It is Qing Ming Jié (清明节) in China today or Day of the Dead, roughly equivalent to Spain´s El Día de Todos los Santos (All Saints Day). On this date Chinese families pay homage to their dead and ancestors by visiting their tombs and taking food to their loved ones as well as burning lots of false paper money in the cemeteries so as to make sure that the dead have enough cash and food to survive in the afterlife.

There are already more than 6000 deaths worldwide due to the Coronavirus and counting. The rate of mortality is growing exponentially on a daily basis, especially in countries like Spain and Italy, two countries that are culturally similar and in which I have family links.

It is not my intention to analyze the statistics relating to Covid-19 in this article, nor to predict its trajectory around the planet, but I do want to point out and report the behaviour of many humans in this pandemic. By humans I am not referring to individuals, but to certain groups, crowds, people who spend their time glued to their TV sets and journalists especially, yes , false presstitute journalists responsible for all the hysteria and havoc that we are seeing at this moment in our society.

Fear is the number one enemy of the soul: the soul is thus suffocated, paralyzed, and stunned by something that cannot understand, it starts to behave without Being or Form, creating chaos. Not the kind of chaos that reigns in the Universe, but a chaos that lacks everything: empty, without meaning or direction, the type of destructive force that buries human ethics and aesthetics. One only needs to look at consumers in the most industrialized countries entering a big supermarket, pulling out a huge trolley and filling it with tons of toilet roll to understand this. I never knew that our backside was of so much importance. Is this the way we show our respect to the dead or to those about to die?

Nobody knows for certain what we are actually experiencing, or what we are going to have to go through in the coming weeks and months. That is precisely why at the present time we have to give all we have got and forget our materialistic problems. How many people have already lost their jobs, their businesses or even loved ones? I do not know the figures but I am certain that the number is in the region of hundred of thousands if not millions. I also ask myself where will my next pay cheque come from? But that does not mean we have to forget our family or our friends, or even more importantly, ourselves.

We have no choice but to face and resist the current crisis, the so called pandemic, and the upcoming social and economic changes. We must not be overcome by panic because “Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path, Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain”. 1

 

Notes:
  1. Frank Herbert, Dune Chronicles and Dune, the movie by David Lynch, 1984
  2.  This article is based on the publication by the same author ‘ Reflexiones en el día de Qing Ming Jié‘