As Sydney has entered an extended lockdown due to the deliberate indifference of the current Federal Government in wanting to rollout an effective vaccine program, I have been driving to and from work across this swirling conurbation. That means that I have had the opportunity to listen to the radio. What have I learnt?
Some talkback radio stations which used to be thoughtful have recently made the editorial decision that it is a good idea if the general public is offended and affronted by any and all policies which governments took to protect people from dying due to Covid-19.
Of course flooding the airwaves with this constant wash of complaint, has meant that instead of any sense of public philos being generated, this has produced a work of lots of individual affrontery (as opposed to effrontery which is just insolent or impertinent behaviour). If the beast that shouts "I" at the heart of the world is allowed to shout louder and louder, then that is all that is heard. Suddenly, any sense of community which might have existed and any sense of public duty and philos which could have been built, is burned upon the altar of selfish atomos.
There is of course a lot of profit to be made in manufacturing outrage because outrage sells advertising space. That outrage can be manufactured quite easily if you can make the beast that shouts "I" at the heart of the world, shout ever louder. If you can get that beast to shout about some notion of freedom; including where individual freedom is going to result in the harm of other people, then sooner or later that notion of freedom with be transformed into a sense of entitlement; which only burns public duty and philos faster upon the altar.
In the before times the radio stations who play to their audience of people who on the whole are older than I, loved to play the game of baiting their audience into disparaging millennials, for not being hard working or perhaps soft. I find this particularly mind bending because the Lost Generation, Greatest Generation, and the Silent Generation, who were in many cases conscripted to fight two of the bloodiest conflicts in the history of the world and who also lived through the Great Depression, were the ones who built the world which the audience of talkback radio now lives in. The two World Wars and the Great Depression built moral goods like nothing else could have done and that sense of shared community which was forged as a result, is the reason why the modern welfare state exists. People thought that other people's welfare was something worth purchasing. Today? Not quite so much. At some point, the people who run media decided to convince us that other people are disposable, if the ends of that are our imagined freedoms.
No trial, whether it is thrown up by other people, by the vicissitudes of history, or in this case by nature itself, seems pleasant at the time. At the time that someone is going through hardship, it can in fact only seem painful. However, once the trial has passed, it generally leaves people changed in some way. The kinds of moral goods that the work of trials produce are virtues like resilience, perseverance, patience, maybe even kindness and the realisation that other people have inherent value and should be afforded respect and dignity.
If you were going out to face a fast bowler in a cricket Test Match, then you would think it most advisable to wear some kind of protective gear such a helmet, shinpads, maybe a forearm guard and a protector for other parts. I would have also hoped that you would have done the practice beforehand, to learn things like timing and stroke selection in batting practice. The most successful Test batters also learn patience and temperance, and how to be calm in the face of 90mph screamers from 22 yards away.
By definition a novel virus is one that people's immune systems have never seen this before. The virus is novel. Just like other viruses which are endemic, this one has started out with nobody having had it before; that means that herd immunity is only built up either through everyone's immune system having learned to recognise it through a vaccine or having actually gotten the virus. The latter of those two, that is actually getting the virus, has a non zero chance of death.
The inherent problem with a novel virus is that it is like sending out a batter to the centre of the field, with no bat. There's not exactly any training that one can do for that. You can send out a batter with the requisite pads and protection but they can not score any runs whatsoever because runs only come off of the bat. The only option is that they either get out or manage to survive because the bowler fails.
It would be advisable then for the batter to lift up their hands that are dangling and brace their knees and shins and wear a helmet and a face guard. Maybe even learn and practice those moral goods like patience, resilience and long-suffering; so that when you are bruised you won’t be put out of joint, but will heal. The problem is that the repeated yelling of the beast that shouts "I" at the heart of the world, demands freedom for itself and that other people go out to the middle of the field with no bat.
I kind of suspect that the underlying rules of economics and ethics work in similar ways. I don't think that it is imprudent to assert that people act in ways that they perceive will bring them maximum good.
You could make an argument that a lack of wisdom results in people making bad choices instead of prudent ones but I think that if you can repeatedly yell offence, affrontery and complaint in the name of freedom, then people will yell so loudly that public health, public philos and any sense that anyone owes any duty to anyone can be yelled out of hearing.
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