A reader of this blog, moved by some problems he has faced, has written to me asking whether I think there is any basis for his strong belief that some things are simply always wrong. Without quoting him directly or in any way revealing his identity, I thought I would answer with a blog post since this question is obviously of very broad interest and importance. The question he raises is one to which I have given a great deal of thought over the course of my life and, as I have said in various places, it is a question on which I fundamentally changed my mind at one point in my life. So I will have a go at answering him here in the hopes that my answer will be of interest to others as well.
I was not raised in any religion. As I have recounted somewhat
puckishly in my autobiography, when I reached the age at which other little Jewish
boys were bar mitzvahed, my mother told me that I was the product of a mixed
marriage. “Your father is an agnostic,” she said, “and I am an atheist.” Still,
my parents offered to send me to Hebrew school if I wanted to have a big party
and get lots of presents, but the alternative they offered – a hundred dollars
to buy some presents for myself – seemed more attractive so I took it, thus
severing my connection with organized religion. I confess that I do not find
religion a very helpful answer to the question my blog reader posed. Either what
God commands He commands because it is right, in which case I am left with the
question why it is right. Or what God commands is right because He commands it,
regardless of what that is, in which case I am reduced to the status of a
mushroom, as the background bystanders in the early computer games were called.
I spent a good deal of time in the earlier part of my life
looking unsuccessfully for an argument that would satisfactorily support the
claim that there are universal moral principles demonstrable by reason alone
that tell me what I ought to do (the way in which I formulate the question
makes it obvious that I was influenced more than anything else by the teaching
of Immanuel Kant.) Indeed, when I wrote
In Defense of Anarchism I still believe that such an argument could be
found, as a careful reading of that little book will reveal. Having grappled
with Kant, I was not, as you can imagine, much impressed by the vastly less
powerful arguments of Rawls.
Eventually, I embraced my failure as a deeper truth and
concluded that each of us in this life must decide, as I chose to think of it,
who our comrades are and who are our enemies, or as I also liked to think of
it, which side of the barricade we choose to stand on. I found that I was
liberated, not enfeebled, by the recognition that I was forced to choose what
sort of life I would lead and what principles I would bind myself to
autonomously.
My liberation comes with a price, of course. I was forced to
acknowledge that no amount of argument, no assemblage of facts, no appeal to
conscience or to sentiment or to the consensus gentium could promise eventual
agreement about fundamental principles of morality. Many people, I am well
aware, find this an unacceptable conclusion and refuse to embrace the fact of
struggle as the human condition. I think I can hold my own against them in an
argument but I have nothing to offer them to alleviate the discomfort that my
position causes them.
39 comments:
Prof. Wolff,
In his book “The Atheist’s Guide To Reality,” Prof. Alex Rosenberg opts for nihilism. He writes (on p;. 113:
“Scientism starts with the idea that the physical facts fix all the facts, including the biological ones. These in turn have to fix the human facts – the facts about us, our psychology, and our morality. After all, we are biological creatures, the result of our morality. After all, we are biological creatures, the result of a biological process that Darwin discovered but that the physical facts ordained. As we have just seen, the biological facts can’t guarantee that our core morality (or any other one, for that matter) is the right, true, or correct one. If the biological facts can’t do it, then nothing can. No moral core is right, correct, true. That’s nihilism And we have to accept it.”
I find this conclusion rather disquieting. And, judging from your posts, I infer that you do to. You believe, for example, that the taking of human life on a massive scale as would be inflicted by a nuclear war exchange is immoral. From this, I would infer that you believe that the taking of innocent life, generally, is immoral. I don’t see how a nihilist could believe this.
I recently heard the President of the WHO declare that it will be wrong (I am not sure if he used the word “immoral”) for the industrialized world to administer booster covid vaccine shot, while there remain millions of people in the less developed world who have not even received on vaccine shot, due to a shortage of the vaccine’s availability in those countries. This raises, for me, the following moral dilemma. I, and you, are in the age group in which American physicians are recommending that we receive a booster shot. Every booster shot we receive could mean that someone else in the world who could use that booster shot as their first shot will not receive it, and therefore may contract covid and die. Although it is recommended that people over 60 in the U.S. receive a booster shot to sustain or increase their immunity, it is not certain that without we will be infected and possibly die. Do we, therefore, had a moral obligation to forego a booster shot and thereby increase the availability of the vaccine to those who have not ever received one vaccine shot? Your thoughts?
