Do we want to be sane or just safe?
It's about time to get off the fence about what is and is not healthy
My wife told me in tears today that she misses hugs from friends and family. She misses her friends. Only our families seem to be willing to be around us, hug us, and be unafraid to be with us.
It is not healthy that most of our friends seem to be living in fear of an indoor encounter with nude faces or someone else’s air. I said it’s time we start asking people for contact and risking that they might not go for it.
So I decided to message a friend and ask them if there were any barriers to us getting together. He responded quickly ‘none.’ That’s all it took. But the atmosphere of apprehension and hesitance is so thick that we loners may feel fine in its fog.
We all get tired of everyone else keeping us at quadruple arms length. Yet we are not under ‘lockdown’ here in Oregon as that exists in parts of the world. We exist in a twilight zone of ‘new normal’ in which the germaphobia has taken hold so that it seems no one wants to risk human breath anywhere near them.
That is not healthy. At some point, we all must risk exposure again. If we wait too long, renewing exposure may seem to make us so vulnerable that we won’t want to risk it. But it is exactly that risk — the risk of nude faces, smiles, and noses — that we need. Sanity must prevail.
We cannot continue living under misanthropic health policies that treat human beings as bags of germs and health risk. Love is a risk. It’s terrifying to put yourself out there to be vulnerable with another person. But we do it because it is worth it. Love is worth it.
And life is worth living again as if human beings are worth it — because we all are.
When media constantly exaggerate health risks 'safe' becomes a euphemism for control.
Stop staying ‘safe.’ Risk what you risked before and lived through!
You’d think we’ve been dealing with sneeze AIDS the way the media and governments around the world have been treating the Covid situation. As if no perceivable risk that could be hypothesized should be allowed. There’s no way the reasonable notion of ‘safe’ can be fulfilled under such delusions. Scientists have gone mad with speculation in the media, clearly to keep power in their hands that they’ve become accustomed to.
That kind of control cannot continue. We must rebel.
Such social controls do not produce greater health, but only add to the power of un-elected bureaucracies to further damage it.
It is not healthy to just stay home and avoid social contact. Just like our emotional well being thrives on contact, so does the human immune system. Natural immunity is superior to anything offered up by big pharma or modern medicine.
It is not healthy to avoid hugs and handshakes. These are expressions of trust and acceptance necessary for human society to thrive.
It is not healthy to cover our faces with materials that cannot stop passage of micro-organisms and lower our oxygen levels. Face masks were symbolic muzzles from the beginning, symbols for not back-talking to those in positions of decision making power. Symbols of who is really in control of our bodies when they feel the whimsy to enact that control.
Are we going to just sit passively by, hoping things get better?
It is time to organize in our local communities and start embracing our humanity again. And yes, risking a respiratory infection (Covid-19) in order to be fully human. Risking death in order to be fully alive. Risking a cold (Omicron) in order to take back our lives together.
Very provocative article. And certainly something to think about as we embrace the new year. Happy New Year to you and your family, Kannon.