30. The 5 stages of grief in coronavirus lockdown
Some
of you reading this may be familiar with the 5 stages of grief, first published
by Elisabeth Kubler Ross, in 1969, in her book ‘On Death and Dying’ (granted,
the title does not develop the expectation of an enjoyable read). When someone
close to us dies, or we suffer a serious personal setback, we go through
denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Somewhat regular trips to
the supermarket as the coronavirus lockdown ensued unveiled for me the
equivalent stages for a pandemic lockdown. Hand sanitiser. Toilet paper. Pasta.
Flour. This is it so far, and I cannot wait to see what the fifth one is.
Curiously, as Kubler Ross told us, we only moved to one stage when the previous
one was complete (this impression may have been aided by supermarkets’ quick
reactions to stock depletion). Has our society become so materialistic that we
have replaced feelings with consumer goods? I, for one, refuse to be defined in
history by those four objects, there must be something we can do
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Comments
Group 1: those that stockpiled for themselves showed themselves to be selfish, unsympathetic of the needs of others and to have overactive bowels
Group 2: those that stockpiled to sell on and make some omoney showed themselves to be entrepreneurial, but of the worse kind, exploitative of short term difficult market conditions to make a profit without adding any value
I prefer group 1 over group 2, whilst disliking (or despising) both