Priorities

I have always wondered about priorities. I mean, you think you know what your priorities are. Like, say, ensuring that THAT slimy so-and-so does not get ahead of you in the corporate rat race and things like that. Then you fall sick and suddenly find that your biggest priority is to get through the day without puking your guts out once every half an hour. THEN you sort of decide that this stress of corporate rat race, this acidity and loss of well-being is just not worth it. You recover, and back you are, sidling to your boss, and telling him how that ass messed up that project and you had to enter and save the day. Priorities!

Anyway, having read enough dystopian fiction to sink the Titanic, I was always under the impression that a crisis would show up what the priorities of the human race are, even if my own are totally messed up. Not that I wished for one, understand, and I'm quite sure that I could have readily done without the knowledge if I had been given the choice. But now that there IS a crisis and I necessarily have to live with it...

Yeah, I know, this is altogether too heartless of me and all that but I, like you, have to live with a lock-down and have to spend my time some way. Some choose to do exercise videos, others need to show that they know the way to their own kitchens; some love to issue a doomsday message every 5 minutes, others need to talk of a new tomorrow...so what if all that I want to do is check out what the priorities of humanity are. Crisis is supposed to bring the real priorities into sharp focus after all.

I must admit that the initial data does not support any massive change in focus. True that it has wrought significant changes in my own behavior, added a huge dose of fear into my everyday life but...

I am now afraid to step out on my balcony. I mean, apparently, the least little action I do there has cosmic consequences. If I clap, five planets, the sun and the moon as well as the lunar nodes all shudder in response, or so I am told. If I light a candle, the entire Cosmos heats up. Every time I step out on the balcony now, I cast a fearful eye at the Sun or the Moon to see if there is some adverse reaction. (I mean, true, that people did say that it was when it was done in unison but then what do I know about whether there is a critical mass of people doing it at the same time?)

And then there was all that solicitous regard for the national electricity grid and its collapse. THAT's put the fear of god in me, let me tell you. NOW I cannot even switch off my tubelight without shuddering in fear at the thought of bringing down the national grid. With more reason, really speaking, because I am given to understand that most people prefer to switch off their lights while sleeping so it is much more likely that, when I switch off the light, enough people could be doing the same across the country. I don't know when next I will gather the courage to touch the darned light switch.

I digressed...but with reason. See, all that may seem outwardly new but it is much the same as before the crisis. One lot is bent upon finding meaning of cosmic significance in every act of its leader. The other lot is equally as determined to see every act of that leader as likely to lead to catastrophe. THAT's how they were before, that's how they are now, nothing has changed.

So, then, have the priorities of humanity not come into sharp focus? Not even during a crisis?  Or is this not crisis enough? As in, does it require something more serious for humanity to start thinking in terms of what the priorities of the race as a whole ought to be, sinking individual likes and dislikes in the process? I was almost veering to that conclusion, that the sort of crisis which brings focus on the real priorities would have to cause much more disruption in the everyday lives of people (I am NOT wishing that it happens, thank you!) than has been the case now. And then I realized that I has not studied my data properly.

China had concealed the seriousness of the epidemic. Maybe even released it as bio-warfare. There were these people congregating when the epidemic was feared. Perhaps that was an intentional terrorist attack. Then these governments - some don't do enough screening, others did not start in time, this government is to blame because over the last so many years the health system was not made robust, that is to blame because they dismantled the system...

I think I KNOW what the biggest priority of Humanity is during a crisis.

FIXING THE BLAME!