Covid is here and is not going anywhere.
In this Zero Covid strategy, you can sense mainly propaganda, politicians who try to give themselves a role in the game and power that, in the end, they do not have.
Government, for many people, has absolute power. Many are convincing themself that this is an undeniable phenomenon, part of the nature of things. But it’s not so simple.
It’s a show, a theatre, where we like, want or desire to think that there is a puppeteer. But it is much more likely that there is none.
This theatrical need is the basis of some of the Zero Covid strategies. When a proposed campaign has biblical dimensions, doubts raise.
It’s a dream, and suddenly we woke up when the numbers changed, and the covid turned out to be still here among us.
I must admit that fear is the greatest tool rulers have. Many had understood it a long time ago.
“Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved,” Machiavelli wrote in The Prince.
“No man would have any reason to fear the fury of a tyrant, if he had no authority over any but from fear.” David Hume wrote in “Of the First Principles of Government.”
I touched it with my hand the first time the virus came to Shanghai. I naively thought that such a solid, omnipresent controlling, and intrusive governance was advantageous. Fear had made another victim. It was me this time overlooking the obvious. Nobody can no longer eliminate the virus. Everything else is just theatre.
Hundreds of years ago, no one would have noticed this virus. It probably would have passed and done what it had to do without making any noise.
But today, we see it; we have tools to indicate and show it. And we have all asked to be saved. Do something!
Why? Because we don’t know anything about it, we don’t comprehend it. We don’t have enough knowledge to understand its mechanism. I don’t mean everyone but enough people and me among them.
Like a thriller audience, we spend time waiting to see how it ends, another great show, the theatre of politics.
So is all this fidgeting on TV a distraction? But what do we want to be distracted from?
I think we want to be distracted by ourselves. The world is so large and complex today that we no longer know what to do in it.
Feeling lost, for example, is why we seek social causes to be part of something. To feel useful and think we have important things to do. Still, in reality, we don’t have any. Do we feel empty? Without a role in the comedy, we’re playing? I’ve noticed that so many are extras in their own life.
The community is essential, it’s right to participate and contribute, but that’s not all. Individuals made up a community. We are not drops in the ocean. We are not cogs in a clock. We are not wolves with the pack. We are not even ants.
