I feel like elaborating on this

I used to have a fascination with stories about people who survive disasters and what makes someone resilient in extreme conditions (which I totally am not)

I read a book about it and the guy said the most dangerous thing was denial https://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1250222170304729088

People talk about the difference between those who have "the will to live" when stranded in the wilderness and those who don't, as though people who fail have consciously decided to make peace with death

He said that's not his impression, and it'd be more comforting if it were

It's not that people who do inexplicable, self-destructive things in a crisis have made peace with death and embraced it

It's the exact opposite, they REFUSE to accept death, even the possibility of it, they think acting like what's happening isn't happening will save them

And the common thread of survivor stories is that survivors at some point have a switch flip in their heads

As bizarre and fucked up as the situation is, they accept that this is the situation

You have to play by wilderness rules, civilization rules are over, they don't apply

He got kind of highfalutin about it

Baudrillard's quote about "mistaking the map for the territory"

We all have a simplified "map" of the world for our daily lives to make the territory easier to handle, a bunch of rules overlaid on the physical reality

It's how you live life in civilization

You stay on the marked path to cross the grass instead of taking a straight line

Food in the trash isn't for eating, you're allowed to walk through doors but not climb through windows

Child socialization stuff

And the really hard bit necessary switch to flip is understanding when the map no longer describes the territory, you're not in Kansas anymore

That raw meat is disgusting but it's the only food and no one's bringing you anything else and if you don't eat you'll starve

Hacking your own arm off is horrible, too awful to think about, but NO ONE KNOWS YOU'RE HERE and NO ONE IS SENDING HELP and if you don't do it YOU WILL DIE HERE

Etc, etc

It's not that people who refuse to do these things and then die made a *rational choice*, that they actually said "I would rather die than eat bugs", "I would rather drown than take my shirt off and let people see me naked"

It's "I can't believe this is allowed, this isn't fair"

This inability to accept that the universe isn't fair, that the fairness you think is the way the world works was imposed on reality by a lot of people's daily effort, the collective project we call "civilization", and if you fall through its cracks all kinds of shit happens

Like Michael Scott driving right into the lake, in an almost too perfect reference to Baudrillard

Refusing to accept the plain evidence of your senses that there's a lake there and not a road because you just won't let go of the map, you can't function without it

And now our whole civilization is going through a crisis where a ton of details from the map that people thought were laws of nature have been ripped away

All those finance tips about the stock market returning 4% every year or renters will always pay your mortgage for you

"They can't just CLOSE EVERYTHING, they can't just LAY EVERYONE OFF, we can't have a Second Great Depression RIGHT NOW, in my lifetime, they promised with the Fed and the SEC no such thing was possible ever again

This can't be happening"

Again and again that childlike whine of THIS ISN'T FAIR, THIS ISN'T RIGHT, I CAN'T BE EXPECTED TO LIVE LIKE THIS

You're right, it fucking sucks, there's nothing good about it, but there's no manager to complain to who can magically make a virus go away because it's wrong

And the guy was very harsh, he said that people who talk like this may be very smart and very kind and very hardworking decent generous people in normal civilized life

But that tone of voice in a time of disaster is the sound of a dead man walking