I don’t think I would have believed you if last year you’d told me 2020 would include governments around the world controlling when you can travel freely, which businesses you can shop at and when, which businesses can remain open or must stay closed, whether or not you can peacefully assemble and in what numbers, forced in-home isolation even with no symptoms, and more while enforcing standards of behavior like mask wearing, distancing, temperature taking, hand washing, hand sanitizing, etc.

How did this happen?

The encouraging thought that hit me this morning was this: this happened because humans are a compassionate, cooperative, loving species.

For liberty minded folks like myself, it’s easy to get discouraged and think it’s just people being “sheeple” and falling unthinkingly in-line with the myth of authority, doing whatever it is they’ve been programmed by their masters to do. On some level, sure this is true, but I believe the deeper reason these policies are still in place and so widely accepted is because they appeal to our compassion. As whole, we don’t want to harm others. As a whole, we are willing to inconvenience ourselves if it protects someone else. As whole, we’re not so selfish to think our preferences give us the right to endanger someone else to weeks or months of suffering and possibly death. That’s the hook behind whether or not all this works.

I know some believe this is all a complete hoax and the tests show too many false positives and the death counts have been misdiagnosed, etc. Even if that’s true, the chance that it’s not true (uncertainty principle applies here) causes people to defer to their love for others. Most people I talk to who proudly wear their masks understand it’s not for them, it’s to protect others in case they are sick but don’t know it yet.

This lockdown is driven, empowered, and effective because of love for each other.

At least, that’s what I choose to believe today. The alternative is to focus on the reproduction of the Milgram experiment in 2015, 50 years after the original, where most people (shockingly 90% of the 80 people involved) where willing to go to the highest level of the experiment, believing they are delivering a harmful shock to an innocent person because an authority told them to do so. We could dwell on this and be discouraged, but again, I choose to find the hook: the milgram experiment is set up as a voluntary agreement. The participants are told they agreed to the arrangement beforehand. Should I judge someone’s BDSM preferences, for example? Would the experiment work the same if those involved were told the other person was their against their will? I think not. The growing attention towards human trafficking demonstrates awareness rising.

No, I choose to believe we care for one another. That’s why we respond so dramatically to news stories of what we consider to be injustice. It’s precisely because we do care so damned much. Our love is a powerful force strong enough to create the 2020 we’re seeing. In a perverse way, even the political drama relates to our need for others around us to be protected and the father figure of President is something many care about because they want everyone to be protected. It’s why many “support the troops” thinking sacrifices are being made on our behalf, which is considered by many as an act of service and an expression of love.

The same physical act can have two completely different meanings based on the intent and circumstance. The proper use of force can be heroic and life saving. It can also be destructive and immature. The key to understanding is knowing what people believe about what they are doing. Only a very small percentage of humanity is actually psychotic (some day around 2%, and even then, at different levels with different coping mechanisms). Most people, even the ones you are absolutely convinced are evil incarnate, justify their actions because of love. It might be love of a movement’s ideals as they understand them. It might be more personal, like the memory of a loved one who wasn’t protected. It could be any number of things with the same driving power behind it all: because we care.

So how do we make sense of 2020?

Find the hook. Isolate and magnify the real, genuine love there. Identify it, honor it, celebrate it, and encourage it. Be open to being wrong about your judgements of it and be courageous enough to talk about that raw vulnerability. When the power of what is thought of as love is misdirected, it can be extremely destructive and dangerous (“love of the motherland”, love of “our dear leader”, love of the “pure race”, etc). That doesn’t mean the need for love or love itself is wrong. It’s a powerful force and like anything powerful, it can build or destroy. What we can do is find real love and direct it towards productive ends for a world we prefer over this present reality.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

Search other religious texts and you will see similar descriptions about the unconditional love I’m describing. It’s all around us. It’s powerful. With training, we can find it even among those we might call enemies or humans we believe to be worthy of our hate.

Look for love today. It might help you make sense of what otherwise seems absolutely insane. People in love do crazy things.

_{Note: I originally published this on Voice, but as you can see here, the formatting got all messed up. More on that here. Until Voice lets you edit posts, I think Hive is still way ahead.}