There are nefarious reasons behind the government response, but it is aided and abetted by the quest for meaning. For many, this was the first time in their life they woke up in the morning with a sense of purpose. The main reason the Covid panic is not old news is the people swept up in the cause cannot let go of it. Many got swept up in their fantasies on-line for the same reason. When it started, every nurse and doctor went on-line every day to tell us how exhausted they were, as if they were rescuers working day and night to save people from a collapsed building. They imagine they are in real trenches fighting real monsters. Of course, for close to two years we have been hit by a tsunami of this from women claiming they are in the “front lines” of Covid. These pointless and foolish acts are driven by a need to be seen as men with a purpose beyond the role they play. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma decided to play Rambo and went over to personally rescue people. They had to be in the middle of the action. They were not satisfied with making noises about it on the House floor. Two congressmen flew over there against the wishes of the government in order to play hero. This quest for meaning was not limited to LARP’ing on-line. Of course, those friends were always heroic Afghans, not Americans. All of a sudden, the media was full of stories from people who claimed to working to get their friends out of the country. They spent all day on-line playing “digital Dunkirk” as if they were really doing something heroic. Suddenly, getting our “allies” out was a holy mission.

Ours is an age where everyone is on a vision quest and they force the rest of us to play along.įor example, lost in all of the handwringing about Afghanistan is how some became emotionally attached to a place they ignored for two decades. Every crisis, it turned into a crusade that quickly takes on the trappings of religion. They invent victims of imaginary oppression so they can play the white knight. They turn the trivial into all-important moments, so they can pretend to be in a struggle. This is the time when people are always searching about for meaning and purpose in their lives.

Perhaps the democratic age, where mob rule plunged the West into darkness and chaos. Maybe this is the geriatric age where aging Baby Boomers ruled the day. In this age, society is whipsawed by one trend after another, so it seems impossible to know which one will be remembered. Few people living in the Jazz Age would have guessed they were living in the Jazz Age. When you are living through an age, it is very difficult to see the currents with which the age will be identified.

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