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Hungary Eases Its Lockdown - Sort Of

5/6/2020

Hungary went into lockdown mode about two months ago. Since then, the birdemic plague has caused a startling 3,111 infections and a staggering 373 deaths in the country. I have no doubt the government will use these low numbers to prove the astuteness of their lockdown measures. I mean, think about it. If they hadn't locked down the country, cases and deaths could have been double or triple the current number. The horror!

In all fairness, saving lives was not the lockdown's main goal in Hungary - at least that's what the government maintains. No, the chief purpose of the lockdown was to buy time to 'flatten the curve' to prepare the poorly-equipped and poorly-staffed Hungarian healthcare system for a potential, apocalyptic mass infection scenario.

Well, it took seven weeks, but Hungary has proudly announced that its healthcare system is now ready, willing, and able to handle anything the birdemic can throw at it. Seems like the perfect time to end the lockdown to see if the potential mass infection event really does happen. No worries though. If it does, Hungary is ready. If it doesn't, hmmm . . . then that means the lockdown worked gooder than anyone could have predicted.

If keeping people at home kills viruses, then I'm never leaving the house again. The problem is I can't do that anymore. You see, yesterday the government announced it was easing its lockdown measures . . . sort of. Though the capital Budapest remains in strict lockdown (I guess the hospitals there aren't ready yet), the rest of country can leave the house and get its butt back to work (if the work hasn't disappeared during the birdemic). I guess the rural hospitals are better equipped or something. Or maybe its a density thing. Or maybe rural folk are simply favored over urbanites because, let's face it, most rural people vote for the government while the lefty city types don't.

Though many non-essential shops, stores, and services in the countryside will be allowed to open and operate again, each will obliged to do so under a tangled knot of industry/service-specific rules and regulations. The bulk of the rules and regulations are arbitrary, contradictory, and confusing - so much so that even the government itself appears somewhat mystified by them. But logic be damned! Millions of Hungarians are still potentially at risk.

Schools will remain closed for the rest of the school year, but churches will open again, albeit with many catches and stipulations. No peace handshakes or communion or gossiping in groups after the service. Oh yeah, and everyone has to keep a two-meter distance and wear a face mask in church as well.

Apparently, face masks are now a mandatory fashion accessory - unless you have asthma. Qualification for this humanitarian exception requires a stamped doctor's note. The only way to get a note is to visit a doctor. You can't visit a doctor unless you are wearing a face mask. Apparently doctor's notes are fairly cheap. I may invest in one because my face is far too handsome to be covered by a surgical mask. If I wore a mask all the time, I would be depriving the world of beauty, and I simply refuse to be that cruel!

All kidding aside, the easing of the lockdown is happening exactly as I imagined it would - a return to normal with plenty of strings attached (conditions which, ironically, nullify any sense of normal). I suspect the same return normal with extra heaps of regulations and bureaucracy has occurred or will occur elsewhere. Hungary's problem is it does not possess the manpower to enforce the bureaucracy, especially not in rural areas, which might help explain why it is giving the countryside the qualified green light first.

Whatever the case, the country has its work cut out for it. All things considered, the economy was doing quite well before the lockdown. Now? Who knows? Two months of economic freeze is a long time. In addition, Hungary is not an isolated island. The country has an export-based economy that relies heavily on the viability of its trading partners. As far as I can tell, Hungary's trading partners are not doing too well, which means Hungary will inevitably not do well.

Nevertheless, the government has guaranteed it will replace every job the birdemic wipes out. Perhaps the bulk of those new jobs will be in the "making sure people follow the post-lockdown rules" industry because I can't for the life of me envision any other industry where workers will be in high demand after life returns to sort-of normal.

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The Wrong Turn And Its Ending

5/3/2020

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The wrong turn the West took about two or three centuries ago is a subject I have addressed many times on this blog. By wrong turn I am referring specifically to the West's gradual and, eventually, sudden abandonment of the Divine in favor of materialism. It's difficult to pinpoint exactly where and when this wrong turn took place. In fact, it would be more accurate to think of the larger wrong turn as a series of smaller wrong turns spread over the course of many political, social, religious, and economic events beginning some time after the collapse of the feudal system and the waning of the Catholic Church's authority in the West.

