I find myself repeatedly contemplating the potentially vast predictive power of Terror Management Theory in light of this cold blast of mortality salience related to COVID-19. This is the biggest flare-up of mortality salience since 9/11 and much of the resulting frenzied societal dysfunction was foreseeable, including the fact that so many modern-day tribes are so vigorously circling their wagons.

COVID-19 is a such terrible thing to grapple with. Many of the people we care about are going to be hurt, physically and economically. We are particularly taunted by COVID’s invisibility because, as a species, we rely so heavily on brain systems related to vision. That said, we human animals are now living in a huge sphere-shaped petri dish. It’s difficult to imagine the huge number of dissertations and research papers that will result from this upheaval. My speculative hope is that as a result of this pandemic we will learn something critically important about how to get along with each other. Whatever we learn, we need to learn it both in our hearts and our minds. We so desperately need some sort of reboot down here on Planet Earth.