Ego Stupidity-The ‘Oxygen’ COVID-19 Needs from Us to Survive

We are living through the darkest time that any of us has known in our lifetime. A pandemic challenging our way of life and that of our children and grandchildren. Some may argue the Great Depression, Hitler and Nazism, and 9/11 were darker than the challenges of COVID-19. But there is something very different taking place now, contributing to our darkness, beyond the ravages of COVID-19, when compared to those monumental challenges of the past. Then, our country willingly and instinctively came forth together to defeat what was facing it at the time. Americans knew they were all in this together and it would take that realization to meet the challenge. A time to become “one” in order to meet and defeat the threat at hand. Whether it was working our way out of a Depression, destroying a dictatorial monster bent on taking away peoples’ freedom, or responding to the threat of terrorism on our shores. I remember that feeling in the aftermath of 9/11, and so do you.

Unfortunately, that selfless, do what’s best for America and Americans, hasn’t been aroused and is absent in many, in response to COVID-19. It has been replaced for many by a “me first” willingness to sacrifice the lives and health of so many of their fellow Americans. Social distancing and wearing a mask are just too big of an “ask” in order to protect others and themselves. An approach to citizenry that has contributed to the grotesque, unfathomable, and often preventable daily loss of life in our great country. Rivaling the loss of life that occurred on just one day—9/11/01. But, now every day is a repeat of that horrific day in the loss of humanity. And that doesn’t seem to matter for a whole lot of people. Why! Why, is the unconscionable acceptance of the loss of life and the destruction COVID-19 has brought forth, taking place? Why, are so many failing to act as their brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, particularly health care workers and first responders? Why, is this happening in people who are as intelligent, and spiritual, and mentally stable, as everyone else?

The answers to these questions must be asked and answered, on behalf of those who have and are being lost to this scourge. This involves two influences that have given and are giving COVID-19 the “oxygen” it needs to survive. It is the combination of these influences that has resulted in a whole lot of senseless mismanagement, or what I refer to as ego stupidity. The first influence involves the role of social media in dispensing non-truths and lies about COVID-19, that’s doing its part to maintain the virus and help it to flourish. The explosion of social media platforms over the past 20 yrs. has led to the growth of “the empowerment of non-truth.” Under the cover of the First Amendment, social media platforms and opinion news programming, are less accountable for presenting and making distinctions between truth and faulty beliefs and half-truths about COVID-19. A lack of responsibility fueled by the fact there is a lot of money to be made in telling people what they want to hear and often less money in telling them what they need to hear—the unvarnished and vetted truth. Fiction and fantasy play better than reality for many people. People are “sold” what they want to see, hear, and believe which can be quite addictive.

An addiction to social media and opinion news reflected in the incredible number of hrs. people are willing to consume and “stay tuned” on their TVs and computers. Unfortunately, this addiction has found its way into the content involving COVID-19 and many of the mistruths being told about it. Often, including various forms of conspiracy theory in which people pay attention to half-truths while ignoring lies. One additional benefit of the addiction is that you don’t have to spend time getting to know the truths about COVID-19, you can just let others “find” it for you and you even allow them to do your thinking for you, though you often don’t realize that this is happening. Things like telling you it’s a hoax, or that it’s going away after the election, or that warm weather will make it disappear, or masks don’t work to limit the spread of COVID-19. Intelligent, spiritual, and mentally stable people have swallowed many of these non-truths and still are. They just don’t know they are because the whole process is quite insidious and as I said addictive.

Now to the second influence. Just as COVID-19 needs a host in the body, it also needs a host in the mind. And, that’s where the amount of balance and healthiness within our ego energy comes in. The amount of oxygen involving our ego, on which COVID-19 survives, is affected by the balance in one’s ego energy. When it’s balanced and healthy we deal with life in a healthily empowered, mentally flexible, appropriately vulnerable way to meet the challenges we are faced with, particularly COVID-19. We retain an awareness of our empowerment in so many aspects of life, even in the face of COVID-19. Wearing a mask represents empowerment, not disempowerment. We can listen with an open, but healthily skeptical mind, to scientists, medical practitioners, business, and political leaders whose life’s work is about serving everyone, not themselves, or the profits to be made from irresponsible (e.g. truth disconnected) social media or opinion news programming. People who have no interest or agenda, monetary or political, in spewing forth non-truths about COVID-19. Truth is and has always been their North Star. COVID-19 can find no host in our mind and the oxygen it needs when met with the disinfectant of truth. We can meet any of our fears with a realistic perspective built on truth to know that which must be feared about COVID-19. The common thread here is truth. It is the vaccine we must also take to kill what COVID-19 needs to survive and not be its mental host.

When one’s ego energy is less healthy and imbalanced we can find our way or be led to thinking and feeling we are disempowered, when we truly aren’t. We can find our way or be led to conspiracy theories connected to COVID-19, which can be eviscerated with the disinfectant of truth. If one is willing to drill down to the bedrock of truth that social media and opinion news often falls short of finding and feels no obligation to seek. We can find our way to feeling more threatened than we need to be, if we fail to meet COVID-19 with the truths we have and continue to learn about it, from the real experts, to keep each other safe. Ignorance of the truth from social media and unhealthy ego energy are the foundation of the ego stupidity with which many have been dealing with COVID-19. It is the oxygen on which COVID-19 depends and that has led to the deaths of more people than have died in each of our nation’s wars, and those yet to die from COVID-19. It remains for many to take two vaccines. One for their body and the other for their mind.

I end this blog with a quotation from Charles Dickens which appears in one of my previous blogs “Coronavirus—What Your Ego Needs from You.”

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

As we embrace wisdom, belief, light, and hope brought forth by the best of our humanity melded to our Divinity shining forth collectively in truth, it will be ‘the best of times’.

Stay safe and be well.
In peace and love,
Nick