Traditionalist-minded Christians are keenly aware of the spiritual/historical wrong turn the West took sometime during the Renaissance, and they quite correctly lament the de-spiritualization brought about by the abandonment of medieval hierarchy and authority. In light of this it is little wonder so many traditionalists hunger for a return to some kind of localized feudal structure held together and inspired by the unifying and stabilizing power of a strong church. And who can blame them? After all, despite its many flaws, faults, and shortcomings, medieval Europe was an inherently Christian society; that is, Christianity permeated everything and formed the foundation of all aspects of European civilization and culture, to the point that the term Christendom was not only accurate, but also made complete sense at every level of analysis. It is the loss of Christendom traditionalists lament most; and what many desire, above all else, is a return to a time of Christendom - the realignment of civilization and God. Achieve this, many traditional Christians argue, and re-spiritualization will be assured.

Though I am inclined to sympathize with visions of a revived Christendom, I believe traditional Christians who long for a return to such an arrangement are missing the bigger picture when it comes to the wrong turn and the cascading negative consequences it has unleashed. Christendom was thoroughly Christian, but this thoroughness had its limits and, to a certain extent, had already served its purpose by the time the first Renaissance blossoms flecked the medieval landscape.

Traditional Christians correctly identify the wrong turn, but the limits of the traditional Christian mindset become evident in how it defines the wrong turn. Feudal medieval Christendom was a civilization built upon the promise of salvation from sin through obedience to an external authority. For traditionalists, the wrong turn culminated in the rejection of external religious authority as the guarantor of salvation from sin. According to them, all modern sins can be traced back to that point when Western people turned away from the church, which was the guarantor of God's will and the implementer of God's plan for creation on Earth. By the same token, the sins of the modern world would be vanquished the very instant modern Western people repented their egregious material sins and willingly embraced external religious authority once again. Put simply, the only way forward would be a return to the past - to a rigid social structure stressing and enforcing the primacy of spiritual with the aim of mass salvation from sin.

Once again, I sympathize with this outlook to a certain extent. Given the choice between our modern, perverted world and Christendom, I would likely choose Christendom, but this choice immediately raises a very pertinent question: Where would that put us spiritually? Well, if my estimations are correct, it would put us right back at the point before we took the wrong turn, which means we would be facing the same dilemma our ancestors faced when they gradually but ultimately willingly chose materialism over the Divine - when they actively began turning away from the deeper promise of everlasting life in favor of the shallower promise of never-lasting life.

The problem of Christendom is a problem of freedom and authority. Traditionalists tend to idealize the stability and congruity of the past without considering the obvious limitations the past enforced on human freedom. Christendom's Christianity was mostly an enforced top-down arrangement in which being a Christian was largely a matter of default. Rigid social structures, the lack of social mobility, and limited material means to which most people had access created a civilization in which personal salvation was largely a matter of knowing your place and obeying the rules.

In this sense, Christendom was a phase of spiritual childhood, but it was a spiritual childhood marred by incessant physical and material limitations that made life difficult, grueling, and short for the vast majority of the population. As far as I can tell, Christendom offered no concept of spiritual maturity or development in this world. At the risk of sounding flippant I would argue Christendom's spiritual mission was to ensure all Christians remained good little boys and girls in this world in order to make it to the next world after physical death. Thus, as far as Christendom was concerned, spiritual adulthood was not a matter for this world, but the next. As a result, any return to Christendom would likely entail a step back into that spiritual childlike state - a veritable Never-Neverland populated by Peter Pans and other eternal kids whose sole purpose in life would amount to little more than making sure they did not end up on Santa Claus's naughty list before Christmas Day.

Concepts like spiritual childhood are largely a matter of consciousness. The Renaissance and the other subsequent movements away from Christendom reveal a shift of consciousness in the West. People were no longer content to be spiritual children. They began to sense they could do more in this world and that their lives in this world required more from them in return. This shift in consciousness is what traditionalists identify as the wrong turn, but I would argue that the wrong turn is not to be found in the consciousness shift itself, but in the choices made after the consciousness shift occurred.

