How the world has become so fearful since the end of World War II
During the Siege of Malta in WW2, the air forces of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany bombed Malta to the brink of annihilation. During the war, the 97sq mile Malta absorbed the impact of 14,000 bombs, destroying 30,000+ buildings. For a stretch of 154 consecutive days and nights during the siege, 6700 of those bombs were dropped.
When the air-raid siren would sound, the Maltese people would take cover in their homes or in shelters. They would wait until the sirens ended and the raid was over, then, the starving but strong Maltese would go back into the streets, and back to their jobs and lives, knowing that at any moment, the next raid could begin without enough time to seek shelter.
They, like many others during the war, had literal bombs dropping around them, and yet they got on with it. They didn’t cower, terrified of what awaits them beyond their front doors.
I write this as Sydney, Australia, my home, enters another week of consecutive lockdowns due to the new strain spreading of COVID-19. However, I am not here to judge the competency of the state and federal governments of New South Wales and Australia respectively, rather comment on what I believe the news and current lifestyles have created. At 11 am every day, hundreds of thousands of Australians tune in to a live broadcast of Gladys Berejiklian, the state premier, and Kerry Chant, the chief health officer of New South Wales, informing us of the dire situation in regards to the Covid spread in our cities and state. It is, in my opinion, overkill. The news stations, desperate for something to report on, eat it up, with live feeds to reporters in all the affected locations, donning their surgical masks, even though no one is to be seen. One can just conclude it is to protect the cameraman standing ten feet away. Another might conclude it is to show their virtue at being so careful and cautious, meanwhile spreading numbers of infected people, irrespective of the very few numbers actually suffering from the symptoms of the virus.
But perhaps the most telling and worrying factor is how so many people, to my surprise, are absolutely terrified to go outside or to be near another human being. Walking through the shops the other day, I had a woman hug the wall and mutter under her breath at me for walking within 5 feet of her. Dropping my daughter off to daycare, I was greeted by a man who stopped in his tracks as I walked down the exit walkway towards him. Again, hugging the wall and holding his mask to his face as if that will save him from the virus I must be carrying. We are so into fear porn, that we assume everyone is infected, and really, it’s not their fault. The news sites here in Australia literally tell people to act as if everyone has the virus and, to dob people in who are breaking the ever-mutating restrictions.
How have we, a society just a generation or two from those men and women who endured World War II, become so fearful and weak, that we are so complicit in everything the news tells us, without accepting our own critical thinking capacity to judge risks versus rewards for ourselves. My theory is that life has become so good, and more and more people are engaging in office and computer work, that people have lost their risk barometer. If you don’t engage in physical sport, or a physical job, or anything where you have to assess risk for yourself, then everything becomes life or death to you, even stepping outside your front door. Men and women who once walked amongst bombs dropping in their cities are gone, replaced by those who seemingly en masse, do not look after their own health, do not engage in anything physical, and who don’t understand that we cannot lock our people inside their homes forever.
One look at social media and the future isn’t encouraging. With every post about the lockdowns, come people literally begging for more. Lockdown harder, lockdown longer, how dare anyone leave their homes.
“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”
This quote has never seemed more true.
Roger