I guess that 7 steps of denial thing is right on. This is it. Our Noah flood.

No, it's not going to be mass genocide leaving 1 (incestuous) family to repopulate the earth...but things will never be the same again. People might listen to Experts more and realise how bad their politician are.
When this is all over, things will be very different...for a while, before human nature pushes through again.

Every few generations something utterly horrific comes along and forces us as a species to re-evaluate things. That last major one for white angl-saxon culture was WW2, which also spread all round the world. Out of WW2 came the EU, the utter renunciation of fascism by almost everyone, and the fear that we'd now created weapons so terrible there could never be another war between the major powers because it would end all life on Earth. Except of course what actually happened was they fought proxy wars with each other in undeveloped countries which brought chaos and mayhem to Central America, the Middle East, and large parts of Africa, not helped by the legacy of exploitation-based colonialism.

But people grow complacent and as the peace lasted we began to assume that was the default state, and that the era of terrible shocks was over. Mother Nature has other ideas.

The last great pandemic was 100 years ago. It won't be 100 till the next one. It may not be 10. And then there's the ongoing spectre of climate change.

The future is dark and full of terrors.

"Mom's gonna fix it all soon. Mom's comin' 'round to put it back the way it ought to be.
Learn to swim" - Tool: Aenima

I agree, it does seem like that in many ways.
Perhaps it always has seemed that way. Change brings disruption and threatens the existing settlement.
To craftsmen and smallholders during industrialisation.
To the working poor and those left behind afterwsrds.
The World Wars must have been like the last of days, to those who suffered.

When we grew up, nuclear war was an ever present possibility.

Maybe we are close to the end of one era of world history.
The era of mass consumption.
Where wealth is measured by how many resources are extinguished.
If consumption can not continue growing indefinately, than moving away from it
will be very painful and many will feel loss.

The future may lie with technology.
Wealth is what we can acess, not what we can consume.
And people will look.back on our values of consumerism as being as outdated as colonialism.

By the time my grandparents were about 40 years old they had -

Survived WWI
A flu pandemic that killed millions globally and in the USA
The Great Depression
WWII

As well as a lifetime of infectious disease without antibiotics or most vaccines. Polio was still the great terror.

As if just being aware of that isn't enough I'll recount the only story my maternal grandfather ever told me. Wars and poverty didn't frighten him but his tale of surviving the Spanish flu still gives me the heebie jeebies.

My grandfather, his parents, and his five siblings all lived by their own sweat on another man's farm in a shack at the edge of town. They didn't work, they didn't eat. There were no other options. Once one of them got the flu they all got it shortly thereafter. Their father's motivation was the threat to put them on the wagon load of bodies that went past every day on the way to the pauper's cemetery nearby. He made all of them get out of bed, dress, and at least sit on the front porch even if they could barely move. He told them there were a lot of people on that wagon that would trade places with them in the night if they couldn't at least get up. They did. He woke up during the night terrified at every bump and listened to all of his family wheezing and coughing waiting for pneumonia to come get them. Courtesy of a basket of potatoes and a sack of corn flower that someone from Church left on the porch they all managed to survive.

I'll spare a lot of details but I don't think my grandparents would be very impressed with our suffering.

This is quite sobering Duncan, but the vast difference between then and now; the truly horrific disparity isn't the disease or the war. Rather, it's the entropy of the human spirit, empathy, and common decency.

THAT is what brings me to despair. If they current generation of humanity somehow had to live through what you described, I'd give us a week at best. Because...there would be no potatoes an cornmeal. People just aren't that giving anymore. I've learned this from my entire childhood growing up in "the church".

Whenever someone was truly in need, prayers were offered, but never deeds.

And while I know that varies person to person (thankfully), the overarching collective consciousness of humanity has become increasingly "inhuman".

FWIW - I'm a closet atheist who is in Church and active as much as anyone there.

You are correct. Things have certainly changed and it's been brought on by the idea that rules, regulations, government, lawyers, etc now set the standards for everything. Common sense and civility have been replaced by these much colder and less human institutions. I'm not saying why or if either is better but it's just the fact. The result is where we are now.

I was very fortunate to grow up with all of my grandparents and even some great-grandparents, great aunts and uncles, all around me until I was out of college. Myself and those around me all understand that in the end you only have close family to rely on so you better be prepared to take care of yourself. My world consists of wife, kids, and dog. I help where I can, probably more than most, but really everyone else is on their own.

You may now remove your mask (mark) We all turn into the ending of War of the Worlds due to the common cold.

Mandatory physical distancing and public murder-suicides means we're actually in The Happening.

Which, as apocalypses go, is both a lot better than War of the Worlds (i.e., objectively) and also worse (i.e., because, bad movie to watch, let alone live in).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdhhQhqi_AE

google did not have anything constructive to say about "7 steps of denial" (so curious for any links or further info) but indeed these are very "interesting times" we currently find ourselves in... Personally, i am more worried about things i see/read/etc regarding Antifa and the more militant branches of BLM...

He meant seven steps of grief.

Also, out of curiosity, did you formerly post on this forum as ANTDX or something like that?

Maybe I'm just naive about everything, but personally, I still feel like nothing (so far) has topped, or will top the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the Able Archer war drills of 1983 as the most dangerous moments in human history. In those two years, humanity could have been wiped out with just the activation of a couple of launch codes basically. And in both cases, it was only the actions of just one man that saved everyone on Earth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov_(vice_admiral)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

Hopefully, you don't mean "AnthonyX" maybe?

Anyway, "ANTDX" is not me... i am mainly a "wet clothes only" wammer, so for many years i spent most of my time on those other "wet clothes" forums and/or message boards...that's where you would have found me (IF you had been looking for me) [b]AND[/b] i have pretty much used some form of "NCgreg" user name (most likey "ncgreg231") and added the LC2 when i registered here, about a year or so...ago...

Sorry for asking. I'm just feeling twitchy these days I guess.

The whole world is twitchy right now...