The image of a human is the face. Can you identify  Obama from his hands, his elbows, his forehead? Suppose he introduced himself to the world with a mask on his chin, mouth and nose. We would never know the human called Obama or allocate him a specific space in our brain. His unique identity, his true ID is his face. His distinctive humanity. When they wear masks, the people known to us for a generation simply vanish right in front of us. They become total strangers instantly.

A face without a chin, mouth and nose is not is not a face. The face is not one organ but a territory on the upper end of our body that hosts the chin, cheeks, nose, eyes, eyebrows, forehead and the ears.  To cover any space in this territory is to have a human completely lost in a mask. To lose his true identity. A bank robber knows to lose his face and thus his humanity is gone in putting on a mask. A robber or an agent of terror without a face by simply wearing a mask, is a man becoming a beast to another man. Humanity without a face becomes a sea of robots. A world of humans without humanity. We are suddenly surrounded by strangers, people we used to know. There is a case to be made that we easily become beasts without a face, like the terrorists do.

80% OF COMMUNICATION LOST IS HUMANITY LOST

We are becoming mere robots. It might also mean that we are being primed to interact with robots that will never achieve the level of facial movements of humans. Robots that will thrive in the ‘new normal’ fast getting imposed on us.  But the danger is more grave that a world of emotionless robots or the Matrix reloaded. Facial movements constitute 80% of communication during our face to face interactions. To lose our faces in masks is to lose 80% of our communication. Let that sink in, we are about to lose 80% of our humanity.

The cues that come from a subtle single twitch or quiver on the lip that tells you that your friend is afraid, angry or in deep mourning. The cue that cannot be put into words that instantly begs a hug, a tight hug that miraculously absorbs all that pain and distress in the very same instance. An instance where insanity beckons but is waded off by a timely fluffy bear hug invited by a subtle twitch on the lip. We humans are about to lose that. Stolen by masks.

That means, we will walk around with never healing psychological wounds because our faces were covered and our friends missed the cue to heal us. They won’t heal us by hugs and reassuring words because our lips were covered by masks. They couldn’t see the twitch. Surprised that mental illnesses have skyrocketed within a few months of masks and imposed loneliness? Brace yourself for a flood of mental health issues the world has never known. Running from a virus blindly and sheepishly is creating a world of deep wounds. Never healing wounds. Is it wise to run towards the edge of a steep cliff if a monkey was charging towards you?

We will have to be on multiple anti-depressants, anti-anxiety and sleeping pills because our faces were covered. Big Pharma just as those virtualizing our existence is incentivized by your masks and loneliness. Their future profits are astronomical funded by your loneliness, misery and humanity lost to masks. Seen ads about being apart together? Together simply tells your misery is shared by humanity! We are in this created misery together. The great equalizer, really? A life lived apart for social beings is one of unspoken misery. Ever wondered what’s the most severe punishment for a rotten serial murderer? It’s solitary confinement!  It’s simply severe loneliness. Any loneliness strips humans of a piece of humanity. The more the isolation, the bigger the piece of humanity lost. A total virtualized world is one of physical isolation. It’s one of lonely existence connected virtually with other lonely existences. Lonely together!

In a world of masks, our children will never know those eyes that melt a youngman or  young lady and instantly know he or she has seen love, true love. Love interpreted or deciphered from a face not words. Not just the eyes but the cheeks and the lips, all ecstatic with pure love. But we are losing all these to masks. Running from a virus blindly. Running from a monkey straight to a steep cliff.

EXPLOITED PRIMAL FEAR?

To bring up a child in a world of humans wearing masks is to instill and permanently fence primal fear as the child can never develop distinctive identities of those he is around. The infant learns to trust by reading faces. They read identity from a face and decipher messages of love, hate, disappointment, fear from the caregiver’s face. Remember a masked face is not a face. The data coming from the part of the face is fragmented and thus messages are complete distorted. Hence, the infant as is the adult is confused.

