Humans

Pre-accident I had an unusually high level of discipline. This discipline, combined with other good fortune, enabled me to move from poverty to the middle class. (Yes, luck, because I’ve learned personality characteristics are just the chemical and structural composition of your brain and thus luck/chance/fortune. This is a wild concept.)

This was accompanied by an assumption that everyone had or could have this level of discipline, and a lack of understanding for people who didn’t exercise it. 

Weeks ago I read that humans evolved with about seven weeks of tolerance for crisis and after that our resolve tends to break down. It warned that now things would get difficult. The majority of humans, in my perception, made it a few weeks longer. But then many broke. They went out to eat, out to party, out to bars. They didn’t wear masks. They got sick. They spread it. There was no requirement that they wear masks so they didn’t. 

This makes me very angry. To me it seems so stupidly unnecessary - but I still lack ..... I have a lot of emotional empathy. I have compassion. I am lacking something here that would help me be understanding and accepting of this weakness of humans. 

To me, it should not matter whether the government requires masks, people should be capable of making the correct decision on their own without being forced. but many aren’t. In countries where people are required to wear masks the curve has bent, lives have been saved, the economies can begin to recover. I have learned that a sizable percentage of people need to be forced, with real or imagined consequences, to do the right thing. Religion is necessary. I was wrong.