rockaction
Footballguy
"But even then: do you have a mother? A father? Maybe your grand parents are still with us. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone they came into contact with had had their vaccine. And even though your grandmother is only 86% protected from that vaccine that just isn't perfect enough--everyone she comes into contact with is also 86% protected.
Well man, I want that for my granny. I want it for my mom and dad. I want it for your mom and dad. Even if you don't.
But the biggest factor: This just doesn't end until we hit herd immunity. Our lives won't be the way they were in January of 2020. We'll have a new variant. We'll have surges. We'll have government officials trying to tell us how to live our lives. People used to believe in this concept of having a civid (sic) duty. What you owe to your fellow man. That seems dead. People think it's all about individual rights in 2021. How dare you ask me to wear a mask? How dare you expect me to take this shot? And as a result--people are still getting sick. And our hospitals are overrun." - JM192
Please do not mistake this for just a vaccination post. I wanted to talk about something. Something very much missing from our fabric of life these days. It is the rampant individualism with which we see people act on a daily basis. We've been urged, since commercials caught the cool in about 1964, to serve the consumerist self as master, to satisfy every whim, to "just do it" when "doing it" meant serving the self, the only master.
We've been taught, through commercials and other societal zeitgeist folkways and mores, that the fulfillment of individual desires and goals would help us become self-actualized, good human beings. We've been taught that there was justice in following every whim or desire, that it was the fulfillment of these wants and desires that was good, good in the seeking, good in the having.
I'd like to posit that from social liberation to political individualism, we've lost a lot of what made us humans, made us caring. The vaccination conundrum has been but a microcosm of so many problems in society. From the lack of faith in institutions, to the problematic nature of circumstance vs. expediency, to fact vs. self-fulfilling fiction, to the instant gratification needs of everyone, to the over-entertained in us, to the rampant divisions of the self from the body politic, we've seen so many things go awry, but none has struck me like the lack of a conception of civic duty.
We seem to have lost the notion that it is right to do that which is better for everyone because it just is. We used to not question acting for others in an organized matter. Where government means were considered too risky and too antithetical to the objections of overreach, we had social organizations and charity to pick up the slack where we would not let government venture, where we did not dare let the means and machinations of politics interfere with our engagement with society. But for some reason, that died. Social capital died. Individualism, radical individualism, reigned. It reigned over many things.
It reigned over the acquisition and disposition of knowledge. Where we once trusted schools and the news, those institutions came into question from both the left and right.
It reigned over circumstance. Where we once accepted tribulations and trials of health and body and mind as a given, we now regarded them as an inconvenience to be eliminated.
It reigned over fact vs. fiction. Given the fulfillment of self, what was fact to stand in the way of more pleasant deceptions? What was to stand in the way of our fun, our gratification.
It reigned over entertainment. One must be a complete dupe to not see radical individualism in our entertainment desires, be it from the right or left.
My parents and others that grew up through the polio epidemic said you "just got it" about the vaccine. There was no great dissent. Institutions were trusted to be up front and to deliver and they did for the most part. Those on the short end of the stick just accepted it and moved on. So it seems it should be today. Life is a risk, but one that can be mitigated through the proper channels, the proper institutions. We've lost a lot of faith in those institutions, and to be fair, some of those institutions deserved the lost faith. But we've reconstructed nothing in their place except the most laissez-faire, caveat emptor ways of being. It doesn't suit a republic. Here endeth the polemic.
Well man, I want that for my granny. I want it for my mom and dad. I want it for your mom and dad. Even if you don't.
But the biggest factor: This just doesn't end until we hit herd immunity. Our lives won't be the way they were in January of 2020. We'll have a new variant. We'll have surges. We'll have government officials trying to tell us how to live our lives. People used to believe in this concept of having a civid (sic) duty. What you owe to your fellow man. That seems dead. People think it's all about individual rights in 2021. How dare you ask me to wear a mask? How dare you expect me to take this shot? And as a result--people are still getting sick. And our hospitals are overrun." - JM192
Please do not mistake this for just a vaccination post. I wanted to talk about something. Something very much missing from our fabric of life these days. It is the rampant individualism with which we see people act on a daily basis. We've been urged, since commercials caught the cool in about 1964, to serve the consumerist self as master, to satisfy every whim, to "just do it" when "doing it" meant serving the self, the only master.
We've been taught, through commercials and other societal zeitgeist folkways and mores, that the fulfillment of individual desires and goals would help us become self-actualized, good human beings. We've been taught that there was justice in following every whim or desire, that it was the fulfillment of these wants and desires that was good, good in the seeking, good in the having.
I'd like to posit that from social liberation to political individualism, we've lost a lot of what made us humans, made us caring. The vaccination conundrum has been but a microcosm of so many problems in society. From the lack of faith in institutions, to the problematic nature of circumstance vs. expediency, to fact vs. self-fulfilling fiction, to the instant gratification needs of everyone, to the over-entertained in us, to the rampant divisions of the self from the body politic, we've seen so many things go awry, but none has struck me like the lack of a conception of civic duty.
We seem to have lost the notion that it is right to do that which is better for everyone because it just is. We used to not question acting for others in an organized matter. Where government means were considered too risky and too antithetical to the objections of overreach, we had social organizations and charity to pick up the slack where we would not let government venture, where we did not dare let the means and machinations of politics interfere with our engagement with society. But for some reason, that died. Social capital died. Individualism, radical individualism, reigned. It reigned over many things.
It reigned over the acquisition and disposition of knowledge. Where we once trusted schools and the news, those institutions came into question from both the left and right.
It reigned over circumstance. Where we once accepted tribulations and trials of health and body and mind as a given, we now regarded them as an inconvenience to be eliminated.
It reigned over fact vs. fiction. Given the fulfillment of self, what was fact to stand in the way of more pleasant deceptions? What was to stand in the way of our fun, our gratification.
It reigned over entertainment. One must be a complete dupe to not see radical individualism in our entertainment desires, be it from the right or left.
My parents and others that grew up through the polio epidemic said you "just got it" about the vaccine. There was no great dissent. Institutions were trusted to be up front and to deliver and they did for the most part. Those on the short end of the stick just accepted it and moved on. So it seems it should be today. Life is a risk, but one that can be mitigated through the proper channels, the proper institutions. We've lost a lot of faith in those institutions, and to be fair, some of those institutions deserved the lost faith. But we've reconstructed nothing in their place except the most laissez-faire, caveat emptor ways of being. It doesn't suit a republic. Here endeth the polemic.
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