shit happens.

You have people still to love. In the end, as the French say, we must live with the living.

Through our differing opinions, I still like you. A lot.

In the shadow of tragedy that hangs over us all, nevertheless, have a good day. We still have people to love.

   

                    Hold me, Mother (Welcome Photography Prize 2019)
                      (credit: Philippe Fitipaldi, via Wikimedia)