Hi TOK Society List,

 

  Thanks to Waldemar for that beautiful picture.  

 

  And if you are in that state of mind which I completely want to honor, just click off what follows and look at it sometime after the holiday 😊.

 

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Here are three articles to help us think through the way things have been handled from a “skeptic of lockdown” point of view. The basic question that needs to be seriously entertained is whether our modern awareness of threat is causing us to overreact, such that we really don’t know how to judge costs and benefits, and our cure, although helping in some ways, actually is worse than the disease.  I am not making that argument, I just think it needs to be considered. These three articles together should cause some reflection about that.

First, this article shares the Hong Kong flu summary of 1968. Basically, it was ignored in terms of public policy, at least relative to what we have done today:  

https://nypost.com/2020/05/16/why-life-went-on-as-normal-during-the-killer-pandemic-of-1969/

 

Second, this article describes the emerging mental health wave that we were confident would begin to crest right about now:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/mentalhealth/is-everyone-depressed/ar-BB14sWCG

 

This article offers a (very) pessimistic view of the economy of the next decade:

https://apple.news/AAKhGP5kfQtSLydlh5sGXGA

To be sure, there are many things to consider, and I do not believe that we should have just continued life as normal during the COVID crisis. At the same time, we are living in such new territory that it may really be the case that we do not know how to calibrate risk-reward and coordinate our activity accordingly.  Indeed, such a thing is very difficult to even assess. For example, let’s say that if we did not shut things down, 3.5 million people died instead of 750,000. But, instead of a recession that would have happened if we kept largely moving forward, the global shutdown hits a fragile economy and we spin into a five year depression? Do we have the capacity to even make those kinds of assessments of which is preferred? Do we even have a clue how all our complex societal systems are intertwined? Do we have a sense as to how to find the path toward a robust way of living in the 21^st Century that fosters flourishing?

 

Regardless of all that, it does seem clear that we need new sense and meaning making systems, and ways to connect together to foster personal growth, meaning, and mutual relational value. And that is what we are trying to do as a community. Along those lines, let me say how much I appreciate the people in this community. The depth, care, and authentic goodness of it nourishes the soul. And we certainly need that.

Best,
Gregg