In the second decade of the twenty-first century (the time of this writing), political leaders everywhere faced a real problem: How do they stop a pandemic? One of their solutions was isolating populations, a process easier in socialist and socialist-leaning countries than in capitalist countries. Regardless of the politico-economic nature of the country, all leaders who shut down society discovered that they also shut down their economies. For many, however, the solution was the lesser of two evils. As might have been predicted, that lesser evil was unequally applied because its total application would have terminated all commerce, leading to mass starvation. So, for example, grocery stores remained open, even after the panic emptied their shelves before the normal supply chains were reconnected. And the uneven application of the rule of isolation and closure allowed a company like Target to remain open, whereas a store that sold only clothing, like Macy’s, had to temporarily close. Then came the restrictions and mandates: Vaccines and masks. But, if you have been alive during the past two years, you know this. And you also know that the uneven application of restrictions and mandates was exacerbated by politicians openly defying their own rules.
Eight hundred years ago the people of Florence began construction of the cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore, today mostly known as the famous Duomo. The plan called for a magnificent dome, but its proposed height above the ground and its great diameter at its base precluded using any then-known building techniques, though several clever ideas were advanced. One of those ideas was to fill the church and the area beneath the dome with an ever-greater pile of dirt intermixed with gold coins. The idea was that after the bricklayers used the growing pile as a base for scaffolding, the massive volume of dirt would be voluntarily removed by the populace eager to find the gold coins. Think of it as a Mark-Twain solution as written into the famous fence-painting episode in Tom Sawyer. As Twain once wrote, “Work consists of whatever the body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”
And that is the reason for protests over mandates around the world and the failure of politicians to convince their people to cooperate. They imposed obligations. And they imposed those obligations on the basis of Either/Or thinking.
As of this writing (in January 2022), 356,081,089 people have been infected by variants of COVID-19. Of those 5,625,000 have died. Those figures equate to a death rate of 1.5%, though the initial variants did most of the killing; Omicron is apparently less fatal and infects and sickens more like the annual flu. And hospital watchers acknowledge that people are currently being hospitalized with COVID more than for COVID. That is not meant to downplay the effect on those who do suffer seriously and even terminally from COVID, but it is meant to downplay the necessity for extreme political decisions. How, for example, does one account for all those who had and survived the disease? In some places, well, actually in many places, the same restrictions and obligations imposed at the outset of the pandemic have continued unabated. The entire world population, it appears, is required to “paint the fence.” Other solutions to living with COVID be damned—at least damned by the politicians.
The dome of that famous Florentine cathedral presented a problem that required a new approach to dome construction. Enter Filippo Brunelleschi. The creative architect devised a new type of construction and a method for building the dome. His design of an inner and outer dome supported on ribs made the construction possible, because it relied on scaffolding attached to the rising dome, rather than on piles of dirt or scaffolding built on the ground, this latter choice impossible because the timbers could not hold their own weight. Today, when the world’s population looks for a Brunelleschi, they see instead politicians on the floors of unfinished political cathedrals, looking up and scratching their heads, most, if not all of them, seeking no solution but the imposition of obligations.
And even when a “Brunelleschi” comes along with possible alternatives, such as using therapeutics that have by those on the front lines of care been demonstrated to work with some positive results, the politicians cannot break from their one-size-fits-all approach. They also seem to reject the facts that those already infected have immunity, that those vaccinated still get the disease, that most masking did nothing to spread the disease, that a six-foot distance is an arbitrary guidance with no scientific support, and that even the vaccinated can spread the disease. Seems to me that the current political leaders will never get the fence painted or the dome built.
Eight hundred years ago the people of Florence began construction of the cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore, today mostly known as the famous Duomo. The plan called for a magnificent dome, but its proposed height above the ground and its great diameter at its base precluded using any then-known building techniques, though several clever ideas were advanced. One of those ideas was to fill the church and the area beneath the dome with an ever-greater pile of dirt intermixed with gold coins. The idea was that after the bricklayers used the growing pile as a base for scaffolding, the massive volume of dirt would be voluntarily removed by the populace eager to find the gold coins. Think of it as a Mark-Twain solution as written into the famous fence-painting episode in Tom Sawyer. As Twain once wrote, “Work consists of whatever the body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”
And that is the reason for protests over mandates around the world and the failure of politicians to convince their people to cooperate. They imposed obligations. And they imposed those obligations on the basis of Either/Or thinking.
As of this writing (in January 2022), 356,081,089 people have been infected by variants of COVID-19. Of those 5,625,000 have died. Those figures equate to a death rate of 1.5%, though the initial variants did most of the killing; Omicron is apparently less fatal and infects and sickens more like the annual flu. And hospital watchers acknowledge that people are currently being hospitalized with COVID more than for COVID. That is not meant to downplay the effect on those who do suffer seriously and even terminally from COVID, but it is meant to downplay the necessity for extreme political decisions. How, for example, does one account for all those who had and survived the disease? In some places, well, actually in many places, the same restrictions and obligations imposed at the outset of the pandemic have continued unabated. The entire world population, it appears, is required to “paint the fence.” Other solutions to living with COVID be damned—at least damned by the politicians.
The dome of that famous Florentine cathedral presented a problem that required a new approach to dome construction. Enter Filippo Brunelleschi. The creative architect devised a new type of construction and a method for building the dome. His design of an inner and outer dome supported on ribs made the construction possible, because it relied on scaffolding attached to the rising dome, rather than on piles of dirt or scaffolding built on the ground, this latter choice impossible because the timbers could not hold their own weight. Today, when the world’s population looks for a Brunelleschi, they see instead politicians on the floors of unfinished political cathedrals, looking up and scratching their heads, most, if not all of them, seeking no solution but the imposition of obligations.
And even when a “Brunelleschi” comes along with possible alternatives, such as using therapeutics that have by those on the front lines of care been demonstrated to work with some positive results, the politicians cannot break from their one-size-fits-all approach. They also seem to reject the facts that those already infected have immunity, that those vaccinated still get the disease, that most masking did nothing to spread the disease, that a six-foot distance is an arbitrary guidance with no scientific support, and that even the vaccinated can spread the disease. Seems to me that the current political leaders will never get the fence painted or the dome built.
RSS Feed