I really butchered a lot of the words in my comment above, but i trust my meaning is clear.
The reader's name (first name only) still shows at the beginning of your response.
My position, for the time being, is that one's doubts and difficulties in "metaethics" (I think that's the right word: philosophical reflection on the nature of ethics itself, e.g. on whether it's possible and what it might mean for something to be unconditionally obligatory or forbidden) need not have any serious impact on the felt quality and weight of our moral experience.
If that's right, then you can still abhor (what seems to you) evil, follow the lead of like-minded people, and encourage others to do the same - even if you also doubt or wonder if there's any sense to be made of such notions as "unconditional duty," or of such statements as, "X is wrong, and my knowledge that X is wrong in no way depends on my personal aversion to X."
Wittgenstein said somewhere that philosophy leaves the world as it is. (Not really a Marxist sentiment!) On most days, I feel somewhere around 70-75% in agreement with him; occasionally I think that's just a lack of courage on my part. It's difficult to search for a clearer and more satisfactory outlook overall, but it's "good" to try. :)
There is no absolute right or wrong for all situations and all times. Right and good are wholly dependent on the perspective from which they are drawn. What is good for the wolf may not be good for the lamb. And what is good for a 2-year-old boy may not be good for that same person when he is 82 years old.
In the beliefs of those who faithfully accept, or even insist on, absolute right and wrong I see parallels to what are, in my view, mistaken beliefs that genetic evolution entails a constant march toward the creation of ideal, perfect species. There is no such thing as a perfectly evolved organism. There cannot be. Because for a species of organism to be perfect in all situations and through all time it would need to be well suited to whatever situation its kind might ever possibly encounter; yet the environments that organisms encounter invariably change over time, whether in terms of the abundance or scarcity or resources or of various threats from predators or toxins. A suite of genes that allow a creature to thrive in arctic tundra will likely be disadvantageous for living in an equatorial rainforest. Similarly, while the genes that can cause thalassemia in humans may be advantageous in regions where malaria is prevalent, those same genes may be highly disadvantageous in regions where there is no malaria.
("Right" and "good" and "to thrive" here meaning increasing the chances that a being's kind will continue to live into future generations, and, for the sentient, conscious being, that the life of the individual will be as satisfying and free of discomfort as possible.)
Since the topic of ethics has come up, any thoughts on the ethics of mandating that people be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to keep their jobs or continue to take classes, even in situations in which they may not necessarily be at particularly high risk of getting the disease or spreading the virus?
This ethics professor lost her job over refusal to be vaccinated.
This college student who had planned to take all of his classes remotely, never going to campus during the semester, was not allowed to enroll.
And what about the argument some are making that people who have refused to be vaccinated should not receive the same level of access to medical care as those who have been vaccinated if they do wind up getting COVID-19? (You'll notice that Arthur Caplan Liked that tweet.)
I have just watched Prof. Ponesse’s youtube video defending her right to refuse to be vaccinated. Like so many defense attorneys I know, she is obfuscating the issue by conflating two different issues. I agree with her that she has the right to refuse to be vaccinated if, after careful research, she has concluded that it is not guaranteed to be effective and safe. But that is not the issue. The issue is whether she both has the right to refuse to be vaccinated, and also has the right to continue to work as a professor at a university and not to be fired for refusing to do so. She does not. If her employer, contrary to her, has concluded based on the evidence that the vaccine is both effective and safe, then the employer has the final say as to whether she can continue to be employed as a Prof. of Ethics at her Canadian college. And this is not a legal opinion. It is an ethical opinion.
Separately, she claims she has spoken to colleagues in the medical profession who have advised her that the vaccine is not necessarily effective or necessarily safe. She does not provide the data or evidence upon which they have drawn these conclusions. She may be a Prof. of Ethics who can teach what others have said about ethics and morality, but as far as I am concerned, she is not a very good professor for telling her students that they have the ethical right to refuse to be vaccinated and continue to come to class. Her college is well rid of her.
