The world is ending. The future is imperceptible, thus non-existent. We have entered the apocalypse, a post-world suggestion, funnily enough nothing like depicted. 

We have electricity and food and FaceTime calls and copious amounts of time to binge-watch television shows. The borders of hell have been constructed, yet our inmates are the families we so love. But truly, I insist, the world has ended.

How could the world not have ended? It’s the proclamation of middle-class suburban folks and nighttime news anchors across the country and every tale the internet spins is true. 

Because we have never experienced loss before, we feel loss, poignant and sharp. 

The world has ended because we are bored out of our minds, because what we’re left with is true depravity. Indeed, boredom is more suffering than physical pain, or the loss of a loved one, or the loss of a small business, or the inability to return home. 

We are suffering because we have the means to broadcast our suffering. The suffering we do not see, the lives outside our own are so marginalized, they do not exist.

The world has ended, and so, we are above the law, refugees whose selfish acts are excusable. We are the select few, the insurgency who see what no one else can see: the world was made for us, for our benefit, under our rules. 

We are above the regulations set in place to help society, allowed to break confinement, our haughty breaths filling the air as we pass around jokes with our friends, pass around viruses to affect the elderly or those with compromised immune systems.

The world has ended, and we’re all in this together. We say the virus is classless, as if times of hardship lessen the socioeconomic divide rather than illuminate it. 

The rich are justified, hoarders of food, recipients of test kits, the ones who can afford healthcare and hope. 

The ever-widening moral and ethical debate on who to help is too tiresome and ambiguous. 

What is good, what is bad? When medical centers become overwhelmed: who to keep on the ventilators, who to die? These unanswerable questions are a waste of time and the rich provide a simple, black-and-white answer. Survival is something to be purchased. 

We’re all in this together because what unites the human race is our selfishness. Of all human traits, our pride is universal and as old as time. 

A president saves face to prevent a collapsing economy. The CDC and NIH go ignored because our opinions are more educated than healthcare professionals. 

We believe in individual responsibility, yet we find scapegoats for our problems: it is China, it is our far-fetched political conspiracies, it is anyone but ourselves, any place but our own country.