Masks have meaning, they are not — as the press insist daily — merely a medical or practical measure. Like illness, masks are not only a scientific phenomenon, they are a metaphor. Everything is a metaphor actually, and you ignore this at your peril. Today everyone competes for who has the most ‘facts’ or is the most ‘scientific’ or who has the most truth; this is invariably toxic because we are creatures of lies, stories and fiction, and we are merely setting our lies against each other. It’s important to understand what we are talking about here. I certainly believe masks can help to keep illness under control. But to the devoted mask-wearer, the mask is something else. It is a kind of blessing upon them, it is the hand of God touching their forehead and telling them they are good. We are told again and again that masks are not about protecting ourselves, they are about protecting others. In this way masks bestow upon the wearer a kind of mystical seal of approval; a mask-wearer is one who cares about others and is inarguably unselfish, one who puts their own feelings last, as they themselves don’t care about their personal appearance, or inconvenience (Where’s my mask? Oh it’s caught in my glasses…) in the face of altruism. It’s all about altruism really, and ultimately about living in a world where we finally come to realize (good luck with this!) that our own happiness is less important to us than the happiness of other people. Masks say; there will come a day -- no — it is finally here — when I give up my life for you, when I not only do unto others, but will abandon my own comfort and pleasure to make you happy. As you might well imagine, for the anti-masker, the mask means something else; it’s about freedom, or the lack of it. To an anti-masker, the mask-wearer is a hypocrite, a person who may wear a mask but probably beats his wife or kills helpless animals for food; the mask bestows nothing and it is at the very least a lock a chain, a pair of handcuffs — no worse than that — a stranglehold on one’s life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. You are of course permitted to ignore what I am saying here (and you will) as it’s much more fun to go around patting ourselves on the backs for each of our competing ‘truths’ — as my truth is right and yours is wrong. Unfortunately, ignoring the narrative meaning -- the mythical meaning -- of masks will make us all hate each other more, because unlike in the old days (pre human consciousness) when we all believed in the same God, and in effect, were connected to the same digital channel (i.e. mystical intuitive truth) we are now all on different channels and our Gods and truths are vastly different depending on whether you use Google or DuckDuckGo. This explains why we presently celebrate the deaths of the anti-vaxxers who die of COVID-19. Wow. This is a beaut. I simply can’t believe this is happening, or that people are actually defending it. Yes, the maskers say, it’s okay to be happy when anti-vaxxers die of COVID, and it’s okay to celebrate their deaths online and make fun of them. Why? Well obviously because they are evil and deserve to die, many times over, for spreading the virus. This reminds me of my dear friend Rob Johnston who was an AIDS ‘denier’ I.e. he dared to suggest that AIDS was not precisely not what Antony Fauci said it was, that perhaps there could be alternative interpretations of the illness, related to homoeopathy and drug use — in other words various factors other than Fauci’s much vaunted virus that transmits HIV. At any rate, when Rob died, many in the gay media celebrated his death. I would say there is no justification for celebrating the death of another person, no matter how evil they are; they deserve what we all deserve -- respect, because they, too, are human. We are all human (just a reminder). I was having a drink the other day with a woman who was my friend, and when I mentioned I have another friend who is an anti-vaxxer —her eyes glazed over with hate. I could tell she was suppressing the urge to ask me to leave. How did we get like this? From forgetting how much we all adore our own personal fictions. Because, after all, it is not reason that separates humans from animals, it is our ability to lie.
