“Now is the winter of our discontent…” William Shakespeare, Richard III, Act-I, Scene-I, Line 1
This scourge has carried on for two years, through what feels like a never-ending cycle of lockdowns and isolation, through information wars spawned from within and without, leaving us with uncertainty and doubt. Many are ready to give up. Nearly six million dead world-wide [1], and 36,000 in Canada [2]. We have all been touched, if not directly ourselves, then someone we know. The danger seems real, yet many deny. Risk is an intangible beast that few understand or can measure. It’s bad, but is it worse than otherwise? Resistance to accept information contrary to one’s belief, one’s mental model, infects all sides.
The battle between science and empiricism has created a division so wide, it’s hard to reach across the middle ground. Authenticity-propaganda, good-bad, right-wrong, black-white. This endless pandemic has spawned resistance with even the meek participating simply out of frustration. Their participation in protests expressing legitimate concerns are a way of acting out. But some protests are usurped by the extremists who use the frustrated as a cloak under which they plan and execute their agenda of division, supremacy, rebellion, and insurrection. They mock our symbols and words by appropriation to legitimize themselves and their actions.
Our political leaders taking a stand on their respective side, encourage actions to benefit themselves, to select their voters, to bolster their chance for re-election. Re-election to do what? The pandemic, science, conspiracy theories have been weaponized. Yet as controls and restrictions are lifted, we hope; we hope to return to some form of normality. But that will be a place left with the scars of division, we can only wonder what will it be like? These scars are amplified by our fragile mental state, battered by isolation, confusion, frustration; we are susceptible, and unbalanced. We strive for normalcy. We anticipate a summer of warmth and unencumbered air, but what will the later seasons bring? Are we ready to simply give up on the precautions and live our lives?
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