Carpe Diem

When fear is being used against us as a tool of control, only the fearless live. Everyone else suspend their lives for the moment in the hope that normality will return. However, normality may never return. Those waiting for a better time to live than now may well find themselves waiting for ever.

It was this insight that led the Romans to the conclusion that life has to be lived fearlessly in the now, especially in times of chaos and social decay. Carpe Diem, they said as they scrambled to make the best of every day given to them. Other people and religions have come to similar conclusions. In Norse mythology, only the fearless go to heaven. The fearful go to Hellheim. In Christianity, we're told to love and live freely as God intended. Life is a gift that must not be wasted. To squander it is a sin.

What is suggested is not recklessness or hedonism. The idea is not to indulge ourselves in the now at the expense of our future. We are not to act as if there's no tomorrow. Rather, we're to act in the certainty that there will be a future, but that it may not be better than now. There has to be a balance. We must neither exhaust our resources in the present, nor save them all for some future day. We must act rationally in the face of real dangers. Life must go on, and life must be lived fully, not huddled in fear.

Implicit in this is a cost benefit analysis based on available information. We must trust our instincts and reasoning. The current flu scare appears overblown. The flu is nothing to be feared. Very few people die from this, so why cut back on our lives? Our children are even more immune to this disease, so why not tell them straight up that they are unlikely to be much affected by it? Why bother with face masks for children?

It may be tempting to go out and argue against all the tyranny that has come about in the wake of this scare, but it's not going to get us anywhere. If we have to wait for permission to live freely, we'll be waiting at least as long as those waiting due to fear of the virus. It's not only the virus we should be fearless about. We must be equally fearless in the face of authority. It's not up to any of these to decide when and how we live. The best strategy is therefore to stay out of the public eye and live as freely as we possibly can. There's also no point in arguing the facts of the matter. This is not about facts. It's not about statistics and numbers. It's not about the virus. This is about freedom, and freedom is only for those who live life fearlessly in face of imagined and real dangers.

Living life in the now