A few thoughts this Monday...

Could it have inspired Field of Dreams?

I know this isn't what your thoughts were focused on. But Rod Serving may have actually aided in our national anxiety and paranoia epidemic. What's the vaccine for that?

How I remember that episode of The Twilight Zone ! When Chris Matthews had his show, he actually (on more than one occasion) compared dt to Anthony, the Billy Mumy character.



And a lot of this same crowd has completely bought into QANON. Not only have the "libtards" conspired with the ENTIRE world to be faking COVID-19 to bring down their dear leader, this INSANE group of lunatics think Hillary, Dr. Fauci, Bill Gates,(who's also planning on putting "chips" in all of us via the vaccine-I'm still not clear on what the chips are about), Tom Hanks, other Democrats, and some "Hollywood Elites" are operating a world wide cabal who are trafficking thousands upon thousand of babies and children. The "hero" to bring down "the deep state" is none other than Donald Trump.

"THE DARK AGES were rife with plague, fanaticism, and accusations that Jews secretly fed off the blood of children. In 2020, we too are beset with plague, rampant medical misinformation, and a persistent rumor that “global elites” torture children to harvest the chemical adrenochrome from their blood, which they then inject in order to stay healthy and young." (Wired, 7/21/20, Brian Friedbarg).

I've completely cut off communication with was used to be a very close friend because she's absolutely brainwashed. It's terrifying that people REALLY believe this...

I have stated this several times since mid March, and discussed it with a few academic friends and they agree with my idea.

This pandemic and all the other issues we are enduring currently can lead to great opportunity that would have taken much longer to act decisively upon had we not been faced with these problems.

A famous Anthropologist, Stephen Jay Gould, worked out a theory involving genetic evolution which I think can be applied in a human culture environment. His theory of Punctuated Equilibrium*, a concept to describe genetic evolutionary splits, is something I see taking place throughout humankind since the beginning of this pandemic. We, all humans, are faced with this one common threat and we are being forced to deal with it simultaneously. This threat forces us to re-evaluate our lifestyles, health, manner of communication, everything in our daily lives is affected in some way.

I see a rearrangement of cultural norms and practices in the present. It's a punctuated equilibrium event that will end up being a shift in psychological, philosophical and cultural norms to a great degree by the time we get to the other side of this pandemic.

The opportunity is that we can make numerous changes in how we go forward from this and appropriate planning now can facilitate a rapid shift in the right direction to ensure our survival as time goes on. This isn't the first biological threat of this sort that we will see as we keep increasing our population as a species, there will be more so we have to prepare for that including addressing uncomfortable topics, like population numbers.



*Punctuated equilibrium theory, basically, claims that evolution didn't happen at a gradual pace throughout time but in many cases was foisted upon those affected by major events upsetting the norm and hastening distinct changes due to necessity for survival. I realize that is a simple explanation but for my argument it will do, and I know his theory was about genetic evolution but I see a similar set if events taking place on the human cultural level and it's the best description I can find for the time being.