Vincent van Gogh: Pair of Shoes (1895)
"We'll be a very long time absorbing this lesson and recovering."

PersonalResponsibility will ultimately prove to have been the greatest failure during This Damned Pandemic. Governors, mayors, and other well-intended authority figures deflected pleas to take firm stands by directing The Public to wear masks, avoid clustering, and simply stay at home. Some insisted that it was these public figures' duty to mandate certain behaviors in order to stem the flood of infections. The more conservative responded by rejecting these assertions that their duty lay in implementing what they insisted were fundamentally unenforceable rules, insisting that individuals rightly held the PersonalResponsibility to, as they repeatedly said, "do the right thing," whatever that might become. As a result, several interpretations of right thing emerged, each presumed true by whomever held it. Some refused to mask themselves, for a variety of curious reasons, potential suffocation a common if utterly spurious explanation. Some even became militant at the suggestion that their PersonalResponsibility might extend any further than their own, apparently holy, me, me, and me. The result, of course, became a rather shameful and utterly ineffective act of Collective Irresponsibility, as each adhered to their own conscience rather than what might prove collectively effective. We produced together a large-scale Tragedy of the Commons, where what's individually perceived as best for me, inevitably becomes the very worst for everybody.

History might perceive this troubling paradox, and even a majority see it in real time, but unless everybody buys into mitigation, the outcome's inexorable, for stemming this infection was not merely a matter of PersonalResponsibility, but a collective one. What mattered was the ability of individuals to act collectively, not personally, and no individual possesses the perspective to intuitively comprehend what collectively demands. Collectively requires coordination no individual holds leverage to achieve. It most probably means agreeing to engage with some behaviors which seem personally crazy-making, unjustifiable from any individual's experience or perspective, like simply refusing to frequent bars and restaurants even should they stay wide open. I still can't really conclude that the bulk of what I'm doing to protect myself actually serves to protect me or anybody, really. I manage my affairs mostly by myth and hearsay, with no real way of proving that I'm doing right or best. I'm just trying to be as responsible as I know how to be, and I started out largely ignorant of what responsible might be.

I had to ask a doctor friend if he thought it might be best if I wore a mask in public. When he responded with an emphatic, "Yes!", I was challenged to trust his possibly superior perspective. I felt foolish at first, when I found myself one of few with my face covered in public. I persisted, not so much out of any deep sense of PersonalResponsibility, but because I had no better story. I figured I might just as well mask up. I acquiesced. The Muse helped by crafting some fetching masks. If I would have had to rely upon those flimsy paper things, I might have lost motivation long ago. My Governor speaks with marbles in his mouth, trying to satisfy fiercely competing opinions of what responsible behavior means, rather than stating it plain. The CDC seemed in agreement until it didn't, directives seemingly continually watered further down to tip-toe around some contingency's notion of the actual extent of PersonalResponsibility. To make matters even more convoluted, we were learning as The Damned Pandemic progressed. This learning reversed some early notions of responsibility into their opposites. We never came to agreement and still haven't.

PersonalResponsibility seems about as unique to each individual as a pair of well-worn shoes. One size never did fit all and once well-worn, even the size that used to fit might no longer feel all that comfortable. Those unaccustomed to wearing shoes might understandably refuse to wear a pair to appease some ephemeral collective, for their sacrifice seems more personal punishment than generous gift. Those who always wore shoes can't see what all the fuss was all about. So who's in charge? If not even the police will enforce what's widely-acknowledged as a spare effective measure, and PersonalResponsibility won't adequately inform the collective, where do these conditions leave us? Disappointed, I guess. Maybe not so much disappointed in ourselves, for we see ourselves as acting within the minority who could properly see our contributing responsibility. We're mostly, it seems, disappointed in others, those within whom diversity most glaringly manifests. Those who ever more firmly believed the whole pandemic a hoax. Those who took even PersonalResponsibility as a sad joke. Those who could never quite muster any sense of solidarity, let alone identity, in any notion of any collective; the self-proclaimed self-made independents and libertarians among us.

The commons represent the true tragedy of This Damned Pandemic. We might have blithely presumed a country existed, one bound by strong common bonds. Any bond should properly inhibit freedom of some movement. A collective ethic constricts everyone, but by common agreement. The benefits such boundaries bring seem difficult to individually reason into place, for they seem emergent collective properties. By not walking on certain paths, we enable everyone to enjoy the grass we didn't trample down by straying there. Our soon-to-be former president (now with the lower-case 'p'), seemed primarily interested in undermining any remaining sense of collective responsibility. His strategy seemed focused upon blowing up everything in the naive notion that everything might somehow spontaneously reconstitute better afterward, an utterly absurd presumption. Primary among the principles, if I dare call them that, of this perspective seemed to have been that everyone's better off when everyone exhibits higher qualities of PersonalResponsibility. He mistook the collective for the personal. He misled even those obsessed with personal satisfaction and misguided even those striving to do better for others. We haven't so much failed ourselves as others. We'll be a very long time absorbing this lesson and recovering.

©2020 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #WhatNext, #PureSchmaltz