Post-script:
Prof. Wolff, since you have indicated that you are interested in finding venues in which you can continue to teach, you might want to consider replacing Prof. Ponesse, if her employer is willing to pay for your airfare and board while you travel between Ontario and North Carolina.
" Her college is well rid of her."
Indeed. The video was made this month, i.e. after hundreds of millions of folks have been vaccinated with no serious problems. The question as to the qualifications of those she has consulted is a good one. Her statement as to her agreeing to receiving previous vaccinations seems problematic as most vaccinations are received in childhood when ones agency is limited. I recently saw a twitter thread in which an O-5 (U.S. Army) resigned at 19 years over this and other equally bogus issues. That was an unforced seven figure error. I hope after twenty years she's vested. My general impression is that these folks are mental.
I very much appreciate Professor Wolff taking the time to respond to the questions I had. I also appreciate the opportunity afforded to remain anonymous- but that is not necessary and I am in no way embarrassed that I would consult someone or ask them for help understanding something that I was having difficulty with.
I was reassured that apparently these are not easy questions and that I was not missing some obvious answer. The Professor apparently spent quite a bit of time and effort in his attempts to come to his own conclusions. So I am not alone in my own struggle with these questions.
At this point I still believe that some things can really be considered to be always wrong- I used the Holocaust conducted by the Nazis as an example in my email questions. And I am resigned to the understanding that saying such cannot really be backed up by any proof I can ever deliver. So it is a statement of a belief. Which I guess I am ok with now.
Thank you Professor. I may have come to a different conclusion than you but your response was very helpful to me in sorting out my thoughts.
To respond to Eric, it's worth considering the ethical implications of the state's preferred method of coercion: federal, state and local health orders that impose a duty on employers to mandate vaccination or testing of employees.
Which means that "the government" is not exercising its police power to mandate vaccines for all Americans for the health and safety of the populace; instead, it has chosen to exercise regulatory authority deprive anti-vaxxers of their ability to earn a living in a capitalist economy precisely when enhanced federal unemployment benefits are set to expire so that Americans are compelled to return to the workforce and resume their exploitation by capital.
And somehow people have been mystified into believing that this method of coercing the unvaccinated - which can of course be avoided by the ruling class who need not collect a salary from an employer to make a living - is more ethical or legal or acceptable than the government simply coming out and requiring all Americans to vaccinate via legislative or regulatory processes since, after all, everyone has a "choice" not to work.
Ridiculoussiculous,
Give me a break.
Yes, the government – the federal government – is exercising it is police power to ensure the safety and health of the American citizens via the police power of the applicable agencies of the various states. To turn this into a Capitalist vs. Socialist/Marxist dispute is absurd.
I think Ridiculousicculus makes a good point; but the bit about the ruling class being exempt from their own coercive measures, while true, might distract from it somewhat.
The point I think is to question this claim: If the government required employers to mandate vaccines, then anti-vaxxers's protests against coercion would have less ethical weight than if the government imposed a vaccination mandate on the general population.
In one case (R. points out), the coercive measures are merely less direct; and it misses the mark to argue that anti-vaxxers can exercise their freedom simply by choosing not to work, because the capitalist system is such that more-or-less everyone (except, R. says, the ruling class) must "choose" between work and impoverishment.
It's not (I take it) that the anti-vaxxers have a good case; it's that it seems false to say the employer mandate is clearly less coercive and less ethically problematic than a mandate on the general population would be.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not on the anti-vaxxers' side. I'm not aware that they have any non-bogus reason not to get vaccinated, and I think there is a strong case to be made for the ethical obligation to get vaccinated, and most likely for a mandate as well: The chief reason would be to prevent harm to others. Essentially Mill's liberty principle, right? But I doubt that this principle represents the final word in moral philosophy, and in the meantime, there's nothing wrong with pointing out the weaknesses even in arguments that favor our position.
Ridiculoussiculous,
By prosecuting them for murder, would the government be depriving 1st Amendment rights to the free exercise to those whose faith mandates human sacrifice?
It's basically a question of criteria. In a relative universe, there are no absolute criteria.
