Don't think about the Eiffel Tower. And already you are thinking about it, you can't do anything about it, for a fraction the image of the Eiffel Tower flares up in your mind's eye. When messages are marked with a "not", it's as if the "not" doesn't exist. But the word behind it does. Do not think of death. Voila, you think of death. Don't ask questions. Already you think, why not?
I grew up with disaster messages since childhood. The news was always full of them. Whether it was Chernobyl or nuclear waste disposal, Pershing missiles, acid rain, dioxane in shampoo, the hole in the ozone layer, forest dieback, fish dieback, the melting of the polar ice cap, and always nature documentaries showing beautiful pictures from Africa or the rainforest or some other region, always with the message that "this could end soon", that "if man continues like this, he will have destroyed everything.
Already in the 70s there was an oil crisis, in Germany the motorways were at a standstill. There is always a peak this and peak that. Oh, and not to forget the miserable labour market. As a teenager who was supposed to choose a profession, I was full of fear that I wouldn't be able to get an apprenticeship. "Is the pension safe?" was a catchphrase of my time. I wrote in my childhood diary how bad the world was and was always afraid when everything in the media called for fear. The "violence is on the rise." Also a popular phrase and right now you often read that "parts of the population are becoming radicalised" and that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is watching them. They "could endanger the state". blablabla
Mark Twain is reported to have once said that "the worst things in my life actually never happened" and I agree.
Man seems fascinated by death and disease and the more pleasant his life, the more he fears the unpleasant, no?
But I have a question that leaves the noble side line from which to look at things. Since the whole affair came into the world two years ago with a sledgehammer, demanding of all people alike a "Submit!", loud, commanding, warning, would it not have been far more surprising if nothing at all had been done to counter this loud force? Wouldn't it be the strangest thing of all if all people had unanimously tended towards the same result, the same realisation? Doesn't the loudness demand that people respond in the same volume?
I think when it gets too loud, all one hears is noise. Envision a stadium; sports arena. Everyone is talking, can hear the hum or the buzz; don't know what anyone is saying. All you know is they're saying something. It would be strange if there was a goal and nobody cheered; a bad play by the opposing team and nobody booed. Since it's so normal, silence would say more.
I can't see society coming together with quiet confidence and discipline though. So when the space rock is on its way, the world will just try to yell it away.
My question to you has been whether it would not have been more than strange - that is, highly improbable - if there had been no backlash given the dramatic fixation on the issue.
Can I interpret your answer as "yes", it would have been strange?
Apart from your or indeed my view of an appropriate response, I find that of others, the loud ones, understandable, although I don't necessarily share it. A more wait-and-see position that does not support either fearful attitude is probably preferable, as so often in life, things turn out to be less dramatic in retrospect.
Nevertheless, my personal experience has been that the extremism that spread like wildfire across the world in 2020 did not even begin to listen to cautious or thoughtful voices, and hence the reaction of people who did not know how to make themselves heard other than, for example, taking to the streets or writing provocative posts.
The stadium is a good comparison in this respect because two fan bodies meet there, each supporting a different team. The cheers are always for one's own team, never for the opposing team, and the fan blocks are separated from each other. If the fans were to remain silent in the event of a goal for their own team, this would have a very disconcerting effect, true.
It's not the crowd's fault that you can't hear what's being said because of all the noise. The cacophony is not something you can blame for existing. There is always the possibility of contemplation and of withdrawing from the din or picking out individual voices that you perceive as reasonable or worthy of attention. In fact, you have no choice if you don't want to be infected by hysteria or excitement.
Communication is only possible between two people with the intensity one would wish for in a conversation that is accompanied by interest. But the way I shout at the crowd, nobody hears me, right.
I don't share that people would try to yell away a space rock (LOL, funny imagination), because people are never unanimous, they are not the Borg, they are disunited. While the loud ones yell, the other work on different things and they are quietly confident but that's why you don't hear them. That can be seen as positive, because total unanimity is firstly impossible and secondly - as I said - would have something exceedingly strange about it.