The Enemy We Need
By: Craig Allen Heath
Tags: Belief, Humanity, Survival, Covid 19, Truth

COVID-19 is a ruthless killer of human beings. Any human being. All human beings.

Photo by Tess on Unsplash

It has no reason to kill us other than its own replication. The Corona virus worships no god, pledges no creed, follows no leader, expounds no politics. It claims no nationality, springs from no particular people or culture, owes no allegiance except to itself. If you are a human being alive on planet Earth it will come for you.

It is exactly the enemy we need to teach us the last lesson we have yet to master: We are divided only by the stories we tell ourselves.

The United States will not prevail against COVID, nor will China, or Italy, or Europe or Asia. California will not stand battered but victorious as Washington and New York fall in defeat. Lines on a map defining named territories do not exist in the real world where the virus operates. Nations and states and counties and cities and townships are abstractions and cannot suffer the effects of the sickness. Only the people living within those invisible lines are vulnerable, and COVID doesn’t care what passports we hold.

Progressive left-wingers will not beat it back by eating kale and reactionary right-wingers will not send it packing with a hail of gunfire. Christians will not save their children with prayer and Buddhists will not protect their families with bells. Democrats and Republicans, Socialists and Capitalists, Libertarians and Authoritarians have no agenda, no five-point plan, no Great Idea that, once codified into law, will turn the virus away from its relentless, cold-blooded attack.

Not one label, not one name, not one story we use to identify ourselves as anything other than human will save us. Labels, names and stories are what will destroy us.

Have you heard these stories? Do you tell them to your children? Do you believe them? Americans are this, Europeans are that, Asians are something else. Religious people are not like atheists, black people aren’t like white people, gays are not like straights, men are not like women. To the Corona virus, all are equal, all are meat for the fire, all are on the menu.

Every science fiction story about aliens landing to destroy us is a telling of this simple truth. In the utopian version of this story humanity bands together to fight off the invader. In the dystopian version humanity defeats itself. The difference that makes the difference is as simple to understand as it is difficult to learn and believe:

We live or die by our ideas of who and what we are.

If we believe we are all humans, all equal in the eyes of god or the galaxy, we can defeat the aliens and survive. If we believe we are all separate, some more equal than others, then we will destroy ourselves before the aliens get a chance to cook and eat us.

If I believe I can survive at your expense, that I am more deserving of life than you, that I can win even if you lose, then I make humans my enemy. Enemies cannot band together and fight for the survival of all.

The truth of the matter, the curriculum, the lesson of our unity in our common humanity, has been on offer in the since the beginning of time. We’ve had a chance to take the course.

COVID is here to administer the test.