My Fragile Faith in Humanity / The Plague

I live with a fragile faith in humanity. I waiver, sometimes within moments, between being an all out humanist believing in humanity's unadulterated ability to overcome all to an occasional belief that humanity is a virus upon this planet. It is not an easy way to live, but I have growth to be accustomed to this dichotomy. I have adapted and it has become the norm for me. 

I go about my life like anyone else. I drive along picturesque, pastoral rural Vermont. I look upon the windmills on Georgia mountain and their awesome turning. I think of progress. I think to myself, "How wonderful we are leaning to live in harmony with our environment!" and then drive on and come across someone with a chorus of plastic blowup Walmart crap cluttering their lawn. It could be Christmas, there could be blinking lights with Santa, elves and reindeers. It is at this point when I change over to my other self. We are fucking doomed. I am in constant battle with myself. 

I just finished rereading Albert Camus' The Plague. It is a perfect book to read coming out of the pandemic. It is bubonic plague in the book but symbolically it is a different plague he is writing about. It is a plague of bad ideas. It is written shortly after World War II and it take place in his native Algiers in a small city called Oran in 1947. The world was fighting a plague of isms in mid-20th century: communism, socialism, capitalism and fascism. 

This is a philosophical novel so the journey is a personal one, one of thought and self reflection. Like most books of this nature it's soul, it's place where it sets the reader straight, it's denouement, if you will occurs towards the end of the book when the character Tarrou finally tells the main character Dr. Rieux what is on his mind. 

"... this epidemic has taught me nothing new, except that I must fight it at your side. I know positively ---- yes, Rieux, I can say I know the world inside out, as you may see --- that each of us has the plague within him; no one , no one on earth is free from it."

Life is a battle of internal dialogue in a search what is right and what is wrong. For me, the wind mills are right and a sign of progress, but the plastic blinking Santa on some idiot's lawn ... that is clearly wrong. All I can think is "What the fuck?!"  Plastic comes from oil. Roughly13.9 million acres, globally, are being used for oil production on this planet. All that habitat being destroyed so that blinking Santa can exist. Why is anyone buying this shit? If you bought it used or a long time ago, you don't have to use. You don't have to waste the electricity using it! I have to control myself not to pull the car over, in the dark, sneak their lawn and destroy this shit. I think of this each time I see one of these. My faith is fragile, but calmer minds do prevail in the end. 

The character Tarrou smiles a lot. He doesn't show his internal struggles. This is not true for me. My internal struggles are obvious. I bitch a lot, sometimes loudly. Here I go again, our plagues here in the early 21st century are different. We have global warming and the destruction of bio-diversity and it is capitalism that is bringing it on. The other isms are mostly gone but capitalism is alive and well and eating our planet, much like Galactus in Marvel Comics. Each time you buy some plastic crap, something you really don't need, you taking a bite, your bite, out of her. Capitalism is our plague. 

Camus' narrator says this early in the novel:

"In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves, in other words they were humanists; they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure, therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanist first of all, because they haven't taken their precautions. Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and through that everything still was possible for them which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.

Camus is considered an existentialist, which is perfect for humanity's current predicament. We fight for our literal existence. But he didn't care for this term. He considered himself an absurdist, our search for meaning leads us into conflict with the world. This is me. Recently, I was having breakfast with some acquaintances and a young mother mentioned that she wanted to have five more children. I was screaming inside. I don't know why, but the pestilence of the plague is not obvious to everyone, even smart people. Denial is a lot easier than confronting reality. 

Let us not forget to be modest.