I'm perplexed. Again! How is it that a culture that is hurtling headlong into the murky ethics of secularism all of the sudden thinks that even one life matters? If we can save one life, we are told, then we ought to all stay at home forever! Kill a baby through abortion so you can go to college, but don't kill grandma by not going to college and sheltering at home! It is so strange!
I would like to take us into the odd thinking of this period in time for a bit, especially when one considers our herd behavior for just about all of our past.
I will start with a hopefully accurate logical syllogism:
1. If unrestricted business, then thousands of deaths.
2. No unrestricted business. (or, for those who hate double negatives: "Restricted business")
3. No thousands of deaths.
I started thinking about this after a throw away comment by a doctor friend. He said, “these hospitals are only seeing Coronavirus right now. We’ve all but stopped the flu and other communicable diseases by staying at home.”
Fascinating! How many people die from the flu each year? Between 30 - 60 thousand! If we did this each year during flu season, how many lives would we save? Let’s put a conservative estimate at 20 thousand. Why would we not do that? Do we not have a moral responsibility to do that? Surely human life is more precious than unrestricted business. And there are plenty of people who are saying exactly that.
And how many people have been saved by avoiding overcrowded roads? Do companies have a moral responsibility to offer more work from home days? Will not such a policy save lives?
Surely the government can merely infuse the economy with stimulus each winter to get us through the shut down, in order to save lives. Don't we care about lives?
Perhaps the greatest problem with the argument, besides the fact that it denies the antecedent, and as such is fallacious, is with premise 1. We are trying to eliminate death by passivity. We are training everyone in the notion that the world is a dangerous place and must be feared. And certainly it is a dangerous place. Here are other means of death that are radically reduced by everyone staying home:
1. Car accidents.
2. All commutable diseases.
3. Pedestrian and bike accidents.
4. Falling off a ledge while taking a selfie.
5. Shark attacks.
6. Any encounter with any animal in Australia.
7. Getting struck by lightening.
8. Mass shooting... (someone may shoot their family, but that is not a mass shooting)
9. The slow death caused by global warming. Carbon emissions and global warming are solved by everyone staying home, I think.
10. Bar stabbing.
On and on it goes! Why were these people not concerned about those deaths prior to Covid-19? The short answer is that they were good and faithful utilitarians (people who believe that there is no ultimate moral ideal; only what works for the happiness of the majority of people). They knew that there is no grand ethical system, and so they were comfortable with sacrificing some people (passively) each year so that the complex and dangerous interactions of a global economy could carry on. They would take a level of risk when it was mostly other people who were dying and when they didn't feel like they were causing it. These are now the same people who are largely pushing for everyone to stay home, to save that one life.
It is curious that if you add all the deaths caused by my little list above, how many would it constitute? What is the number of acceptable deaths in a particular year before we will look deep into ourselves and ask why we are so brazenly seeking our own self-interest by having a job and selling things and seeking luxury and fun and interaction with other human beings? How exactly does a utilitarian answer this question? What is the number? If we put the list together, minus Covid 19, and estimate at 100 thousand deaths per year, then is that acceptable? And on whose authority?
People didn't used to think that our moral responsibility came from our passivity. Imagine if our moral responsibility in life was owing to all that we did not do to avoid some possible or even plausible causal outcome. If we live in a population dense area, then in theory it could be that our non-existence (is that sufficiently passive) might be "safer" than our existence. If we add to a dense population, then perhaps we only add another vector for disease, conflict, car accidents, on and on. But that is wholly foolish moral reasoning. Do we honestly think after the fact that the two actors in a car accident are morally impugned merely because they left the house that day? If you are going to assess people based on a bizarre calculus that imagines back into time the lack either of their existence or of their actions and then blames them after the fact, you might as well blame Boeing for 9/11. Just think about it.
I am actually astonished at how sloppy human reasoning is on this matter. So few people are really thinking about the simple matter of causation. For example, is there such a thing as a blameworthy cause? Or are there only causal chains broadly conceived? Ford made cars. Cars make crashes. Therefore, Ford made crashes. Same with guns. Same with cigarrettes, boats, business, hand-shaking, kissing grandma. Any bad that arises from the causal chain of these things is because of the existence of these things in the causal chain. Thus, stop these things and you stop the bad. Ridiculous! You might be asymptomatic with any number of diseases that could take your grandma out, even after the scare of Covid-19 relaxes. So you should never kiss grandma. Welcome to the moral guidance and logic of the age!