Even the sages of perennial wisdom admit this. Therefore they say that the criterion is those in a position to know, that is, prophets thaI purportedly transmit revelation, or sages that purported have access to epistemological levels in experience and cognition that are not ordinarily available. In both cases, one is thrown back on faith, and there is the further issue of interpreting the meaning of the prophets and sages, for which there is no criterion either.
Many anthropologists and sociologists would argue that morality is a cultural construct without firm basis in criteria. Thus, the "natural law" argument is just a appeal to stipulation.
Kant's categorical imperative is an attempt to formalize a statement of the golden rule that is found in some from in all traditions. It has precedent at the subhuman level in reciprocity, leading to the conclusion that it is an evolutionary trait that favors pro-sociality. See evolutionary theorist David Sloan Wilson on this, for example.
In this view, existentialism is the most correct view to be offered. We are thrust into a relative world that we didn't ask to come into and have to make the best of it. Philosophical positions can be viewed as justifications of a lifestyle after the fact. "Minerva's owl takes wing at midnight, to paraphrase Hegel.
This is a reason that morality remains an enduring question. There are a whole lot of interesting approaches to these questions but not are as yet universally compelling base on reason and evidence. It's called "the human condition"
I have conviction in a certain position, but that is of concern only to me, since my conviction is an entirely personal matter. BTW, Wittgenstein left some posthumous notes published under the title, On Certainty, that are relevant.
There is a proof of God, but the success rate is very low. Most do not survive it. Jews call it the "water test". This from the Babylonian Talmud:
Four Entered An Orchard
Our Rabbis taught: Four entered an orchard and these are they: Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Aher and Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Akiva said to them: "When you reach the stones of pure marble, do not say: 'Water, water!' For it is said: 'He that speaketh falsehood shall not be established before mine eyes' [Ps. 101:7]." Ben Azzai gazed and died. Of him Scripture says: "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints" [Ps. 116:15]. Ben Zoma gazed and was stricken. Of him Scripture says: "Hast thou found honey? Eat as much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it" [Prov. 25:16]. Aher cut down the shoots. Rabbi Akiva departed in peace.
"cut down the shoots" means he attacked the children's faith, i.e., he became a heretic.
So as you can see, one died, one went insane, and one became a heretic.
This is why Rabbi Akiva is my favorite Jew. He would be, for those around him, the Philosopher's Stone. Here's his Wikipedia bio (check out the picture of his grave in Tiberias, Israel):
Rabbi Akiva
As an aside, the "water test" is also mentioned in the Qur'an.
Michael - yes, the point of my post was not to opine on the relative merits of mandates vs. non-mandates. The point, predictably lost or ignored by a usual suspect, was to raise a question about the ethics of Biden's chosen means of enforcing the mandate.
Ridiculousicculus,
Since you are a person with such high moral standards, do you believe that Americans over the age of 60 who have already had two vaccinations of the covid vaccine should forego obtaining a third booster shot, so that the extra vaccine can be shipped to Africa and Asia in order to ensure that the millions of people in Africa and Asia who have not received even one vaccination can be vaccinated?
My understanding is that doses of the vaccine are destroyed as they age out partly due to all the refuseniks. Two weeks ago I rattled some cages and got my third Moderna shot. I assume my shot would be trashed not sent to some other country.
David Palmeter - I'm not sure of your post is serious, since the legal answer in response to the constitutional question is clearly "no" and it seems pretty obvious that refusing to vaccinate is not morally equivalent to human sacrifice.
AA - thanks for the complement on the high moral standards, but I haven't really given it much thought.
Oh wise and most ethical Ridiculoussiculous, why don’t you give it some thought. Surely one as moral as you, who are in a position to accuse Pres. Biden of being unethical, unfair and immoral to the working classes by requiring that employers insist that their employees be vaccinated as a condition of continuing to work must have some opinion about the morality of obtaining a booster shot while millions of poor people around the world have not been vaccinated for lack of the vaccine and are contracting covid at the highest rates in the world. Please, Oh Great One, grace us with your wisdom and give us the morally correct answer.
And, by the way, why do you insist on continuing to refer to yourself as Ridiculous?
Ridiculoussiculous
What human sacrifice and refusing vaccination share is that both are forms of harm to others. To be sure, there is a difference in degree: one assures death of another person; the other "merely" risks it.
