Mandates, Lockdowns, and Commuity

For a lockdown, or mask requirement, or social distancing requirement to work, requires caring for your community.

In the United States, we have lost community. It has been stolen from us by rich and powerful people who want to be richer and more powerful.

We don't know our neighbors, or the man who walks by our house every morning, because we don't have time to learn who they are. We are busy working. Americans work long hours, sometimes two or more jobs so they can buy the things that the TV ads say will make us happy. We will be happy if we own a big car, or a big TV, or buy the right clothes, or the proper makeup, or eat at the right restaurants. Those don't make us happy, so we try to buy more, so we work more. What we don't know, and what is hidden from us is that knowing the people near us would make us happy, not the things that we own.

We buy our food from big grocery stores. We do not know the farmers who grow our food. We don't know the bakers who make our bread. They, too, are far away. Because we do not know them, we don't care about them. They are not community. We don't know the people who make our car or the TV set that we are told will make us happy.

The rich and powerful people have taken caring for the people around us by making us work hard for things we need, and for things we are told we need, but really don't.

In times past, when a child came home from school, there was always a parent around, mom or dad, or a neighbor who would watch for them. Now, that mom or dad or neighbor has been stolen from the children, so the parents can work, and in their place, parents pay money for "after school care". Free, community child care has been stolen from us and is being sold back to us so someone can become richer. Many things have been stolen from the community so they can be sold back to us, until community is no more.

Our feelings of community, of belonging, of caring, have been replaced with "rights" and "freedoms". We have forgotten that rights and freedoms come from caring, not in place of caring.

Because we have no community, we do not care for the people around us, it is government that has to tell us to stay home, to get vaccinated, to wear a mask. Then we say, "but we have freedom to do what we want, not what the government says". Because the people say "we are free" even the police do not enforce lockdowns and other public health practices, because the police believe they are free to not care also.

So people shout "I am free. The government can't make me care about my neighbor" and then they and their neighbors die.

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