Addressing the new public health constraints of a global viral pandemic with an academically driven public service announcement
Addressing the new
public health constraints
of a global viral pandemic with
an academically driven public
service announcement
Date Completed
April, 2020
Overview
A viral pandemic brings forth a myriad of challenges for human communities, civic society, and global economic systems. At its core, the main challenge lies in our ability to coordinate behavior effectively. The virus necessitates actions such as wearing masks and practicing social distancing to prevent severe economic consequences and potentially millions of fatalities. However, the coordination of behavior poses significant difficulties. In the United States, our deeply divided politics has the tendency to politicize nearly every aspect, including factual information itself.
Discourse serves as the primary means by which we coordinate behavior, and in this particular situation, we aspire to achieve moral progress through it. In our culture, moral progress is attained by recognizing suffering within certain aspects of our society and acknowledging the importance and inherent value of addressing it.
Historically, moral progress has often been catalyzed by moral entrepreneurs like Martin Luther King Jr. or Betty Friedan, who challenge our assumptions and work on our collective conscience. Alternatively, moral progress can emerge as a consequence of a significant historical event. While individuals may play a role in creating such events, often they are the natural unfolding of the course of history. The COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly a historical event, but it does not inherently represent an example of moral progress. This framing highlights the challenge of manifesting moral progress from within the circumstances of historical events.
Process
To tackle a writing challenge like this, I find it helpful to immerse myself in the right voice by watching philosophers engage in conversation on camera. Their manner of speaking, rhythms, and expressions assist in cultivating the mindset and tone necessary for putting my own words onto paper. One interview that stands out is the one with Hubert Dreyfus, where he delves into Pascal's response to Descartes, arguing that "we are essentially bodies and essentially minds, and they often conflict, leaving us stretched and crucified by this conflict." This understanding of the inherent difficulty at the core of the condition of being human is often talked about by Jacob Needleman.
In light of the genuine possibility of a family member experiencing suffering or facing death, I couldn't help but feel that it placed everyone at the heart of profound questions surrounding our physical existence, vulnerability, commitment, risk, and the pursuit of meaning. My thoughts gravitated towards those who view caring for others as their true calling and the immense burden they bear within our present political climate. I contemplated the emotions that surge within me when I read or hear someone recount stories of selfless care and sacrifice. It was my intention to harness that emotional register as a message of support for those who will stand between countless individuals succumbing to illness and the end of their lives, or enduring the agonizing journey of the illness with all its accompanying hardships.
When the process had run its course, I had a straightforward message that was emotional to read, made more impactful with the metaphor and meaning of moving images.
"There are more than fifteen million at risk health care workers in the US alone. Of those fifteen million, each and every individual has chosen to stretch themselves over the contradictions of being themselves, being deeply feeling members of the human race, and at once mothers to children they must protect fathers to families they must carry and sons and daughters of parents they are terrified of feeling the loss of.
As the feet of these caring people bear their own weight each morning, as they do what one does, we are given the gift of feeling the energy of their vulnerability, the weight of their commitment — the trembling of their risk. Sit with them, pray with them, sing for them — keep them close in your mind, but let the energy of their actions inform your own, contemplate the good!
All the answers to the questions of how to act in these gravest of circumstances are there in you. All that is required of us is to turn our attention to acts of selflessness, toward the good. There you will find a we! You will find that what was before the impossibility of getting all this, what it means to be a human being, together, has become natural. We are the human race, finite and infinite, temporal and internal, possible and necessary, we are a we!"
The final product generated a
number of positive responses
