I am thinking a lot about how hard it is for us to face reality sometimes. Here we are amid this pandemic mess. And we all look forward to a day, soon they tell us, when everything will be back to normal. But the thing is, experiences change us. And major experiences change us in big ways. We cannot ever go back, because we will not ever be that version of humanity again. How will this change how we live? We are traversing the stages, one by one. Stage Three is characterized by fear. Linger too long there and you get desperation, and along with it, desperate measures. Stage Four is characterized by selfless acts. Linger too long there and you get martyrdom. Stage Five sees anger and offense as the primary emotions. Too long there and you get violence. We are already seeing all of these. What then? Stage six is characterized by ignoring reality and creating your own. Willful disengagement. There is plenty of that now too. Soon we will reach Stage Seven, questioning everything, characterized by disillusionment. Too much time in Stage Seven brings depression, and it’s many ill effects. Eventually, we will get to the purposeful Stage Eight. But when? This pandemic… or to be accurate, our reaction to this pandemic, is similar in psychological effect to large scale terrorism or short term war. The last time this happened to the United States was 9/11/2001. It took 16-18 years to move through the stages. We went fairly quickly through fear to national solidarity in just a few months, and landed in a stage of ideology that lasted the rest of those 16-18 years. We had significant movement in 2018 and 2019 in the areas of purpose and consciousness. You could tell just by the number of books and experts coming forth on those topics. But here we are now, attacked again at home, or so we perceive. The effect of this pandemic response on the average person is much much larger and longer lasting than 9/11 was. What will that do? We went quickly back to fear (3) for just a couple of weeks. Then selflessness (4) for about a month, before ideology (5) kicked in. It was then about freedom versus security, and other similar ideological debates. If history is any metric, we will remain in the 5-6 range for somewhere between one and ten years. You see, every time we go back, we move forward faster, at an exponential pace. What used to set us back for thousands of years, began setting us back for hundreds of years, and then tens of years. If the last setback was 15-18 years, this one should be certainly less than that, and likely a lot shorter. My money is on something more like 1-5 years… let’s call it 2 years, because that is one tenth of the last major setback. During those roughly two years, we will suffer prolonged desperation, martyrdom, and anger. We will periodically close our eyes, exhausted, and ignore it all for a while. We can expect more crime, protests, lawsuits, and violence. Then, still within those two years, many will create their own cocoons of reality, and many will steep in disillusionment. Because the foundations of purpose are out there (so many great books, blogs and thought leaders), the move beyond disillusionment to purpose will be swift. By the two year mark, I would expect to see us surpassing our previous peak, focusing again on purpose and curious about consciousness.
The Next Two Years – The Road Back To Purpose And Consciousness
