My man and I like to play cards.
Some games have a very exciting course, take much longer than others. Which is because the players vary their strategies. When I see that my hubby only has a few cards in his hand and seems about to win and I keep a cool head, I manage to prolong the game.
Dracula Vampira
Von Brett Francis from United States of Amercia - Dracula vampira fullUploaded by Orchi, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11116277
What do I usually do then? I sit it out, don't play my hand, but observe which cards he can't use and avoid acting hastily. My experience tells me that if I wanted to force my win or thought I was playing an excellent hand, I would surprisingly let myself leave the table as the loser. This was because I was only focusing on my own hand, but I was not paying enough attention to his hand.
So, for example, when I want to annoy him, I ask for a suit of which it was clear that neither of us was holding it. Such an extension of the game always led to greater enjoyment of the game, because that's what playing is all about: Having fun, keeping it alive. But what keeps the game alive is not only the strategy, but also the amount of luck that every game contains. If everything was just pure chance and my hand was accompanied by bad luck or good luck, the game would be boring, but if everything was dominated by strategy alone, it would also lack liveliness.
This mixture of both is a very nice metaphor for the current events. The Corona phenomenon. What kind of player am I? One who relies heavily on security and keeps supposedly winning cards until the end, wants to be prepared for all eventualities? Often enough I have to admit that this strategy makes me lose. So while I'm hoarding my winning cards, trying to get rid of all the unimportant cards, I have to watch my opponent, who takes a far greater risk, beat me in the end. Then I sit there and get angry that I didn't let myself get a chance. Too much reliance on security has the unpleasant effect of making my passivity of playing pay off. I have lost the fun of playing risky games.
The comparison with life and its dangers is by no means ridiculous. There is a difference: doing nothing out of fear or prolonging the game alive by leaning back and taking up new cards, more and more until my hand is full again, but also the other hand's. If you think there are only two alternatives to play: full risk or full security, you are neglecting the many other variations and also the mentality in which I am able to play a game.
Dracula Posadarum
Von Orchi - Selbst fotografiert, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6002905
In the case of Corona: what are the other cards?
In principle, the game provides countless, infinite symbols and colours. I just have to find and use them. One interesting scientific text I provide for is this one - The history of Koch's postulates 1840-2000. I won't list all the other alternative sources here in the text. Maybe I'll add it within the next days or in another blog.
When did I ever lose? When I become unemployed? When I can't pay my rent anymore? If I were the only one who could no longer finance the roof over my head, that would indeed be a difficult situation. So I imagine one bad case scenario: That I would have to pay my rent due to an acute emergency situation. I would not simply do nothing. I would enter into negotiations, engage in open communication. I would talk to my landlord and describe my situation to him. For example, I would use my own reputation. Have I been an annoying tenant, someone my landlord was constantly arguing with? Or have we had a reasonable and humane form of communication? In other words: Have I played fair in the past? That would definitely affect the game, wouldn't it?
If I hadn't thought about an important question before the current phenomenon, I would have had an excellent opportunity to do so now, in the last few weeks.
How do I want to live? How to play? Live and play: For me, in many cases, those are synonyms. Do I have to pretend that life on this earth is always a very serious matter? Of course, laughter and humour always seem to be treated like criminals when you are confronted with great consternation. The general fascination with "death figures" and "people in need of rescue", the "protection of the old and weak", this playing card configuration is frequently pulled out of the sleeve.
Dracula Chimaera
Von Orchi - Selbst fotografiert, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6021475
In fact, I did not - in a first touch of fear and insecurity - think of "others, old and weak". I was afraid for my own life, my own mental and physical health. For a while I imagined that I would be infected by the virus - but nowhere did such thoughts lead anywhere but to even more fear.
The thing is: In this game, I would do well not to articulate everything all the time. Once the rules of the game have been established, they are not as meticulous and above all they are not absolute. We change the rules more often, expand the game, agree on some new points in the game. But we don't judge each other when luck and strategy influence the outcome of the game, because everyone is lucky or unlucky, because you never really stop playing.
To demand luck and good cards "for all": Is that realistic?
