{"id":156405,"date":"2020-03-16T12:00:16","date_gmt":"2020-03-16T12:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=156405"},"modified":"2020-03-15T10:49:38","modified_gmt":"2020-03-15T10:49:38","slug":"toilet-paper-is-the-peoples-vaccine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/03\/toilet-paper-is-the-peoples-vaccine\/","title":{"rendered":"Toilet Paper Is the People\u2019s Vaccine"},"content":{"rendered":"

14 Mar 2020 – <\/em>The coronavirus panic has resulted in hordes of people running after toilet paper in the USA and Australia.\u00a0 Such actions are the flip side of running with the bulls, except that I suspect those who run with the bulls have some sense of why they do it.\u00a0 I imagine the thrill is a bit different, even if the goal is similar.<\/p>\n

The overriding narratives of every society are composed of myths and symbols.\u00a0 Societies operate within controlling mythic symbol systems whose primary purpose is to allow people to move through their lives on automatic pilot, believing they are safe from death and chaos in the arms of the authorities. All cultures revolve around death and the need to control people\u2019s fears of it through the construction of symbols of reassurance. \u00a0People need to be convinced that they are protected.\u00a0 In \u201cnormal\u201d times, all this goes relatively smoothly and the symbols of protection \u2013 such as the military, the primary institutions, and photos of the political leaders against a backdrop of flags \u2013 serve as a comforting security blanket.\u00a0 In times of extreme stress, however, whether real or created, the system of reassurance breaks down and people panic.<\/p>\n

Enter the coronavirus and the run on toilet paper. Many economists and psychologists have commented on the fear that motivates this hoarding behavior.\u00a0 Most commentaries are true as far as they go.\u00a0 The problem is they don\u2019t go very far and never touch the real issue.\u00a0 Hoarding is obviously done to quell the fear of running out.\u00a0 But running out of what?<\/p>\n

Why toilet paper?\u00a0 The explanations I have seen say that toilet paper is an essential household item that is easy to hoard because it has no expiration date and comes in large packages that are light and easy to carry and store.\u00a0 All true.\u00a0 Fear induces hoarding, and people have gone insane hoarding all kinds of items, as if the plague to end the world were upon us, which is what the mass media keeps repeating as it whips up lunatic reactions.\u00a0 The end times are near!\u00a0 The Grim Reaper is at your door!<\/p>\n

The authorities have inflamed this fear, as authorities are apt to do, since fear, and the fear of death and disease, is the greatest way to control people.\u00a0 Remember the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001.\u00a0 Fear went rampant and people ran to religious services for a while as elements within the U.S. government sent anthrax through the mail to heighten the fear.\u00a0 But anthrax was nothing compared to the coronavirus\u2019s spread and panic.\u00a0 With the 2001 attacks, the terrorist fear soon went onto the back burner to simmer away for all these years and keep everyone on an emergency fear footing so the government could execute its war and Patriot Act plans with little rebellion. It worked very well. Constant fear and anxiety became the norm as people internalized the 9\/11 meme and its emergency phone number reminder.<\/p>\n

But now the coronavirus panic is running wild and we don\u2019t know when it will end. But why this frantic race to scoop up toilet paper?\u00a0 The answer should be quite obvious, but it isn\u2019t because it is unconscious. People react to the real biological fear of death by adopting any means that might protect them from it. \u00a0Excrement is the fundamental symbol of death.\u00a0 It suggests we are bodies and nothing more; that the symbols of transcendence, whether religious or secular, are mirages.\u00a0 Shit has always been so associated, and always will. It has also long been associated in the Western imagination with the devil, Satan, the Lord of the underworld, who rules the pit of smelly steaming death where the bodies of people are deposited down in the earth to rot away.\u00a0 That\u2019s it.\u00a0\u00a0 No heaven, no immortality, just maggots in the dirt where shit descends.\u00a0 The thought that that is all we are doesn\u2019t go over well with many people.<\/p>\n

To accept that we are only bodies, and that civilization and cultures have been constructed upon symbols created to tell us this isn\u2019t true are pipe dreams, is the fear that runs rampant in days such as these, with the coronavirus allegedly stalking everyone as if it were Mister Pumpkin Head ready to pounce. The fundamental human fear is that we, like excrement, are destined to be buried and forgotten; that we will be buried in the earth or flushed down a toilet.\u00a0 The fear is that \u201cdead\u201d excrement is what we are and that all the shiny symbols erected by civilization to say we are more are just bullshit.<\/p>\n

This fear is compounded when science often claims that everything religions have ever taught is hocus pocus. The religious symbol systems that were the overarching bulwarks of western civilization have been replaced by science and technology.\u00a0 But these twins have no answer for the fact of death, except to say it is inevitable and maybe we can help you to live a bit longer.\u00a0 Many people, if only unconsciously, might not be satisfied with that answer.<\/p>\n

So when death comes courting in the guise of a so-called plague or pandemic, toilet paper will keep you safe and clean. You can wipe away any reminder that you are mortal and will return to the earth; that you will rot there unless you somehow believe in the transcendent spirit of days gone by.<\/p>\n

Rather than focus on all the death unleashed by government violence \u2013 their alleged protectors \u2013 people are easily manipulated into fearing the wrong things and unconsciously seeking some innocuous symbol that might do the job.<\/p>\n

Running with the bulls gives people the thrill of teasing death while defeating it.\u00a0 It must be very exciting.<\/p>\n

Running after toilet paper is quite dull by comparison, but it serves a similar purpose.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the people\u2019s vaccine against death.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. Website: <\/em>Behind the Curtain<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

14 Mar 2020 – The coronavirus panic has resulted in hordes of people running after toilet paper in the USA and Australia.\u00a0 Such actions are the flip side of running with the bulls, except that I suspect those who run with the bulls have some sense of why they do it.\u00a0 I imagine the thrill is a bit different, even if the goal is similar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":89352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}