I joined a wide ranging philosophy discussion last night.  The topic for the evening was the ethical implications of the covid-19 plague.  One of our participants remarked that in his experience a majority of his fellow acquaintances rarely paused to consider ethical matters.  Most of us live unmindfully, engaging circumstances to maximize our pleasure, with self-interest solely in mind.  I would have to agree.

Like in the Matrix movie, if offered the choice between the red pill, and the blue pill a majority of us would intentionally chose the blue pill.  Choosing the red pill is a great deal of work, involving much discomfort to be aware of how “reality” is constructed, how much violence goes on beneath the surface. The blue pill represents a life lived in ignorant bliss, in a simulated reality without fear or discomfort .

These thoughts came to mind yesterday as I read a Washington Post article by Stephanie McCrummen about the opening up of the economy in a suburb of Atlanta.  Being a born and bred Southerner, aware of my status as a white male, I look over my should at my heritage, and sometimes I shudder.  Reading McCrummen’s description of the “opening day” at the tony Avalon shopping venue caused an inward shiver.

The sky was blue, the sun was rising, and as the death toll from the coronavirus continued to soar across much of America, the fountains switched on in Avalon, a development of restaurants and shops in a wealthy corner of suburban Atlanta. It was time for life to resume, Georgia’s governor had decided, so a masked worker swept the threshold of Chanel. A clerk brushed off windows at Fab’rik that had been gathering dust. A gardener fluffed pink roses in planters along the sidewalks, where signs on doors said what so many had been waiting to hear.

“Open,” read one.

“Welcome back!” read another.

Versions of this pledge are now being made all over the country as stay-at-home-orders are being lifted, businesses are opening, and millions of Americans now find themselves free to make millions of individual decisions about how to calibrate their sense of civic duty with their pent-up desires for the old routines and indulgences of life.

In this grand gamble, Georgia has gone first, with Gov. Brian Kemp (R) dismissing public health experts who’ve warned that opening too soon could cause a catastrophic surge of deaths, placing his faith instead in the citizens of Georgia to make up their own minds about what risks and sacrifices they were willing to accept.

“God bless,” he’d said as he gave the order to reopen hair salons, nail salons, massage parlors, tattoo shops, restaurants and retailers across the state.

The piece goes on in vivid detail to describe the thinking of the white middle class, (aspiring to be upper class) citizens, in their own words as they enjoyed themselves on a fine day outside of Atlanta. You can read the entire article for yourself CLICK HERE  

Here are some of the take-away’s that came to me as I read McCrummen’s work.

• Ethical awareness.  In the words of John Donne, “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main..” Ethical sensibility is grounded in the fact that our very existence, and our continued well-being depends upon others.  Ethics, doing what is right, is about recognizing that we are not alone, that we owe something to others.
• Citizenship is a matter of civic duty, which will certainly conflict with our pent up desires, in a time of plague quarantine.  Those two aspects cannot be reconciled, calibrated to a compromise.  Doing the right thing means that civic duty gets the nod.
• Being white and middle class, means that one is racist to a lesser or greater degree.  There is no point in pretending otherwise.  Note has been taken, and comment has been made in public, even from official channels that the demographic of plague infection and fatalities are weighted toward the black and brown communities.  Therefore, we white people feel more safe than we have any right to be feeling.  Where is our shame?
• Finally “freedom” typically defined as the right to do whatever we please, is illusion.  If pleasing yourself in a happy miasma of ignorance, causes the loss of your health and a stint in the ICU on a ventilator, assuming that you survive — you are hardly free.  You are unfree, unhealthy, and have medical debts which you are obligated to pay.  Freedom is not simply the product of losing oneself in thousands of individual decisions.  Freedom has nothing to do with belonging to the herd, however often the mantra of “freedom” of choice is repeated.

Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia is imagined as saying “God bless” as a convention of greeting to the good citizens patronizing the stores on opening day.

If I were in his position, I would have said, “God help you.”