The collapse of feudalism and fading of church authority marked the beginning of our spiritual adolescence. Like physical adolescence, our spiritual adolescence was marked by increasing personal autonomy, the desire to improve one's material situation, the inclination to explore the world, the eagerness to test newfound abilities, and the inspiration to reinterpret the meaning and purpose of life, both mortal and eternal. Part of this shift in consciousness entailed improving material conditions for the majority people in this world. The campaign to make the world more comfortable and livable was present throughout history, but the shift of consciousness out of spiritual childhood into spiritual adolescence provided the momentum needed to secure the complete alteration of human life. This alteration included the Industrial Revolution and all the political, social, and economic transformations that stemmed from it. Our spiritual adolescence vastly improved standards of living; Western people generally became richer and freer.

These developments suggest that the purpose of spiritual adolescence is mostly preparatory. Like physical adolescence, spiritual adolescence is an in-between phase during which the foundation for adulthood is meant to be created. In physical adolescence this includes biological strengthening and ripening (which is mostly innate and unconscious) and active preparation through education or the acquisition of certain skills that will allow for certain degrees of autonomy and success in the world. Our spiritual adolescence also contained a great deal of mostly innate and unconscious strengthening and ripening, but we have come up gravely short in terms of education and skills preparation. Material progress is perpetually condemned as the chief cause of Western Man's spiritual malaise, but I would say the fault lies not in the progress itself, but in our attitude toward the progress. That, in essence, is where the wrong turn happened.

When I look upon the massive improvement in the material living standards that occurred in the West with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, I see a force that wanted to improve physical conditions in an effort to improve spiritual conditions. I see a force that wanted to free people from material challenges, hardships, and suffering in the hope that the time and energy liberated from these developments could be invested into the higher spiritual purpose of attaining spiritual adulthood in this world. Simply put, I see a force that aspired to alleviate the pressing concerns of physical survival in order to deliver the time and focus needed to deepen our sense of spiritual survival. I see a force whose original aim was not to drive Western Man away from God, but a force that provided the material means through which Western man could move closer to God. In other words, the freeing from material concerns over the last two centuries should have led to an increased freeing for spiritually. What we have managed to achieve instead is a freeing from material concerns followed almost immediately by an imprisoning by materialism. We managed to build the ship we needed to get to our desired destination, but instead of sailing to that destination, we have decided, collectively at least, to imprison ourselves on the ship and set off on a seemingly never-ending, pointless, and destination-less pleasure cruise.

Our spiritual adolescence should have been a time of harnessing the material for the further development of the spiritual. Instead we have fallen captive to the material and have abandoned all notions of the spiritual. In this sense, we are now in a worse position than those who lived in the spiritual childhood of Christendom. Despite traditionalist arguments to the contrary, we cannot return to spiritual childhood anymore than we can return to physical childhood. Any attempt to do so would result in an absurd farce (imagine grown men and women wanting to do nothing more than recite nursery rhymes and play in sandboxes all day long). By the same token, we have lost the map that would have guided us to spiritual adulthood. As a result, we are stuck in the teenage wasteland of materialism with nowhere left to go but down.

Individually there may be hope for some, but at this stage our collective wrong turn appears irrecoverable. This phase of spiritual adolescence will not lead to spiritual adulthood at the collective level, nor will it continue on into perpetuity. This phase of collective spiritual adolescence, the wrong turn we have collectively taken will simply end.

And that will be that.

Note added: Dr. Bruce Charlton's recent post concerning the karma of materialism (Rudolf Steiner's phrase) offers some lucid insights into our current predicament. I highly recommend it.

Note added: The ending of spiritual childhood or traditional Christendom should have heralded an era that laid the groundwork for the advent of another form of Christendom founded on an era of spiritual adulthood. In this sense, Christendom should have evolved from its traditional conception into something more aligned with the shift of consciousness from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. Instead, we chose to abandon the concept of Christendom altogether in favor of materialism in the spiritual adolescent phase. This makes the kind of realignment required to reimplement Christendom in the West all but impossible at this point. Materialism, which is antithetical to God, is now probably irreversible and will likely play out until it reaches its inevitable end in some form of partial or total collapse.

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The Daves I Know

5/2/2020

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Earlier this week I announced I would begin renovating my chicken coop. In that post I also explained how the rhythm of physical work helps put me in the proper frame of mind to contemplate the deeper aspects of life.