Below is a link to a fascinating discussion between Anderson Cooper and George Will about democracy, our current circumstances compared to the past, historical determinism and parenting. What do you think about what he says?
https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2021/09/17/wapo-columnist-george-will-acfc-full-episode-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/acfc-weekender/
For Ridiculousicculus. This may be of interest to you:
https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii122/articles/marco-d-eramo-the-philosopher-s-epidemic
it’s a precursor to a later note:
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/sceptical-credulity
P.S. Since according to the O.P. we are incapable of validating things of great importance to us all, what’s wrong with someone drawing attention to their—and our—human intellectual frailty instead of insisting that our powers of reasoning are supreme by choosing to identify himself/herself—and everyone else—as a little bit ridiculous when we imagine we’re purveying absolute truth?
P.P.S. Though it’s really neither here nor there, the mother of the author of these just referenced pieces wrote a thesis on Kant’s Critique of Judgement (look up Luce d’Eramo in Wikipedia—she seems to have lived an amazing life and did decide who her comrades and enemies were).
"What human sacrifice and refusing vaccination share is that both are forms of harm to others."
Is everyone on the same page when judging the vaccines to be "safe and effective"?
Most of the comments in this discussion are maximizing the risks of vaccine declination while minimizing the risks of vaccine acceptance. Forcing someone to accept a vaccine that they do not want also is a form of harm, to the vaccine recipient.
Declarations that the COVID-19 vaccines are "safe" are based on short-term observations. These are new vaccines, so there is no way to know what the long-term effects of the vaccines may be. This is especially so for the mRNA vaccines. Despite claims that mRNA treatments have been "studied for decades," large-scale trials of any mRNA vaccines in human subjects (let alone vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, which was unknown prior to 2019) were actually only initiated very recently. Beyond that, while the vast, vast majority of vaccinations have not been associated with any serious short-term adverse effects, there have been a few cases of possible serious effects, including death. You can call someone's judgment that even those small risks are too high unreasonable, but is it not ultimately their own decision to make?
Some here may also believe the vaccines to be more effective than they have proven to be in practice. The Pfizer/BioNtech and Moderna mRNA vaccines were introduced with great fanfare as being very effective at preventing infection after two doses. But those figures were based on observations in clinical trials, which typically paint a rosier picture than proves to be the case in real-world practice; and they were based on experiences during a period before COVID-19 was widespread and during which nearly all cases of the virus were due to the alpha variant of the virus, against which the vaccines had been designed. The vaccines appear to be less effective against the delta variant.
One recent study suggests that natural immunity may provide more robust and longer-lasting protection against subsequent (re)infection with the virus than two doses of the Pfizer/BioNtech mRNA vaccine. (The report has not yet been published or peer-reviewed.) If this is a valid observation, a person at lower risk for severe disease–someone younger, with a healthy immune system and no known risk factors such as preexisting heart disease or obesity—might be better off, as an individual, declining the vaccine and risking exposure and infection, with the possibility of acquiring natural immunity.
Perhaps in our rush to get back to being able to do normal things, like traveling and going to restaurants, parties, theaters, and music festivals, as well as to getting workers back into offices (which means that their kids have to be back in school), we are too willing to want to put all of the responsibility on those who are unwilling to accept the risks of the vaccines. Maybe those at high risk should be required to be vaccinated and to refrain from engaging in these sorts of activities that increase their risk of exposure, and everyone should have continued to be encouraged to continue wearing masks and social distancing all along.
Many of us still seem to be clinging to the idea that if only those "anti-vaxxers" would get with the program, we could reach herd immunity through vaccination and put this nightmare behind us. Well, a number of epidemiologists and infectious disease experts are doubting that herd immunity is achievable against COVID-19 through vaccination.
