Cause and effect chains go on and on and take some untangling. And to move it from complicated to complex, in a world where everything connects to everything else, identifying which is cause, which effect, where to start and which way to go rather depends on who we are, what we know or think we know, our world view, our belief system, our way of life and way of making a living, our personality ...
It is said that if a human's only tool is a hammer, they will spend most of their time seeking and finding nails. We are purpose seeking animals.
This current crisis may go back to the time when humans shifted from thinking, to thinking about thinking, imagining ourselves separate from Nature ... superior to the minerals, plants and other animals, inferior to the transcendent, that which is beyond description or understanding, which we foolishly named and began describing.
Humans separated from each other too, male and female, our group, their group, our country, their country. .. our religion, their religion, my job, your job and on and on ...
Along the way, incrementally, we bent the rest of Nature to meet our own needs, the lower levels to improve our economy, the upper level to offer magical beings in our own image, with power structures ...
We have to find an entry point to unfold our tale, though there are others and other tales too.
This one doesn't seek conspiracies or blame, just a plausible causal chain from, let's say 1950 to the present day ...conveniently enough this fits the life line of your writer, so some anecdotes from personal experience may add some colour, if not evidence in the scientific sense of the word.
The UK was emerging from the 2nd World War, heavily in debt to the new Superpower, which, as in the previous World War, known as the war to end all wars, chose the winning side to throw decisive behind at the optimum time. As is known, the punitive terms of the peace created the conditions for the horror show of the Nazis and their influential supporters around the world ... including many from the British establishment, who feared the Bolsheviks and their ruthless treatment of aristocracy, bourgeoisie and anyone else who opposed them. The Bolsheviks had their own reasons for concern, since their revolution in October1917 was greeted enthusiastically by many war weary warriors, fed up with the futility of such violence, with the peculiar blood relationship of the royal families of Britain, Germany and Russia ... the infant Soviet Union was invaded by armed forces of previously warring nations and defended itself successfully with the practical support of its international friends ... mutinies were breaking out, reds of many hues prepared their own class wars, and the aggressors backed down. Not a great start.
Before leaving the dreadful Great War and sending this story so far, since it has plenty to chew over for attentive readers ... one of the less salubrious scenes from the start of the conflict was the peer pressure on reluctant warriors exerted by neighbours, exemplified by the handing out of white feathers by women, to do their patriotic duty and sign up to the organised murder of people they didn't know who were similarly encouraged to drop the universal law not to kill, indeed ordered to bayonet another human in the stomach at times ... peer pressure is a neutral phrase for what is known these days as social shaming ... interestingly rife in the current crisis, though on this occasion we don't have to kill anyone, just to stay indoors. And follow orders, though that's another war ...
to be continued ...
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