To an infant, all become one for all are the same without a face. Except perhaps the parents, they will be surrounded by a sea of masked humans, all looking alike. Humans with masks are faceless humans. In Psychology, infants quickly develop stranger’s awareness within a few months of life. Anyone not looking like the mother or a trusted caregiver is a danger and the child becomes extremely anxious and screams loudly for help. It’s called stranger’s anxiety.  Lip-reading is what we do from when we are born to learn spoken language. It’s well established in Speech Pathology that infants study lips movements to learn the languages of those around them.  As infants, if their eyes cannot see the lips they get extremely confused by the speaker. They are gripped by fear and visible anxiety. May be this fear can still be exploited. May be this is what is getting exploited.

We are blindly following orders to strip us of our humanity. We are in training. A global training for virtualized existence served by robots run by a few masters. We will be virtual slaves but slaves nonetheless. When we graduate, the ‘new normal’ will be here. A life without interactions with other humans. No wonder we are calling it ‘social distance’ instead of its proper name physical distance in epidemiology. 

PRIMING FOR A LONELY WORLD

Primed for a world without socialization. No offices where we socialize. No meeting in restaurants and bars where we socialize. No meeting in churches where we socialize. No going to schools where we socialize. No sports where we socialize. No beaches where we socialize. No gatherings where we socialize. No weddings where we socialize. No funerals where we socialize and heal. Simply no more humanity!

This is more true, especially in the severely individualized West, where only a limited few of these were the remaining social spaces. The Western culture prides itself in not knowing neighbors leave alone merrying or mourning with them. But further separation happened by way of social media. What a misnomer for a media that separates society instead of knitting it together? I can befriend you online in a pseudo name even though we live in the same neighborhood as perfect strangers. Stay apart but connect with humanity,  without the human connection, physical connection. We might as well have an Ethernet or USB port on our skulls for ours is quickly becoming a virtual existence. It’s not humans giving up their freedoms, it’s simply humans giving up humanity.  We are tired of humanity, we simply want to be a node in supercomputers network.

WERE NOT DEAD NOT BECAUSE WE HAVE BEEN SO CAREFUL

That’s the true meaning of social distance. Not necessarily to prevent a virus but to create a socially bankrupt way of living. Remember here in Africa our numbers have been low for months. I mean numbers of infections riddled with disputed positives  or mortality rates whose cause of death is a mosaic of commorbidities.

These low numbers are NOT because of anything we have done so CAREFULLY. We have been walking with masks on necks to simply avoid an arrest not a virus. We have not been washing our hands because there is no water and where tenderprenuership presented opportunities for exploiters there is no soap. Hands washed without soap just smear germs thoroughly in your hands. 

In matatus, a seat apart is not a meter and half apart and the virus seems to accommodate that during travel in public vehicles and promises not to infect. Let’s marvel at the intelligence of  this virus and the mercy it’s able to show us in the spaces of our African lives where the so called protocols are impossible to observe. As a condition of our lives and means, just as before the virus, we have continued to live in spaces impossible to put any physical distance. That is  true in Kibera slum in Kenya or Makoko in Nigeria as is any flat or congested places we call home. Given all these conditions, half of Africa would be dead if indeed ‘social distance’ or more precisely physical distance was saving lives. The rest of us would die shortly after if masks were truly saving lives. For a virus whose incubation period is 14 days which has been circulating in these conditions primed for super transmission for more than 4 months, we should all be dead. We are not. Again, it’s NOT because of anything that we have done so carefully. Nothing whatsoever!

THERE IS TIME TO CHOOSE HUMANITY

Humans not just in Africa, but the entire wide physical world, is about  to lose humanity. To lose our faces is to lose humanity. Humans all over the world have to choose whether they want to live as a node in a computer network or to have true social lives in the physical connectedness of our humanity. Humanity has to decide if 80% of our communication is important or limp along permanently with 20%. That’s what’s lost on masks. Humanity has to decide if our kids from here on, will live in a world where all are one. Faces with masks are not distinct to an infant and thus the grown up human that emerges from that infancy. To immerse humanity in a virtual world is to lose humanity and to exchange it for millions of mental illnesses and a complete control of the entire humanity from a centralized switch.

Those who stand to benefit have been making their case by fear and imposition. Humans have a clear choice to make. Make hay while the sun shines; there’s not much time left. I hope humans choose humanity. To fail is to lose humanity permanently! We must not fail!

Robert Mwangi, MBA is the Author of the Books DOLLAR ALTAR and the newly released one FIVE FINGERS.

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