“The focus on ‘herd immunity’ has, in my view, been quite damaging,” said William Hanage, an epidemiologist and expert in communicable disease dynamics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “It presents people with an unrealistic vision of how the pandemic comes to a close and doesn’t account for the evolution of either the virus or the nature of disease in reinfections.” The World May Never Reach Herd Immunity Against COVID-19
As Robert Malone, one of the pioneers in the development of mRNA vaccines, has said, we can't vaccinate our way out of an active pandemic. (Malone has become persona non grata in many circles because of some of his contrarian viewpoints and his willingness to give interviews to rightwing media outlets.) A point he raises is that successful vaccine strategies involve deployment of vaccines to vulnerable populations prior to active epidemics, not in the midst of active, widespread transmission of infections. He also notes that there is some evidence that administering a leaky vaccine to a large population of people who don't necessarily need the vaccine might be counterproductive by paradoxically promoting the evolution of mutant variants that are less susceptible to the vaccine. Malone is not the only one who argues this:
There’s another problem to contend with as immunity grows in a population, Ferrari says. Higher rates of immunity can create selective pressure, which would favour variants that are able to infect people who have been immunized. Vaccinating quickly and thoroughly can prevent a new variant from gaining a foothold. But again, the unevenness of vaccine roll-outs creates a challenge, Ferrari says. “You’ve got a fair bit of immunity, but you still have a fair bit of disease, and you’re stuck in the middle.” Vaccines will almost inevitably create new evolutionary pressures that produce variants, which is a good reason to build infrastructure and processes to monitor for them, he adds.
(More info in the section discussing Marek's disease vaccine experiments here.)
That is not to say that vaccination along with behavioral measures such as wearing masks & social distancing are not useful in slowing spread of infections, which can allow local healthcare systems to more effectively handle outbreaks in their areas (as opposed to having hospitals completely overwhelmed by surging cases).
*a small number of epidemiologists and infectious disease experts
Ridiculousicculus,
This Marxist sees even more nefarious patterns at work in the US government's response to the pandemic. I think he understates the seriousness of the pandemic, but I also think his cui bono analysis of the big finance players' and US government officials' actions are persuasive.
The conflicts of interest among regulators and policymakers, including scientists sitting on FDA committees, ought to be a source of wide outrage. Instead, they are either unknown or accepted as a matter of routine.
Eric, some thoughts -
Apologies for my use of the disparaging term "anti-vaxxers." There's more diversity and nuance in the unvaccinated and vaccine-hesitant population than I tend to give it credit for. I appreciate your carefulness and thoughtfulness, as well as your candid acknowledgement of some items that might detract from the strength and credibility of your position. (E.g. Malone as "persona non grata..."; the number of dissenting experts as "small.")
I'm not quite sure how to ask this without sounding odd*, but: If you were of the opinion that the best way to combat the pandemic would be through universal vaccination (or as close to that as we can get, including via mandates where appropriate), how would you go about stating the strongest case you can think of in favor of that position? And in what ways would you nevertheless consider this case insufficiently strong? I ask this because: Perhaps the most impressive and persuasive move one can make in argument is to demonstrate a superior grasp of the opposing viewpoint. (I admit I'm very far from having accomplished that myself in this conversation, but your last few comments have been helpful to me.)
It might also be interesting (and more pleasant) to see this transition to a discussion of our "epistemic methods" and the psychological factors at work in those. (I guess that's a fancy way of referring to: how we decide what does and doesn't qualify as knowledge, given the limits of our individual competence as well as time, energy, motivation, and bias. More particularly: when experts appear to disagree - and when we ourselves can't be counted among the experts - how we decide which expert opinions are most worthy of acceptance, bearing in mind our desire to act quickly, easily, and decisively.)
*This quotation from Russell's A History of Western Philosophy might convey something similar in spirit to the approach I have in mind. I know it's asking a lot, but I'm always curious about people's best initial efforts, anyway, when it comes to laying out opinions they disagree with:
In studying a philosopher, the right attitude is nether reverence nor contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to know what it feels like to believe in his theories, and only then a revival of the critical attitude, which should resemble, as far as possible, the state of mind of a person abandoning opinions which he has hitherto held. Contempt interferes with the first part of this process, and reverence with the second.
AA, Will was also on Brian Williams' last night. He seems like a nice man but is well past his sell-by date. He still doesn't get that conservatism is dispositional not philosophical. Both Cooper and Will are perfect examples of fish assuming water.
As a nation we are in our third existential moment. Will seems not to get that.
Eric, anyone who writes this: "A year and a half after the arrival of Virus, some may have started wondering why the usually unscrupulous ruling elites decided to freeze the global profit-making machine in the face of a pathogen that targets almost exclusively the unproductive (over 80s)," is likely to not have much useful to say (I persevered and wished I had heeded my initial impression). Merely a detailed Joe Rogan.
Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have been taken to task for not adequately policing Facebook to censor anti-vaxxer nonsense.
Is Prof. Wolff expected to do the same to keep the nonsense being spewed by Ridiculousicculus and Eric from appearing on his blog?
Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me!
aaall,
was the writer's sarcasm too much for you? He was obviously savaging the perspective of the financial elites with that remark.
Michael,
We're playing catch-up now, trying to inform the public about the value of vaccines, their real likely risks, and their benefits. This is a project that public health authorities, educators, and government officials should have been working on years ago. You don't wait until you're in the middle of a pandemic to try to persuade the public of the importance of accepting vaccination.
How many Americans have died in the nearly 30 years since the first bombing of the World Trade Center from terrorist attacks launched by foreign enemies of the United States? By comparison, how many Americans have died just in the past year and a half from COVID-19? How hard has the US government and its propagandists in corporate media worked at convincing Americans that we must be on constant guard against terrorists, must spend vast sums of our money fighting terrorism, and must devote ourselves to endless war across the globe? As Howard Zinn and Michael Parenti often observed, it's very hard to get people to want to go to war. It takes a lot of effort.
No effort has been spared beating the war drums. But educating people about vaccines has not been as much of a priority as it clearly should have been—despite the fact that we have had a number of major infectious disease scares in recent years that should have been stark reminders of how important vaccination programs could potentially be, and of how skeptical large numbers of Americans increasingly have grown toward vaccination.
Now that we are in the pandemic, the best we could do would be to frame the discussions in terms of our shared vulnerability:
Even though you as a healthy young person are probably at low risk of contracting a life-threatening case of COVID-19, you and folks like you could still become infected (perhaps not even realizing it) and spread the disease to people around you. Some of those folks could then become seriously ill with COVID-19 from the virus you gave them and require medical care, leading to your community's local medical system being overwhelmed to the point that it might not be able to provide the care that you or someone you love (a parent, a teacher, a neighbor) might need if they were to face an unexpected medical crisis, like a heart attack, a car accident, a bout of pneumonia, or a slip-and-fall. Providing care for all those folks also costs a lot of money, which means that we all end up paying a lot more for medical insurance; in many cases, businesses will end up raising prices to help cover their increased costs for paying their share of their employees medical insurance plans, so you'll end up paying more for services and goods you buy. And if we experience a severe enough rise in cases, we could see more shocks to the economy that lead government agencies to reinstate curfews and mandatory lockdowns, as well as to shortages of products like toilet paper. Do you really want to risk going through all of that again?
I don't think there is any single message that would work for all of the people who are opposed to vaccination. But the kind of message that would probably appeal to the largest number of possibly persuadable skeptics would, I think, emphasize our all being in this together and try to explain how even those who might be at low risk of direct effects of COVID-19 themselves are not immune to potential fallout effects that would result from others being infected.
And it doesn't help that people in positions of authority who are now trying to persuade people to trust the vaccines were saying that they themselves didn't trust the way the Trump administration was overseeing vaccine development, back when it was politically expedient for them to say that. So for a large percentage of the population, vaccine skepticism has been fed by the politicized way the country as a whole has viewed the approach to COVID-19. Getting more to accept the vaccines will have to address that issue.
For some comic relief to lighten the mood, the following you tube clip shows comedian Jay Thomas telling his story about his encounter with Clayton Moore, the original Lone Ranger.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfygCxkQZeY
Eric,
As Howard Zinn and Michael Parenti often observed, it's very hard to get people to want to go to war. It takes a lot of effort.
For many, war is entertainment.
In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory, from a longer continuance of the war. —Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations)
"He was obviously savaging the perspective of the financial elites with that remark."
You seem unaware that a version of that point has been one of the anti-vaxers main arguments. This is serious and no place for ox cart materialism.
"I don't think there is any single message that would work for all of the people who are opposed to vaccination."
Having employment, education, and the ability to fly and use public transportation would be sufficient for most. Mr. Darwin will deal with the rest.
Your last point is ridiculous. The vaccination rate is highest among non-Trumpers and lowest among those who worship him.
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