No_Mind wrote: ↑Thu Apr 09, 2020 12:01 pm
I have investigated the cause of my stress. My OCD is more about a disorderly home than anything else like germs etc. It is present but it is not disabling.
What I think is OCD is something else - everywhere in the world the administration has no grip and that it is a situation in complete flux. And this chaos is manifesting itself as OCD-like feelings.
I know that control is an illusion, I am not at all afraid of falling ill or dying, but I am unable to come to terms with every government being frozen (every) and imposing something like lockdown which has no successful precedence, no case study.
It is the chaos that is so disorienting. I might not die due to Covid-19. I might be dead because I have three kilos of rice in my home and a kilo of potato.
It has not come to that. But it could turn to that in less than six weeks. 95 million live in my province of West Bengal. Only 9 have died (between 5 and 9). That is less than 1 death per million. But at least 4 million are going to starve due to unemployment soon.
In fact no government or task force is being able to define - why lockdown? Why can't compulsory masks + social distancing + request to people to not leave home except on essential business work? How can we be sure that after a eight week lockdown there won't be a resurgence.
I know that at slightest sign of rioting every country would put 100,000 troops on the ground and save innocent people but that does not mean society would survive intact.
Here 140 million jobs are projected to be lost in next two months. It is truly unprecedented. I know humans deserved it. But ..
The unemployment rate in my country before the current crisis was 19% and only Buddha knows how high it will reach under the current measures. We do have strong family values where people lean on their relatives when help is needed, but even this might not work when the majority become jobless.
What saddens me is that when collective fear is on the rise, government officials become idolized by the majority of people. The health minister where i live currently have the status of a hero, the savior of the masses, and i ve heard that women on social media began to fall in love with him, describing how handsome he is (you have to see how he looks!) in a sad show of public masochism considering how this begets more sadism. Civil law is currently suspended under the name of "defense orders" hinting that we are heading towards a martial law.
The current measures helped keep confirmed cases relatively low for the time being (less than 400 nationwide) but when this romantic period begins to subside and when people get back to work and infection rates begin to skyrocket, the damage on both the economy and health will be difficult to mitigate and social unrest becomes a very likely possibility.
In the ordinary case of an OCD, the individual is taught to recognize it as a private mental state and not to generalize it by virtue of giving it an unappealing name! Nowadays, the public are encouraged to be anxious, describing this state of affairs as sane and necessary.
We are taught at a very young age to hide aspects of ourselves from the public eye, beginning with teaching us how to defecate in the privacy of toilets. This veil of civility gives rise to the public perception of purity and attractiveness, but when public life itself becomes a public toilet, the defining line of what is a personal choice and public health hazard becomes increasingly unclear.
What remains unchanged in my view is that what we consider as "the gift of knowledge" has always been a poisoned gift. Our worldly knowledge always presents itself as a solution to a problem until itself becomes a problem, such as in the case of COVID-19. In my culture, people believe that God's wisdom of not letting us know how we are going to die is a gift, until the God's of our new age (the so-called scientists) believe otherwise.
And the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus, saying: "Behold now, bhikkhus, I exhort you: All compounded things are subject to vanish. Strive with earnestness!"
This was the last word of the Tathagata.