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

Ana said…
🤣🤣🤣😅I hope so, but wonder if we'd be able to go desperately shopping something less...telltale?
SantiDominguezV said…
Well, only time will tell, but if you look at what happened when B&Q opened in the UK this weekend, the answer is probably... NO!
Ben said…
Ina consume society we are defined, and define ourselves, to some extent by our purchases. This must leave top-end consumers in something of an existential crisis. I know how I would define those who panic-bought all the bog-roll. Perhaps that particular purchase really does tell us a lot about the buyer.
SantiDominguezV said…
I think that purchase does indeed tell a lot about the buyers, although I would split them in 2 groups and remain polite throughout:

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

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