With news about the CDC's updated mask guidance and states and governors following suit ending executive orders requiring masking orders in various settings, I've had the occasion to think back on a paragraph I wrote at the start of the pandemic.
I keep on thinking about John Carpenter’s THE THING and how I should finally watch it if I end up on quarantine. Someone argued in the early days of the outbreak, as we were just watching it unfold over there in China how most people don’t really respond to significant threats with panic, but what is more likely to happen is that the people as a community come together in support of one another, invoking the “togetherness” following 9-11 and the bonds formed during the Blitz on London. The Blitz, in particular, seemed a rather poor analogy to be making. There was a vast threat facing London, but its character was entirely different. Safety and camaraderie was found huddling together in close quarters in air raid shelters and tube lines, which is less advisable in a viral pandemic. More importantly, the threat there was always external. There was no bomb the Germans could drop that would turn you into a Nazi. With the coronavirus, you become victim and, while contagious, silent, unwitting enemy.
I still haven't watched THE THING, but in my defense, I was never quarantined. I think what strikes me most is that last line, and the way in which it has unfolded. It seems that that idea, or since we're fond of talking about them now, a variant of that idea, has become internalized in an unhelpful and dangerous manner. The mutation that has occurred is "with the coronavirus, you become the victim and they become the enemy."
We, of course, are not the enemies in our own stories. And we know that we are doing everything right, or at least we're doing enough of it. Wearing the masks, minding our six feet, getting our shots, making Hamilton references about not throwin' away our shot. But the enemy, the enemy is out there, prowling like a roaring lion, seeking those whom they may infect. They are the un-washed, the un-vaccinated, and the un-masked. To steal from Seinfeld, the only thing between us and them is a thin layer of gabardine. They, on the other hand, are out there, Jerry, and they're loving it. I suppose I'm not surprised that this is a common reaction, at least among the portion of people who think it important that their reactions be known. Twitter and Facebook and social media in general are not "real life," but they do speak for some representative subset of it.
Americans seem to be haunted by the idea of fraud. It shows up as a bogeyman everywhere, from electoral politics to the pandemic. If I'm being hopeful, I'd suggest that it's because fraud is a mirror vice to fairness, which is antithetical to the myth of America and the American dream, but I'm not convinced on that point. The first question everyone seemed to be asking when the CDC said that vaccinated people need not worry about masking was, "Well, how do we know who's vaccinated?" When Dr. Fauci answered Jake Tapper's version of the question, he said, in effect, that you're going to have to trust them, and the howls went up. "Trust? In this economy?" We are, apparently, past that.
Maybe make it we're post that. In that same post I quoted before, I talked about the idea, borrowed from others, of a post-trust society. Originally, that notion was directed towards the sorts of institutions that had always assumed some sort of level of trust from the general society, the government and its various agencies, the news media, the academy. Of course the last fourteen months have been an incredible exercise in seeing which of these groups could operate a credibility shredder at the highest capacity at times, but there is another way the idea of a post-trust society could be imagined, and it has possibly more serious consequences. What happens when a society has no trust among its constituent members?
I don't know that there's any particular way to solve that problem, certainly at a macro level, I suspect the gains to be had there must come at an individual level. I suppose this is why I appreciated Joseph Keegin's essay "Be Not Afraid" in Breaking Ground. He focuses on fear (particularly fear driven by outrage media cynics) as a source of the sort of societal breakdown we're seeing. Questions, for example, of "how can they really know who is vaccinated?" are ultimately driven not so much by a concern for fairness ("who's playing by the rules?") as they are fear ("how do I know they won't hurt me?").
A fear that leads only to the suspicion of our fellow man is a fear that leads unto death, both for ourselves and for our society. Later Keegin adds, "If we can find a way to form communities built on a mutual concern for the good of one another—or (perhaps more importantly) to bring this concern into the communities of which we are already a part—we will find ourselves less susceptible" to the sort of fear that drives us apart. But this can't be some sort of blandly theoretical venture.
Christianity can never be mere theory—it must inform how we live, both individually and collectively. Our theorizing must be understood as part of our long, arduous journey toward mutual edification. We are our brothers’ keepers, and we must concern ourselves with the good of those we love and work to aid in their flourishing.
The admonition that we are our brother's keepers is an one that calls us to approach our relationships with one another with an honest desire for their good, and I'm not at all convinced that concerning ourselves with the good of those we love is equivalent to seeing that they come around on every point of whichever version of the culture war we find ourselves fighting with them. There are greater goods than mask policy.