Axiomatic Civic Responsibility

I’m looking at the “protesters” in Michigan and ruminating on the nature of civil disobedience versus civic aphasia. By that latter term I mean a condition wherein a blank space exists within the psyché where one would expect an appropriate recognition of responsible behavior ought to live.  A condition which seems to allow certain people to feel empowered to simply ignore—or fail to recognize—the point at which a reflexive rejection of authority should yield to a recognition of community responsibility.  That moment when the impulse to challenge, dismiss, or simply ignore what one is being told enlarges to the point of defiance and what ordinarily would be a responsible acceptance of correct behavior in the face of a public duty. It could be about anything from recycling to voting regularly to paying taxes to obeying directives meant to protect entire populations.

Fairly basic exercises in logic should suffice to define the difference between legitimate civil disobedience and civic aphasia. Questions like: “Who does this serve?” And if the answer is anything other than the community at large, discussion should occur to determine the next step.  The protesters in Michigan probably asked, if they asked at all, a related question that falls short of useful answer:  “How does this serve me?”  Depending on how much information they have in the first place, the answer to that question will be of limited utility, especially in cases of public health.

Another way to look at the difference is this:  is the action taken to defend privilege or to extend it? And to whom?

One factor involved in the current expression of misplaced disobedience has to do with weighing consequences. The governor of the state issues a lockdown in order to stem the rate of infection, person to person. It will last a limited time. When the emergency is over (and it will be over), what rights have been lost except a presumed right to be free of any restraint on personal whim?

There is no right to be free of inconvenience.  At best, we have a right to try to avoid it, diminish it, work around it.  Certainly be angry at it.  But there is no law, no agency, no institution that can enforce a freedom from inconvenience.  For one, it could never be made universal.  For another, “inconvenience” is a rather vague definition which is dependent on context.

And then there is the fact that some inconveniences simply have to be accepted and managed.

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What did NASA’s Hubble Telescope See on Your Birthday?

Here's a great way to feel humbled by the fact that you are a tiny speck within an immense universe. It's also a chance to to have a brain orgasm tied to your own birthday: You are invited to receive a high-res Hubble photo from NASA accompanied by a detailed scientific explanation of something incredible that existed eons ago and farther away than you can imagine without serious effort. Go ahead and enter your birthday so that you can become a time traveler to deep space, courtesy of NASA.

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This six-minute TED video by Janet Iwasa inspires me. It's a story about what goes on inside of you and me. Iwasa is a bio-molecular animator. She creates animations of the processes within our cells. Her workspace is an extraordinarily beautiful but disorienting mini-universe.

The molecules Iwasa studies function as the support team within cells. Even though these many non-living things that are clearly not alive, they seem to be alive and even purposeful in these animations. They appear as tiny magical robots. Iwasa offers many examples of her animations in this video, including molecules that allow DNA to function. DNA is not an intricate code that simply sits there. DNA allows your body to be alive via the synthesis of proteins.

That this highly coordinated activity can happen at this scale is mind-boggling, especially given that the DNA is so incredibly complex and so tightly folded. It is mind-boggling that the DNA from one microscopic human cell, completely unfolded, would stretch six feet in length. I hope you as amazed as I was when you see Iwasa's animations.

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Donald Trump Brings a Pocketknife to a Gunfight at the Easter Showdown

Donald Trump, meet Biology. I don’t believe you’ve ever met anyone quite like Biology before.

Biology doesn’t care about your threats or your bombast. Your lawyers can’t sue Biology out of existence. You can’t sway Biology by dangling your hush money. You can’t grab Biology by the pussy. Biology doesn’t care if you pound the podium and yell at it. Biology doesn’t care if you accuse it of being stupid. Biology doesn’t care that you are Commander in Chief. Your bombs and missiles mean nothing to Biology. Temporarily propping up the stock market with funny money means nothing to Biology. Biology didn’t care when you blame Coronavirus on Chinese people. Biology doesn’t care about your fantasies that national borders are somehow relevant to Coronavirus. Biology doesn’t care about fake news. Biology doesn’t care that you think you are smarter than career scientists and health care professionals. Biology doesn’t care when you assure the nation that you have an amazing brain trust consisting of people like Mike, Jared and Ivanka.