I began working on the coop two days ago and the work has indeed provided some periods of intense, immersed rumination. Nonetheless, the work rhythm has also conjured forth some fairly empty-headed reflections and memories.

For example, as I was repairing the exterior brick today, the incredibly dippy yet somehow still humorous song "The Daves I Know" by Bruce McCulloch of The Kids in the Hall fame mysteriously bobbed up to the surface of my mind.

I'm trying to have profound thoughts and what do I get? I get "The Daves I Know". I think God likes toying with me sometimes, albeit in a fun, good-natured kind of way.

So, here is the song ( if you don't already know it).

Enjoy . . . and sorry.

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The Wisdom Of Youth

5/1/2020

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I embarked on two summer-long backpacking tours of Europe when I was a teenager; once when I was sixteen, and once again when I was eighteen. Adventure was the key motivator behind both trips, but it was not a hedonistic sense of adventure. That, unfortunately, came a little later when I was in my twenties. No, by adventure I am referring to all the classic go-to's like testing your individual limits, navigating your way through foreign lands, and experiencing new situations. Of course, I was also eager to see all the cities, towns, and sites I had read and dreamed about while I was growing up.

After I returned from my second backpacking tour, friends asked me if I thought I would ever regret spending the money on a vacation rather than on something more useful like a car. My answer? I told them I had a deep sense that I had to take those trips before the busy adult world began to interfere with my life. It turns out I was on to something back then. Sure, I have taken plenty of vacations and short trips since, but I have never engaged in anything like those backpacking tours again. Turns out I was a prescient teenager. Life did get in the way after I turned eighteen. There was always some responsibility requiring my attention, some schedule to keep, or some priority to uphold.

Another notion I had as a teenager is how I might change with age. Back then I thought I would always remain a romantic traveler forever inspired by the prospect of an faraway destination or an exotic land, but when I looked around at the adults in my life, I knew this was likely a misguided. After my second European tour, I was still inspired go on other backpacking adventures. I wanted to see Asia, Russia, South America, and Africa, but I never got around to any of them. However, as the years passed, my enthusiasm for seeing the world waned. By the time I turned thirty, the mere thought of backpacking through a foreign continent left me cold. Now that I am nearly fifty, the mere thought of going to an airport gives me a rash. All in all, I am glad I took those trips when I did. Though I was a fairly mediocre teenager, I was wise to the whole travel thing. My intuition had been spot on. If I hadn't taken those trips then, I probably would not have taken them at all.

Nevertheless, let's pretend I hadn't taken those trips, and that I was just as infected with the travel bug now as I had been back then. Well, the birdemic has made backpacking tours impossible. I couldn't go anywhere now, no matter how much I wanted to. I guess I would patiently wait for the world to open up again and for things to get 'back to normal', but the whole time I was waiting I would know 'normal' was a thing of the past.

Luckily, I have no inclination to travel anywhere at the moment, so the birdemic has not encroached upon my dreams in any way. But I can't help but think of others. Maybe a teenager out there somewhere who had been saving up for a backpacking tour of Europe this summer because he knew he would probably not get the chance to engage in anything like that later in life. For all intents and purposes, that teenager may never be able to embark on such a trip in his life. Well, that may be a bit much, but I hope you get my point.

I don't want to seem like a Debbie Downer here, but think about it. It could be a long, long time before anyone is able to travel the world freely again. And even if people are allowed to travel freely again, what will those journeys and experiences be like? I don't know the answer myself, but I can't help but think that anyone who believes our jet-set pre-birdemic world is going to kick back into high gear after the lockdown ends is probably in store for a set of rather unpleasant, mind-numbing surprises. This doesn't mean travel is necessarily over, but it will certainly be different.

Though I never could have imagined anything like the birdemic when I was a teenager, my intuitive drive to see the world while I still could has proven to be a surprisingly wise one - which is good because I was an utter mess back then otherwise.

Note added: I use the wisdom of youth in a tongue in cheek manner here. When I was young, I thought all the answers to life were out there. Now that I am older, I realize this isn't the case. Perhaps the prolonged curtailment of travel and other former 'luxuries' will get people focused on more important matters - on journeys that really count. One can only hope.

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