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Collective Emotional Stages
The pandemic
Collective revenge
We Americans have occasional collective emotional stages like during World War II, Vietnam, and after 911, where despite bitter party-based political differences, the country came together in fury.
We have an insatiable appetite for adrenaline.
After 911, for example, we knew the Iraqis didn’t bomb the World Trade Center, but that didn’t matter. We wanted blood — writ large — it didn’t really matter whose blood as long as we could kick some ass.
Even as we saw the bombs dropping with our own eyes, knowing innocent people were being killed who had nothing to do with 911, we cheered (me too).
So, historically, we identify an enemy and come together as a country to defeat it.
Invisible enemy
A pandemic is an invisible enemy.
Remember the collective denial in early March of 2020 when only a handful of Americans had contracted COVID 19. We had no recent memory of a worldwide pandemic and so we believed the politicians when they said not to worry — it would all simply disappear.
As it dawned on us we were experiencing a once in hundred-year viral event, we realized we had an enemy on our hands.
