Corona: Be very careful what you hear or read

There is so much crazy news going around: fake, real, biased, objective, statistically solid, complete fantasy. And with social media in the mix, it has become even harder to separate ‘truth’ from ‘true-sounding’ and ‘truthism.’ I am so sorry about that.

As an adjunct member of the Fourth Estate, I fully acknowledge and apologise for my contributions to this bizarre situation.

There has never been a better time to fully appreciate the power and usefulness of media and especially social media in our modern lives.

With lockdowns being enforced across several countries and humans in general trying to answer the questions: “why,” and “what should I do right now?” the Internet has been life-saving and soul-destroying at the same time.

It is humanity’s collective brain, and we are just as crazy and destructive as we are wonderful and creative and generous and kind.

Speaking directly to the social media naysayers and the luddites: It is important to acknowledge this. Even if you are taking a break from online, it is affecting your life in some capacity or another.

You get to choose whether this is a positive experience or a negative one. You. Get. To. Choose. And oh baby, baby it’s a wild world. There be dangers out there.

Mongerers are having a field day telling us who is responsible for this pandemic: China, the Illuminati, the lizard people, the Deep State, our collective human environmental stupidity, the Hand of God, you name it. Blame must be placed somewhere.

And you know what? I understand on a visceral level. My whole job consists of listening to stories, reading stories, and telling stories in the form of articles and fiction and social media quips. There is a beginning, there is a middle and there is an end. There is a narrative arc, and purpose.

Questions are raised and they are answered. I am worse even than a writer: I started out a poet, trying to squeeze the immensity of conscious experience into a brief structured format. All in pursuit of the one thing we humans crave and do not get: absolute certainty.

Dear reader, please understand this: We humans are designed to make a story out of everything. We create causalities. So far only the sciences have come up with relatively dependable ways of ascertaining facts. The rest, my dear, is all story. Does this mean all is false? No, not at all.

What it means is that with everything you read or hear you must engage your mind, your intellect, your soul and your experience and for humanity’s sake. STOP BUYING INTO AND SHARING OBVIOUSLY FAKE AND HARMFUL “NEWS!”

If nothing else, as a writer, I beg you to please respect the brain that nature or God gave you by using it. Otherwise we will not survive this pandemic the way we should, which would be so typically human of us.

Elsie Eyakuze is a consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report: E-mail: