There are beginning to be events surrounding CoVid-19 where the focus has gone from the disease to protecting people's feelings. WHO has been putting out statements about the dangers of associating the disease with China or Wuhan. Colleges are having solidarity events - gatherings of people - to protest prejudice against Asians, especially Chinese. This seems to be an automatic response for some folks, that the worst, worst thing that can happen is for someone to feel bad about their people. All other values are steamrolled by that one.
I don't deny that it has some value. I dispute that it is the most important value. Getting sick and dying would seem to be more important. Heresy happens not so much from the elevation of vice, as the when one virtue is swollen out of proportion.
What seems to be going on in the real world is an effort to blame *Trump*...and ultimately Trump supporters...for the virus.
ReplyDeleteI agree, but believe it is by this method of transferring the attention to people's (possible) hurt feelings, and calling that the real problem. They have long since set up the association that such things are caused by conservatives, so they draw from that emotion, without reference to a logical connection.
ReplyDeleteIt is weirdly perverse: how someone feels matters more than whether or not he has a dangerous disease.
ReplyDeleteHow he stands in relation to God matters more than the accidents of life, but this isn't even how he stands in relation to himself--just how his temporary feelings fly.
"the beginning of his talking is folly and the end of it is wicked madness."