For a year or so now, I have been lunching once a week with a group of men of different backgrounds. Covid has disrupted this event, not just physically but intellectually for most are against vaccines and this led to conflict in the group.
When this was first evident, I joked that it was not very “modern” of them. I had decided that it was fine for them to be anti-vaccination and that I was also fine with sitting inside having coffee with them.
I am not a big fan of vaccinations but have a family of doctors and scientists around me that are well informed and educated and their view, in combination with my need to travel internationally for work, had me decide to get vaccinated. Vaccination was familiar as I had been vaccinated as a child so it was not that unusual to be doing it again.
I am confident that my immune system can repel this virus but took the vaccination as a civic duty. I believe that it will help stop the pandemic if everyone is vaccinated and it will get our lives back to some semblance of normal.
Just as I am confident in my immune systems ability to fight the virus I am also confident that it can deal with any negative effects of the vaccination as presented by my friends. But as a layman, I am sensibly willing to take the advice of the medical profession.
Granted you have to strip off the hyperbole of the media and be cognizant of the capitalistic stance of Pharma but overall I feel my acceptance of vaccines is logical.
This is not the view of my friends and I quickly started to receive links to Internet posts presenting anti-vaccination messages.
I tried to engage my friends in email conversations about these posts but just kept getting sent more of them without any engagement with my attempt at debate.
All of the posts sent to me where from sources I consider to be suspect in legitimacy. They were all from non-journalists and conspiracy theorists. My question to my friends was whether they had looked at the source of their posts but all I received as a response was more similar posts.
While it was modern of my friends to be pulling information of the Internet to define their point of view it was not modern in my view to decide not to be vaccinated. This decision is not modern because we can no longer expect the status quo of life on earth to prevail because of the significant change we have created on Earth.
The oceans are full of plastic, the soil is full of pesticides and pollutants, the freshwater is full of chemical waste, the air is full of germs and space is full of debris. We have done this with complete disregard to the environment. We don’t think about how 10 miles up you can no longer breathe.
There is a 10 mile deep bubble around this orb in the middle of millions of light years of black space that allows us to breathe and live on its surface. Indigenous culture understands this better than non-indigenous culture. But that is another story.
All of this pollution has changed the environment so significantly that a change in points of view over everything is necessary. All issues are now environmental issues. Everything. War, Transportation, Communication, Agriculture, Sociology, Economics, Law, Medicine, Business, Government, Politics, Arts, Peace – everything.
Our evolution has brought us to this reality. You may not like it, and you may not like the choices you are being asked to make, but you cannot deny the change that has taken place as a result of our behavior and we have to accept this and act globally to protect this very special orb. That is modern. That is the present and the path to the future. The past is past.