It is now clear that COVID-19 is a serious and deadly global pandemic, and all necessary precautions must be taken. However, the words of CS Lewis, written 72 years ago with some relevance to us. Atomic bomb? By “Coronavirus”.
In a way, we think too much about the atomic bomb. “How should we live in the atomic age? I am tempted to answer,” Now how would you have lived in the 16th century, when the plague visited London almost every year? , or how you would have lived in Viking times, when Scandinavian invaders could come and cut your neck any night; Or, indeed, how are you already living in an age of cancer, syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railroad accidents, an age of car accidents?
- In other words.
- Let us not begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation.
- Believe me.
- Dear lord or lady.
- You and all your loved ones have already been executed before the invention of the atomic bomb: and a large percentage of us.
- Do we really have a great advantage over our anesthetic ancestors?And we still have them.
- It is tremendously ridiculous to continue moaning and showing discouraged faces.
- Because scientists have added more chances of premature and painful death to a world that was crawling with these opportunities and in which death itself was not an opportunity.
- But a certainty.
This is the first point to address: and the first action to take is to collect yourself. If we are all destroyed by an atomic bomb, will it find us doing sensible and humane things? pray, work, teach, read, listen to music, bathe the children, play tennis, talk with our friends with a cup in hand and a dart board? and not huddled like frightened sheep thinking of bombs. They can destroy our body (a microbe can do it), but they cannot dominate our mind.