It is not only Americans holding such parties. They have taken place in Germany, the UK, Australia, Belgium, Estonia, and others, ever since lockdowns started setting in.
The idea of attending parties with the intent of becoming infected with the coronavirus or spreading the virus to others, or that participants share no concern for the potential ramifications of their behavior, neither for themselves or their communities, shows a clear attitude of defiance in the party-attending youth.
It is not merely open resistance to government orders. Rather, it is an act that signifies defying any and all boundaries.
The desire in youth to feel free makes them conduct these acts of defiance of imposed rules and limitations.
There is a positive and significant aspect to this behavior when we understand the nature of the desire to defy boundaries in these youth: It stems from a will to exit the shackles of an outdated mode of perceiving reality, and enter into a new perception, one where we feel free and unbounded to the limits of our current systems.
What these youth fail to understand, however, is that the boundlessness and freedom they truly seek can only be found by rising above our egoistic human nature—the self-aimed desires that propel our every thought and action in life.
Without rising above the human ego, then any such move will eventually lead to the realization that no real freedom was gained, and that the outcome is ultimately a failure. They will then experiment with new challenges and events, and as long as they do not elevate above the ego, they will merely keep reaching new dead ends.
If only their desire for freedom and breaking of boundaries would be calibrated in order to rise above the ego—by redirecting self-aimed benefit to thinking about others’ benefit—then they would be on course to the revelation of a new and different reality that is truly outside the boundaries of our entire egoistic world.
If the efforts to run coronavirus parties were redirected at building supportive environments that encouraged thinking and acting for others’ benefit, then these youth would be en route to making genuine breakthroughs and discovering true and lasting freedom.
On one hand, these youth are energetic, knowledgeable and curious enough to engage in such acts of defiance. On the other hand, they lack the sensation of humanity’s interdependence, that our feelings are tied to the thoughts and attitudes of everyone else, and that if we fail to create a environment that supports everyone in rising above the ego and caring for others, then any so-called “breakthrough” will be only to find ourselves in another closed and dark room within the ego’s maze. The more that this will happen, the more dissatisfaction and disappointment, and eventually, resentment, and in some cases, violence, will awaken in these same youth.
Therefore, we need to seek how to communicate the message about our nature-given interdependence to these youth—to awaken the realization that we need mutual support to rise above the ego in order to realize our interdependence positively.
Featured in Quora