People's Behavior and the Corona Virus

There are multiple news stories of people ignoring the advice--even the orders--of government officials and health authorities to "shelter in place" and avoid crowds, groups, etc.

I read that many people are going to church. If that's not a crowd, I don't know what is. I strongly suspect that they feel that, if they are good, faithful, believing church goers, God will protect them from any illness. My money is on the other side, that this behavior is spreading the virus. But then I freely admit that we've got radically differing worldviews going on here.

And then there are the people gathering on beaches and so forth--for example, students on their spring break in Florida. Police had to disperse these crowds and then officials closed the beaches. In this case we think of the fact that young people seem to feel they are invulnerable and often show poor judgment.

So I thought it was going to turn out to be young people involved, again, when I saw a story about police breaking up a party in New Jersey where the partygoers were packed into a 550-sq ft apartment. But no, in this case it was actually a 47-year-old man who was hosting the party. He called it a "corona party." I can only think of adjectives like stupid and foolish and defiance of advice (and government orders) such as you'd expect from 18 year olds.

Well, readers of my blog may have already divined that--based on life experience of almost more decades than I care to admit to--I have conceived a low opinion of the wisdom and rationality of the mass of my fellow human beings. In an age when the survival of humanity is threatened by climate change and destruction of animal species and of the environment in general, I find it difficult to side with the optimists.

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A Better Model of Homo sapiens

If you believe that God created mankind, I'd like you to consider this: I don't think He did a very good job. (This might appear blasphemous to some people, but the spirit in which this is intended is more one of whimsy. Or, it's what the physical scientists would call a "thought experiment.")

Here are some ways in which I think a new, improved model could be better than the existing model; or--pretty much the same thing, I guess--how I would design Man if I were doing it.

First, how about a human being who is incapable of lying? We would not have to worry about being cheated, conned, etc. Think how that might revolutionize politics! We would not vote for candidates only to find out, once they were in office, that they were not going to keep their promises to us.

Or, a model of human who was less fond of killing his own kind.

How about a human being who was incapable of believing incorrect things? We would not have superstition (like albinos in Africa being killed because their bones are thought to have magical or medicinal value, or rhinoceroses being killed to extinction because the Chinese believe their horns have aphrodisiac properties).

Of course there's a difficulty here: If human beings were fashioned such that they only believed that which is true, we might have the problem, in designing our new, improved model of human, that there might just be some uncertainty as to what is true. Even in Science, that which is true today can be shown to be false tomorrow.

So, this is just an exercise in fanciful thinking. But you have to admit, the prospect of a race of beings who could not lie is intriguing. (Any writer of science fiction: Feel free to use this idea in a story of yours.)

On a more serious note, for anyone who would like to indulge in further contemplation of the Nature of Man, I recommend the (long) poem by the 18th-century English poet Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man.