It appears that you’ve shown up to a gunfight with a pocketknife.

You can stand up to your podium and deny how Biology operates, but Biology will eventually have its own day at its own podium and Biology won’t respond using cheap words. Biology will speak in terms of hundreds of thousands of dead bodies. Biology will speak in terms of thousands of people who could have been saved had you taken this situation seriously earlier, when you had the opportunity to act. If thousands of people needlessly die, this should upset Americans, because we get upset even if one airplane crashes, killing 200. Instead of sounding the alarm to protect thousands of people, however, you denied facts and wasted time. Here’s a sampling of your pronouncements:

Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control.” Feb. 2: “Well, we pretty much shut it down coming in from China.” Feb. 10: “By April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus very much under control in the USA. … Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” Feb. 26: “The risk to the American people remains very low.” At the same time, The Post reported, “Trump’s advisers struggled to get him to take the virus seriously,” despite telling him that “the virus was likely to dominate life in the United States for many months.”

Instead of immediately putting resources where they were needed, testing and ventilators, you told the nation that everything was fine. Everything was OK. And then you told Americans that they should pack the churches on Easter because (you have claimed) that day is somehow important to you. Perhaps you chose this date to pack churches because you and your evangelical friends are planning to roll out a faith-healing cure to the Coronavirus.

You won’t need to spend the upcoming days figuring out how to argue that this mess is not your fault, because you are already really good at deflecting blame. You are always well prepared to tell the world how smart you are and how other people are idiots. Spewing self-enhancing lies is clearly your main priority.

I admit that it’s possible that the Coronavirus might simply melt away with the spring warmth and that it might not kill a million Americans. This is possible, even though it looks highly unlikely given the deaths in Italy, Iran and Spain. Rather than argue about those numbers now, let’s check back in two months to see how things turned out for you and Biology. Truly, let’s check back in a couple months and then we’ll see how your amazingly brilliant plan is working.

If things don’t turn out well, you can always embrace that idea often attributed to Joseph Stalin: “A Single Death is a Tragedy; a Million Deaths is a Statistic.” And maybe you can stir in some social darwinism, drawing from your campaign attack on John McCain. To paraphrase: “I like people who don’t die of Coronavirus.”

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Coronavirus as an Opportunity to be Racist

Coronavirus is not an excuse to be racist. We all know that. Nonetheless, as we struggle to deal with the Coronavirus crisis, significant numbers of Americans are dusting off their favorite go-to tactic, racism, and aiming it toward the Far East. This time, it’s racism against Chinese people. For many examples, see the attached clip from Samantha Bee’s show (begin at 3:05 min for many examples where Fox Commentators follow Donald Trump’s xenophobic lead).

I struggle to find words to express my disappointment at this celebration of bigotry, and it’s not simply because I have many acquaintances and friends who are Chinese. It’s not simply because my daughters are Chinese. It’s because engaging in bigotry is a cruel thing to do to any another human being. We need to stop painting hundreds of millions of people with this broad brush. Have we learned NOTHING from the civil rights movement? For those who are tempted to push back at me and continue to blame “the Chinese” for our current struggle, which particular people are you angry at? You know it’s not all the Chinese people. You know that viruses don’t respect national borders. If you know anything about the evolution of viruses, you know that the next pandemic might originate in your own hometown.

Making this even more irritating for me, many of these racists claim to be Christians. Here’s my advice for those of you who are working hard to rename Coronavirus as “Chinese Coronavirus” or “Chinese Virus”: Take a deep breath, look in the mirror, take seriously your own commandment to love your enemy and put your fucking dog whistles away.

PS. This entire episode in hyper-nationalism is predictable by “Terror Management Theory.” (TMT). It’s well documented that people do this kind of shit when they are scared. See, here and here. Also see "The Worm at the Core," an excellent book on TMT by Sheldon Solomon.

That said, we can work harder to become better versions of ourselves in this crisis. We need to do a better job of keeping the focus on saving lives.

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