a mystical möbius — curating facts, ideas, text, and media to create a contemplative space.

Do no harm

The Wesleyan stream of the Christian legacy offers three simple, significant rules to guide our steps in life.

As you see, the first is very pointed:

I say “very pointed,” because applying and enacting Rule #1 is no mean feat.

Even before we consider the complexity of our present life conditions, several pivotal questions arise.

- - Harm to whom or what?
  - Even more basic, what is harm?
  - Can harm be objective (i.e., damage to a thing) or only be subjective (i.e., harm to a person)?
  - Does harm imply intent?
  - Who gets to determine what ‘harm‘ is and why it’s harmful?

Obviously, “harm” is a relational term; it describes a relationship and something that is problematic within the relationship.

As to the last question, in America, ostensibly, our laws have the intrinsic capacity to define, address, and adjudicate objective harm (property damage). They even boldly attempt to deal with subjective harm (damage to persons), as well. However, rarely does either civil or criminal law help the average person discern how the many potential harms they regularly encounter ought to be sorted out in their own life. Like, is the Covid-19 vaccine harmful? Well, at least to some (small?) number, it is.

One unfortunate factor to consider

As we consider harm and its applicability to our analysis of the advisability of getting vaccinated, we sadly recall that conspiracy theories [CT] are endemic in America. Further, Covid-19 certainly has not been able to avoid the CT quagmire. I mean, some people’s “big picture” view sees Covid-19 vaccinations as a cover for inserting a microchip to control individuals in a global society. Is that what’s being argued? And recall, too, anti-vaxxers were a thing well before Covid-19.

How much of the current (enlarged Covid-19) anti-vaxxer phenomenon is just a reflection of opportunism to self-promote by those growing the CT business? —If you have not already seen it, you may want to find fifty-three minutes to watch this FRONTLINE special:

We’ve previously considered the topic of *political technologies* — e.g., the use of emotional propaganda (especially that which stokes fear and outrage) to manipulate political perceptions and voter motivations — at work in American society. Cynical political leaders (not all political leaders, but far too many) leverage and exploit any issue capable of garnering outrage. They then harness these cultivated, radioactive issues as fund-raising grifts (see earlier “Grievance grift” mini-series).

For instance, finding a MIT professor who is willing to speculate about vaccines makes for content that the Fox personalities can exploit to provide profitable red meat to their political base. Prof. Stephanie Seneff [senior research director at the MIT computer science and AI lab] has offered a warning to parents with regard to the RNA-messenger technology platform that some of the Covid-19 vaccines utilize — we recall that it was having this RNA-messenger technology at the ready that made it possible to create coronavirus vaccines in such short order. Seneff’s view [video here] appears to be an outlier.

Do no harm. It would be difficult to argue against this point as a worthy goal. However, teasing-out all the aspects of a novel coronavirus in relation to harm is — as I said before — no mean feat (too many unknowns). However, I’d certainly argue that conspiracy theories generally cause great harm.

Of course, not all concerns that are raised with regard to vaccinations in general, and Covid-19 vaccinations in particular, are a product of CT. The surface problem is that *political technologies* [PT] make it appear that all concerns are of a conspiracy-theory nature. They make it easy to conflate all concerns with the constant PT drumbeat of Covid-19 CT.

Stark division

I suggest that the underlying fault line between the sides of the debate over an appropriate response to the Covid-19 pandemic is quite distinct: i.e., it comes down to how much social Darwinism [see subhead] [sD] society is willing to abide.

This sD question regarding how much ‘cruelty’ society is willing to accommodate is an unresolvable polarity (cf. Barry Johnson). As we’ve described previously, this creates significant obstacles in a context that tends toward binary approaches to discourse (because of the pedagogical constraints of our educational needs as a nation).

The “right” tends to oppose intervention and the “left” tends toward rectifying inequality. In a society that has been politically sorted quite thoroughly, we’ve created an orthogonal-like — apples vs oranges — dynamic making coherent, productive discourse illusive.

For example, the far-right end of the polarity views things like Covid-19 as ‘nature’s way’ of thinning the herd (note: a supremely sovereign God and/or libertarianism frequently underpins this kind of thinking) — perhaps intervention is seen as getting in God’s (or Nature’s) lane.

tl;dr

Faultline

The basic either/or question that divides the ‘Covid-19 response’ debate is actually a polarity management issue regarding the amount of avoidable cruelty we’re willing to abide as a society.

Kansas Covid-19 from Friday (1/21/22):