Poe Party + text posts [6/-]

THIS POST AGED WELL

How we greet friends now

Credit: @ThinkAnneThink

Same.

This perfectly summed up what I’ve been feeling.

On The Social Contract: Pandemics

Fifteen years ago today, my then almost seven-year-old son, Max died from complications of bacterial meningitis he contracted when he was seven months. The type of meningitis he had was streptococcal, the same strain of bacteria that causes strep throat. For reasons no one really knows or can explain, sometimes, this bacteria passes through the blood-brain membrane and enters the spinal fluid causing meningitis. At the time, there wasn’t a vaccine for bacterial meningitis. It came out six months after Max contracted it.

I’m not writing this to rehash what happened to Max or have some cathartic moment on the anniversary of his death. I’m doing it in light of the current pandemic rapidly approaching our country. When Max died, it completely altered the lives of me and my entire family, irrevocably. His death was very sad and very unfortunate. However, it was also an accident. A lot of people have and are going to die from the coronavirus and many of them won’t be accidental. They will be the result of negligence-theirs and others.

This negligence is often the result of ignorance, arrogance, and selfishness. Too many people don’t believe in science or experts who have spent their lives dedicated to a single thing. Too many people don’t understand basic biology, physiology, and statistics. Too many people think, “I won’t happen to me because _______.” Too many people think, “I don’t belong to a group at risk so I don’t have to take the necessary precautions.”

Not that I would ever root for a virus but it would be fair and just if it only attacked adults who didn’t take it seriously. That’s not how viruses or diseases work. They are equal opportunity abusers. Yes, some times they prefer certain groups over others, but the really nasty ones don’t care about your age, gender, race, income bracket… We are ALL susceptible.

Not only are we all susceptible, but we are also all potential carriers and transmitters of the virus. You can not have or show any symptoms yet have it and pass it along to others. To not take this possibility seriously is morally unacceptable. If you don’t care about yourself and want to take whatever risks you want that only impacts you, Godspeed Darwin. You just go ahead and reenact every episode of Jackass to your heart’s content. If, on the other hand, your actions can and will impact others negatively, it is your responsibility to not be a selfish jackass. It is your responsibility to not be negligent.

There are a lot of people in the next few months who are going to lose people they love. In some cases, there is nothing that could have been done to prevent this. In a whole lot of other cases, they could have easily been prevented. Don’t be part of this outcome. Don’t be part of the reason someone loses a child, a parent, a spouse… Don’t be part of the reason someone has to deal with loss and grief when it didn’t have to be so.

You might think the Social Contract is a bunch of European, philosophical, poppycock but it isn’t. It is the foundation for our Constitution, The Bill of Rights, The Declaration of Independence… It is what makes a civil society, civil. It means we all look out for each other not for what we can get from them but because we are all in the same boat. We spend too much time in our own little niches and with our own tribes so we forget just how intricately tied we are to each other. It’s not that we don’t some times understand the importance of how reliant we are on each other. We do it every day whenever we get on the road and drive. We rely on others to take our health and well-being seriously and they do the same for us.

“It takes a village,” isn’t some socialist, commie talking point. It is how societies survive and thrive. In the past, this applied to a literal village, a small group of like-minded people. In today’s world, the village is just that…the world. It’s the moral spin of Chaos Theory-”The flaps of a butterfly’s wings in the Amazon can cause a tornado in Texas.” In this case, the washing of hands and social distancing in your world can protect the health and life of someone thousands of miles away from you. Be smart. Be better. Be safe.

This is so good. Makes me feel like I'm really helping.

Which I need, because this kind of sucks.

“The images of working people fighting each other over toilet paper shouldn’t fill you with feelings of contempt or superiority because you’re not ‘stooping’ to that, it should fill you with a profound sadness at what capitalism can do to people when alienation overwhelms us. A profound sadness, but also a rage at the system that produces this behavior, and a desire to smash it. Don’t laugh at those people. Don’t call them stupid. Instead, think about what you’re doing to build a system in which scarcity is no longer an issue.”

- drawn by Sam Wallman and written by Miroslav Sandev