Everything which gets some part of the population past the rapids makes this whole thing less dangerous for everyone. I would volunteer, personally.
And I will say again: this time is a blessing for me, personally. I am not worried for my sake. I am really valuing and using this time to take stock, and slow down even more. I think I’m pretty slow by most standards normally, but I’m trying to get down to sloth proportions, relatively speaking
I think most of us live on manic energy. It is helpful in our climate. It has survival value. But it makes life LESS FUN, or even NO FUN. It sucks the joy out of everything when everybody needs every last fucking thing immediately and will fire you if they don’t get it. It’s a drag.
We don’t “recreate” so much as recover. We rest just enough to survive, but not enough to feel like we are living honest, engaged, complete lives.
There are forces out there making it like this. There are people out there laughing at all of us running around like hamsters on wheels. At a minimum, it is certainly the bankers robbing us blind, with not one person in a thousand able to see the subterfuge. It was the same a century ago, almost to the year, when Keynes said the same thing, when he was still being honest.
I’m treating this whole thing as an opportunity for a reboot and upgrade. Sad that I would choose computer imagery, but it is the myth of our times, isn’t it? A guy argued to me in a bar once that we are already cyborgs, since for all intents and purposes most of us are attached to our phones. I think he was right.
Put your phone away right now. Bury it, and only check it a couple times a day. Or bury it, turn the ring tone way up if there are any people you actually care about who might REALLY need to get a hold of you, then don’t check it until you reemerge into the sunlight of a freed world.