Is it even feasible? And if you really want to do it, what other rules do you violate? Because one thing should be clear: safety for all does not necessarily mean playing a more lively and better game. "The dignity of the player"; I don't want to touch it, nor force anyone else to always play for safety. If he thinks he wants to do this, he should do it, but not demand it of me. As a rule, my dignity often looks different from the dignity of my fellow player. Comparing it with me usually brings only trouble.
Everyone has a role in this great game: there are the cheaters, the bluffers, the safety players, the risk-takers, the reckless, the off-showers, the daring, the sensible, the sensitive, those who prefer to let the other person win, and so on. We all play more or less hide and seek with each other.
What humans forget too easily is how tough we are as a species.
I mean, how much a human being can really cope with compared to what he imagines he can't cope with, is probably worth paying attention to at the moment.
In fact, we are not currently experiencing any real physical pain, such as that caused by hunger or a really bad epidemic, where you can see real symptoms out there in the world. Those of us who were part of the generation that experienced malnutrition and aching stomachs from hunger may remember and find the current situation strange. A virus can't do us affluent people much harm if we have enough varied food, water and it's why and dry in winter temperatures or cooling in heat. Whether modern medicine can even claim to have eliminated special viral diseases through vaccinations is and will remain unproven, since the hygienic and nutritional conditions have improved and changed extremely for modern people with supermarkets on every corner.
Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula
Screenshot from "Internet Archive" of the trailer for Dracula (1931) - https://archive.org/details/Dracula1931-Trailer, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11678809
Recently, in the very latest Dracula series on Netflix, I heard a truly remarkable sentence from our much loved and feared Count:
"I knew the future would bring wonders, I never imagined it would make them ordinary."
There are times when “The Dark Compass” justifies the decision to time-shift the final chapter of the Dracula story 123 years into the vampire’s future—into 2020, in other words.
One of the best comes early, as Count Dracula surveys a random woman’s home, observing that her television and appliances represent luxuries beyond the comprehension of any of his noble contemporaries. “I knew the future would bring wonders,” he says. “I never imagined it would make them ordinary.”
Even heating a king's castle was a pain and even for kings and super rich leaders it was not possible to receive strawberries during winter times.
In fact, people have always died and are still dying from a combination of bacteria and viruses in connection with poor nutrition, lack of water, lack of hygiene and impoverishment of the immediate environment. None of this is found in civilizations that have such an abundance of readily available food and amenities. In relation, few die of the virus. And let's not fool ourselves: No doctor can give a certain answer anyway, if one has died because of the virus "alone". Think it through. How can one die of a single cause?
Would you want to have that as a single diagnose for yourself or your family members? "She died from Corona." ... I wouldn't.
So it seems to me to be a paradox.
Something that triggers psychic anxiety subsequently triggers some effects that will also impact the material world. Our popular TV-philosopher Richard David Precht called it, in a way, "the longing for a catastrophe", a desire for extreme experiences.
Playing with luck, creating dangerous scenarios seems to be left as the only way to get into a survival mode. We humans seem to like that. Now, look at the movies and narratives, at the numerous fantasy stories and films where man is facing direct threats. That seems to be something we long for. Of course we only long for it to survive a threat and not to lose our lives. So we can talk about it afterwards. To have a story of meaning. To put the events into anecdotes. Worth telling. Of course, some people do die. That's the game. Otherwise we could not play. We are very inventive in creating scenarios where we put ourselves in either real physical or imagined dangers.
Vlad the Impaler
Von Theodor Aman - [1], Gemeinfrei, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1007154
The mask wearers, nowadays seen everywhere in the streets,
are the visible symbol for a life threat. They bring the imagination onto the side walks. And while they annoy me I say to myself at the same time: Don't let yourself being unnerved by it. You are witnessing a time of great potentials. This is it. The thing many people have been waiting for. Don't spoil it into the usual mourns and worries.
The exploding expressions in the Internet attests the great interest in catastrophic events. People talk a lot about what changes and dangers do lay ahead of us and what we cannot let being taken away from us.