Here’s a quotation from “Trump Rex” by John Feffer at https://countercurrents.org/2020/04/trump-rex:
“Athens survived the plague, though its democracy was compromised by war and disease. America, too, will live on. But it will have lost some further measure of its greatness thanks in no small part to the man who, however cynically, wanted to make it great again.”
Well, in relation, I’m glad that people in the USA keep being told facts about Covid-19. In fact, we are bombarded by tv, other forms of announcements and emails by friends about the facts. I’m happy at it all because some people have trouble distinguishing between facts and fiction.
This is not a dilemma that I have. After all, I’ve written fictional science fiction stories and am skeptical when I hear nonsensical hogwash. I know the difference in a hard discerning way about what is truth and kooky ideas. Yet, I think “yea, go for it when I keep hearing and seeing messages about the virus not applicable to my personal state of being. After all, they are boring and redundant to me personally.
In loose relation, I watched part of a movie about fictional characters, I was told, is called “avengers in the age of ultraton.” Of course I can’t watch this murderous slop unless I am bringing something to the table to make it more palatable and less stereotypic than it is.
In a way, it is a pleasure to put one’s pulse on the society’s ways. Indeed, one can walk through mega-stores and arrange thinking for oneself to be like a modern day anthropologist so that the “dig” for the way that people live is in the here and now in time rather than in times gone by.
In this vein, the movie was pretty good, but not much on its own. Yet when one starts pumping into it archetypes, thinking related to evolutionary prompters that humans have embedded in us and cultural patterns in place via memes, it does start to be more interesting.
Now, I know that many people love religious myths and non-religious myths. Take for example that on Friday the thirteenth stocks plunge since thirteen is considered a bad number and is thought to be dastardly when combined with Friday. How about flat Earth believers, people who believe in crazy religious notions such as the ones who drink deadly poison to connect with God and the early Christian injunction against suicide since too many Christians were martyring themselves to assure a place in Heaven? In fact, the injunction still holds today in the laws of many countries like the USA wherein it is illegal in most states to kill oneself because a person is dying from painful terms cancer or has other severe troubles?
Here is a perfect example of this folly:
There is this actor who plays a part called Wolverine in X-men movies. The plot roughly goes that many people are not in favor of the oddballs, including closet mutants like some closet homosexuals. Indeed, the movies are about mutants who develop super powers to salvage humankind.
So the Wolverine character is in fact in nonfictional life married to a woman. Yet when he played a homosexual about to kiss another man in a Broadway play in NYC, an audience member yelled out with a scared forceful voice, “Don’t do it, Wolverine!”
I think that this particular incident sums up the dilemma quite well. It goes like this: Absolutely many people can’t separate myth from realty. Yet each direction does have its place in the human psyche. Please, though, just don’t light candles, lick icons or beat drums to get rid of the coronavirus, I can guarantee that these methods don’t work.
In this vein, Karen of central MA Elder Services pays attention to the truth in this virus onslaught time. She has gloves, a mask and willpower to serve society.
She helps elders in my region of my state whether they are in rehabilitation centers, at home, in nursing homes or in rest homes. In fact, I first met her when I was unable to walk and ready to go to a hospital on account. Then we met again when I was in a rehabilitation unit learning to walk again.
She calls me periodically to check whether I need anything such as food, physical therapy at home, nursing care at home or any other provision. Heck, she’ll even provide the aid if need be and at risk to her health or life. Hey, doesn’t her orientation beat out candles being lit to fantasize the virus disappearing?
Sally Dugman lives in MA, USA.
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