As the end of 2020 draws closer, there seems to be an ever-increasing vocalization of people’s desire to get this god-forsaken year over with and move on to better things in 2021. I can’t count the number of memes that have passed across my Facebook feed lauding the end of a year to be forgotten. The last many months have upset everything we thought was normal. Our collective sense of reality has shifted. And over and over again, I hear the refrain, “I can’t wait for 2021 when things can get back to normal”.
As I reflect on these months of COVID, its personal, collective, economic, and global impact, I find myself becoming more and more frustrated with the reigning narrative of this past year. In part, my frustration is because the narrative is so hard to follow…
- We can slow the spread of COVID-19 by following the guidelines given to us by public health: wear a mask, protect yourself/protect others, sanitize, stay home if you can.
- It’s important to slow the spread so that our health care system isn’t overwhelmed and can continue to treat other major health related issues.
- Stay home.
- Send your kids to school.
- This pandemic is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated upon an unsuspecting public.
- Those who wear masks are lemmings incapable of critical thought.
- Mask wearing shows respect for others who may have compromised immune systems.
- Wearing a mask is part of the conspiracy and has been proven to have no benefit against COVID whatsoever.
- COVID-19 is just like the flu. Stop overreacting and get on with life.
- COVID-19 is nothing like the flu.
It goes on. And on.
This mixed messaging itself is only one source of my frustration. That many of us speak with unwavering certainty about the incomplete and conflicting information we have seems to be somewhat short-sighted.
I think it’s important that we recognize that all of our COVID fears, opinions, and perspectives, without exception, are constructed on a certain kind of ignorance. Perhaps not willful ignorance, but ignorance nonetheless. The choices we make and the advice we follow (or not) is based on changing and growing data. As this virus makes its way through the population and as experts in their respective fields learn more about its behaviour, our responses change. Methods of testing and treatment shift. Social sentiment swings about as people experience varying degrees of economic difficulty or threats to our versions of normal.
Human history is filled with examples of a society taking a particular approach to a threat of some kind (perceived or real), only to find out at some point in the future that those decisions would have been very different had they been make with hindsighted information. [I know hindsighted isn’t a word, but I think it works.] If we knew then what we know now, would the experts and our communities have made the same decisions about thalidomide, nicotine use, alcohol in pregnancy, female sterilization, residential schools, capitalism…? Throw in the reality that all news is biased news, some parts of some stories are told while others are minimized, and most facts come to us from a particular perspective of some kind, and we are left not knowing what information is true and who we can trust to give it to us. We realize that we don’t know everything. Oh the horror! We can’t know everything. And most importantly, we don’t know what we don’t know. We must make the best choices we can with the limited information we have, knowing that what we know now will be different than what we might know in the future.
I would think this would lead us all to be a little more humble in our opinions. I would think this would lead us to have a little more grace for historians and cultural experts and scientists and leaders who really believe they have been responsible with the information they have and have made the best conclusions or offered the best advice that they can. And of course, I would think this would lead us to work diligently and passionately on behalf of those who have been adversely affected by the decisions others have made with good intentions, recognizing that damage, however unintentional it might be, is damage nonetheless.
When it comes down to it, I don’t think it really matters what is true about COVID, its spread, its treatment, etc. There isn’t going to be a ‘getting back to normal’. 2021 isn’t going to be any better or worse than 2020. 2021 is going to be what it will be and maybe what matters is that we start living with the reality that we have. Maybe we need to put a bit more emphasis on our perspective of and response to what we are living in rather than wishfully thinking the New Year will usher in a magical new world that will be more desirable to us Westerners who have had so little experience with hardship. Maybe what matters is how we continue to live with each other as our world and our perspectives change. Maybe what matters is how we choose to live with ignorance that can’t be helped and with realities for which we have no answers or explanations and over which we have very little control.
Ah, there it is – control.
Pause.
Control.
Nobody likes to feel a loss of control over of an aspect of their lives: when and how they can drive, what they wear in public, how they conduct themselves in social situations, when they can go to work, etc… And because control is linked to autonomy, which is inherently connected to identity, the loss of control can mean a loss of self. Who am I if I can’t make decisions that reflect and are true to my identity? And we are back to the relationship between the individual and the communal, between autonomy and social responsibility and integrity. You can check out the posts on Self-Interest, The Demise of Should, and From Should to Could to Must to follow the train of thought on this subject.
For now at least, I am going to spend some time thinking about what COVID 2020 has taught me about my own thinking patterns when confronted with uncertainty of this magnitude. I am going to consider how I can be more humble in my own opinions and more gracious toward others whose opinions are just as flawed as mine. I am going to think about what things I really need to control in order to be truly me, and what things I can let go of for the sake of being a responsive and responsible citizen in my community. I don’t know if I will succeed in these activities but I’m going to try. I think that is the very least this season demands of me.
Post-Script: I just came across this quote from Martin Luther King Jr: “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Believing him to be correct, my only response is, “Oh shit. Now I have to rethink this whole thing.”
And now we, your diligent readers, must wait while you rethink! A pox on the afterthoughts!