Category: Philosophy

Stuff I Learned From Covid-19

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I’m officially sick and tired of Covid-19.  Oh, I’m still going to wash my hands at every opportunity and keep my distance.  Hugs are off the agenda and, for the time being at least, I’ll wear a mask in public.  (Just because I’m fed up doesn’t mean I’m irresponsible.)  The thing is Covid-19 has hung over my life like a black cloud for the last 2 months and I’m done with it.  It’s spring, the flowers are blooming, the birds are chirping, and last night in the darkness of my silent city, I heard coyotes howl.  This is the end you, horrible little virus.  I’m going to outlast you, but I’ll be damned if I going to spend any more time thinking about you.  So here are just a few things I’ve learned from Covid-19– and then I am going to close the door and get on with this new “normal” everybody’s been yipping about.

I don’t care where Covid-19 came from.  It came from China, okay?  Wasting a lot of time and energy trying to find the exact address is bullshit.  It’s like running around trying to identify which particular iceberg hit the Titanic!

Professional athletes earn 5,000 times more money than nurses because – uh — reasons.

First World problems still aren’t real.  They’re a pain in the ass; they’re difficult; they make our lives miserable.  But hot and cold running water, heat, light and a roof over our head is nothing to complain about.

All the scientists and medical people around the world can work flat out for a thousand years and they’re never going to develop a vaccine against stupid.

I really didn’t need all that crap I used to buy at the grocery store every week.

Hearing the same set of common-sense instructions 50 times a day is really annoying.

I don’t care what the “official” data says.  When China (population 1.5 billion) only has twice as many confirmed cases of Covid-19 and fewer deaths than The Netherlands (population 17 million) somebody’s lying.

In a crisis. most people will do the right thing.

In a crisis, celebrities are useless.

Crisis or not, Elon Musk is weird.

Shoehorning someone wearing medical scrubs and a surgical mask into your advertising to sell everything from breakfast cereal to diapers doesn’t mean you’re a caring/sharing/socially responsible contemporary corporation.  It means you’re despicable.

My neighbours are all pretty friendly.  (Who knew?)

Despite the hype, only about half of Netflix is any good.

The Television, Doritos and Pepsi Diet doesn’t work.

I like digital money if, for no other reason, than I don’t have to fight with a pocket full of coins every couple of days.

Zoom is fun — and I only have to dress the top half.

And finally:

The world goes on, and I’m going to go with it.

geese

Photo by C. Bourcier
May 6, 2020 

Time For A “Time Out”

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Call it the Corona Virus, the Chinese Virus, Covid-19 or just a good old-fashion pandemic: it’s clear to me that Mother Nature has given all of us a super-serious “time out” to think about what we’ve done.  So here are a few things I’ve been thinking about.

It took the canals of Venice less than a month to clean themselves.  This is proof that we might not be able to stop climate change, but it’s definitely possible to have clean water and blue skies again.

This doesn’t end here: we need to learn from our mistakes.  And after Sars, Avion Flu, Swine flu, Ebola, etc., etc. — in the future, our international strategy should be containing this stuff at the source, rather than chasing it all over the planet once it escapes.

Three cheers for technology!

No, human nature doesn’t change, but it’s nice to know that, in times of crisis, it does mutate for the better.

Social distancing will mark the end of Uncle Ernie’s long, boring stories and stupid “Pull My Finger” humour.

No virus can put a stop to Kanye West, Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift’s relentless quest for attention.

I am seriously embarrassed by the things that used to annoy me.

It’s amazing how quickly toilet paper jokes lose their lustre.

For the first time, North American drive-thru car culture makes a little bit of sense.

I’ll betcha most parents, stuck with home schooling, aren’t bad- mouthing teachers anymore.

When this is over, we need to give Amazon a rest (they’re going to be totally tired) and buy our stuff locally.  These are the folks who were on the front line.  Now it’s our turn to help them.

I’m amazed at how friendly people can be – at a distance.

For the next month or so, it’s going to be super easy to find Waldo.

I’m pretty much laughing my ass off at the Zombie Apocalypse.

And finally:

To those clever but equally nasty bastard millennials who are calling this the “Boomer Buster” don’t be in such a hurry to get your inheritance.  Grandma might just fool you and leave her money to medical science!

What I Know Now – I Didn’t Know Then

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I’ve been roaming this planet for a few years now, and I’m constantly amazed at how little I know.  In fact, my comprehension of ideas and events seems to be working backwards — like an intellectual Benjamin Button.  Stuff that I knew with all certainty to be true when I was a younger man has become – not so much.  Here are just a few examples of how dead wrong I was.

When I was a kid, I was certain that the best minds would always, eventually, rise to shed light on, and perhaps even vanquish, the dark forces of ignorance.  Welcome to 2020, boys and girls, when the leader of the Free World is going to be either Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders or – holy crap! – Joe Biden.

As a young person, I believed information and education were the keys to solving the world’s problems.   Not even close!  Here we are, the most educated population in history, with all the information in the universe available to us at the click of a mouse, and what are we doing?  Playing “Fortnite” and binge-watching The Walking Dead.  I rest my case.

I used to think that popular democracy was a good thing.  ‘Fraid not!  I have one word for you – Twitter.

At one time, I believed that intelligence was a sliding scale.  It was my assumption that all people were relatively smart, depending on how you looked at it.  Nope!  The world is full of evidence that stupid is real, it’s everywhere and, in some cases, it’s thick enough to cut with a knife.  Plus, it’s contagious.  Hang out with stupid people long enough and you’ll end up buying outrageous amounts of toilet paper because – uh – a bunch of other people are buying it?  (Too soon?)

And finally:

At one time, I thought the truth was an absolute.  Actually, the truth is a moveable feast, and thank God for that, because there are certain times when I want to be lied to.  For example, I don’t want to know how many nuclear weapons have been lost since 1945.  Just tell me none and I’ll be fine with that.  Nor do I want to know how close we are to economic disaster, why climate change can’t be reversed or what kind of bums and noses are in my hotdog.  The fact is, in some cases, the truth will not set you free — it’ll just totally stress you out.