A mere three years ago

Three years ago today, at 11:59pm, New Zealand went under the first Covid lockdown. Like so many things, it feels like it was far longer ago than that, and also maybe far less time. So much has changed since then, not just the deaths and suffering, but also the rise of a persistent, aggressive negativism: People now seem to delight in being grumpy, contrary, mean-spirited, and judgmental. To paraphrase Dr. Julian Bashir on Star Trek: Deep Space 9, people seem to have resolved to look every gift horse squarely in the mouth, and to look for the cloud around every silver lining.

From those early days of solidarity and goodwill, things degenerated into partisan political fights, with those on the right particularly keen to use the pandemic as a justification for all their bizarre conspiracy theories, no matter how unhinged or detached from the real world, and as reason to oppose everything the centre and left proposed, no matter how rational or common sense it may have been.

We saw this play out in their aggressive behaviour, from bullying workers in supermarkets, or masked customers in any shop, to their illegal occupation of Parliament grounds, other “protest” stunts that put people’s lives at risk, and, especially, in the vile rumours, disgusting personal attacks, and credible death threats they aimed at former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Ardern became their enemy because she dared to try to keep New Zealanders safe and alive in the face of a pandemic that, three years ago today, we knew precious little about.

Psychologists have written about the emotional and psychological toll that the pandemic took on people, made worse by the lack of availability of mental health help, and that’s certainly true. They’ve also commented on the role that social media has played in the rise of the aggressive negativism we see today, and the disinformation and conspiracy theories underlying much of it. That, too, is true. But surely at some level we’re masters of our own ship, and the enemy isn’t those who tried to keep us safe, however imperfectly they sometimes did that, it’s ourselves. As Walt Kelly’s Pogo put in 1971, “We have met the enemy, and he is us” [VIEW].

So many people would be much better off if they stayed away from social media, at least sometimes, and if they just ignored whatever l'indignation du jour might be—chances are it’s all bullshit, anyway. Most people know all that: Once the restrictions put in place to fight Covid were relaxed, they just got on with life again, and they didn’t keep falling down the social media doom spirals that a tiny but aggressive minority still live within. We all have the same choice choice: To live in the light or dwell in the darkness.

Today, three years after this began in New Zealand, the day has been a beautiful and bright sunny one at my house. I had plenty of starkly ordinary things to do today, and I didn’t have the time—or room—for the negativist zeitgeist. I wish the same for everyone. We all need more light and less darkness.