Continued. Start here. The monster is loud, mischievous, huge, gaping and barkingEpigraph to the book by A. Radishchev “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”, 1790 Go there - I don’t know where, bring that - I don’t know what.From Russian fairy talesFight with the invisible personA particular difficulty for the situation with the coronavirus pandemic is that this enemy is completely invisible. Those. It is literally impossible to see or touch it. You can only feel its effect when you are already infected. Moreover, one of the most noticeable symptoms is the loss of taste and smell. That is, this cruel enemy seems to be telling us: “you will feel me through the loss of your feelings, but it will be too late.” This invisibility and unpresentability of the threat is precisely what poses a particular difficulty for our psyche. Our brain is used to dealing with visual images and really does not like what is impossible to imagine. For example - infinity. Or the size of the receding Universe. Therefore, most of us prefer not to think about it. At the same time, what we can visually imagine, we can achieve by developing the right route. Because over a million years of evolution, the human brain has become accustomed to successfully processing visual information. In our brain we have not only the cerebellum, which allows us to perform complex movements, but also the so-called visual cortex. And this is one of the fundamental reasons why the brain turns on a state of panic: it simply does not know what to do in this situation, which is designated as extremely dangerous. In other words, we not only do not have biological immunity against COVID-19, but we also have not developed any adequate mental patterns. Therefore, in crisis conditions, we regress and react on the basis of old mental patterns, which not only do not alleviate the situation, but often aggravate it - due to their irrelevance to this case. Only highly specialized virologists can rationally depict the process of a virus attack on the body’s immune system . By the nature of their thinking, they are far from PR technologies and therefore cannot really explain anything to the common population. And the mass population is simply not able to perceive this cognitively complex information, and even in conditions of collective panic and infodemic. We cannot imagine the mechanism of the threat - not only because of our intellectual limitations, but also again because these viral attacks occur at a micro level, which is simply unknown to us and difficult to imagine. “Undetected cases” That is why in the first weeks and months of the pandemic We see a huge flow of contradictory information and a lack of clear recommendations on behavior in these conditions, and most importantly, we see a lack of clear explanations as to why the coronavirus behaves differently in different countries and under different conditions. Under these conditions, there is a regression of social consciousness, and in peacetime, not burdened by excessive rationality - to completely primitive response mechanisms, namely: “Look under the streetlight - because it’s brighter there” “Event B, which occurred in time after event A, is considered its consequence ""Death is red in the world, or a feast during the plague" (mass celebrations, barbecues, overcrowding - that's all). "Everything bad happens as a result of conspiracies" This aspect of the mental reaction is also aggravated by the so-called "undetected cases" about which we both experts and laymen say. Those. The point is that the already terrifying statistics of diseases and deaths do not show the whole picture, since many cases of infection are simply not detected. And this creates a darker picture that the enemy is not only invisible, but he can be everywhere - literally next door, in the elevator of your building, on your doorknob or even in your blood... All this is partly familiar to us from the Chernobyl situation a disaster when the danger in the form of radiation was also invisible and penetrated everywhere. People also behaved carelessly and real as well as hidden victimsthere was a lot, especially if we add to this the effect of radiation on the immune system, delayed for years. It is precisely the invisible nature of the threat that explains this seemingly paradoxical reaction of people to a rapidly advancing epidemic - like the desire to go for a walk, have fun, meet with friends and family: “after all, we’re not doing anything bad ...” - people cannot realize the danger that they do not see. The illusion of understanding We are accustomed to relying on our senses and, above all, on our vision. A Russian proverb says: “The intelligence of men is in their eyes,” and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman denoted this principle with the acronym WYSIATI (What You See Is All That Is), i.e. “What I see is what it is.” And he called this one of the main cognitive distortions. Thus, in reality, if the virus were visible, it would change little in people’s behavior, but its invisible nature makes the mental reaction even more regressive. Another mental aspect of the reaction to the invisible coronavirus is that everything that a person cannot see or even imagine - most often refers to the sphere of the spiritual, otherworldly, divine or infernal. Perhaps this explains why Orthodox Patriarch Kirill called coronavirus “the grace of God” in his sermon. In other words, the invisible nature of the virus provokes in many people a feeling of the intervention of mystical forces in human life - spirits, demons or even aliens. At the very beginning of the pandemic, there were even references to a “British scientist” who suggested that the coronavirus was brought to planet Earth from a meteorite. The now very common explanation that COVID-19 was synthesized in what something from secret laboratories. A huge number of people believe in this kind of “conspiracy theories” due to the fact that it gives them at least some explanation, and our brain is accustomed to dealing with a static and pseudo-rational picture of the world. Those. This is an essentially psychologically justified reaction - in search of a “straw” - our brain, “drowning” in a sea of ​​alarmist information, grabs onto any models and pseudo-explanations, just to somehow reassure itself with the illusion of understanding what is happening. How to avoid panic? In this way - an unknown, invisible and deadly enemy causes the following reactions in most people: A feeling of helplessness in the face of imminent danger. An exacerbation of the fear of illness and death. Paranoia, phobias, delusions of persecution and conspiracy theories. Panic attacks, the desire to run away, hide, bury. Of course, this is not a complete list of mass mental reactions. Here we focus specifically on what is caused by the unimaginable nature of the danger. What recommendations can we formulate based on this analysis? Let's look at them: Action through non-action Taoists have the principle of wu wei: action through non-action. It is especially applicable during a pandemic and quarantine. At its core, the self-isolation regime means a voluntary renunciation of unnecessary, excessive and unsafe activities: social contacts, entertainment, senseless killing of time in public places. Self-isolation means that you stop doing unnecessary activities, especially because they threaten your health and well-being. Maintain inner peace Realize that one of your core values ​​is inner peace and vitality. In other words, loss of peace for you now is a direct threat to your safety and the safety of your loved ones. Taoists say that the external is controlled through the internal. General panic and alarmism came to you from the outside - from the Internet and TV. Don't let them get inside and destroy your peace. If you allow panic to destroy your internal comfort zone, you will greatly facilitate the destructive work of the coronavirus, because real immunity decreases during a panic attack. Silence practices help to maintain inner peace - voluntarily refuse communications, stop endlessly".