Whilst many of the things that we were used to and the systems that we had and the ways of living our lives seem to burn around us; perhaps the most important things are being ignored or overlooked or simply going unseen.
In his latest announcement Boris Johnson confirmed the UK is now in curfew.
Pretty much everything to do with entertainment will shut at 10 pm, that looks like a curfew to me.
Anything over groups of six will be dispersed, that looks like a curfew.
Many of our freedoms and our liberties are being eroded away and everyone is running towards it in the ‘name of safety’.
This is not the most important thing though, it just goes to show the stuff that’s going on around the edges here as everybody is obsessed about continuing to make a living.
And so, the battle lines are drawn now in the UK and probably around the rest of the world and the main battle of our times now is society vs the individual.
I feel sure you’ve already realised this and so perhaps you can stop reading now but the more you speak to people and the more you speak to very, very clever people the more you realise that this is indeed the battle ground we find ourselves upon.
And so, for the sake of my sanity I will not declare for either side in this blog (in truth I don’t know if I can) but it seems to me the arguments look as follows:
1) Every individual life is sacred as it is to healthcare professionals who face up to a patient on an individual basis.
We should do everything we can and every life that we lose is a tragedy.
2) We can’t save everyone, and we cannot damage the whole of society for the long-term for the few.
Twice in the twentieth century (at least) we’ve sent millions of young people to the slaughter to protect our freedoms, to protect our way of life and to protect our society.
That now seems completely unthinkable.
The interesting point though is that I had a discussion with Alison (my wife) the other night around this topic and she is the woman who is able to cut through the cr@p and utter lines of sheer simple genius.
Her take on the situation is “people no longer want to talk about death”.
This comes from someone who deals with the death of children on a day by day and week by week basis in her work.
I was reminded when I was talking to Alison about Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ where death becomes sanitised and bodies are just recycled and no one is concerned about that at all because no one really gets old but it’s different here isn’t it, it’s not quite like that although we seem to be moving towards it.
It’s a tough conversation this but Covid-19 is not going away, not even with a vaccine and the theory of gradual disclosure that the government is using to tell society that it will be here for years and years to come is only just beginning to dawn on people.
We will not be back at Level 2 by Christmas, we will probably not be back at Level 2 next year and so the way of life that we find ourselves in now becomes the way of life unless we alter our philosophy and chose to do so.
In the early stages of the pandemic in the UK Chris Whitty (The Chief Medical Officer) spoke about heard immunity and the protection of the vulnerable in society but this was washed away as the virus numbers went up.
The news told us stories of tragic individual cases of people who have died, some young, some not so young, some with wonderful jobs and wonderful lives.
We pushed the pendulum towards the individual side of the argument and away from the societal side of the argument.
I was told by Professor John Gibson the other week that the figures for suicide for young people for May, June and July are horrible (John has suffered a similar family tragedy to this). That is a terrible trade-off for the actions that we’ve taken and continue to take to protect the individuals in society.
The difficult thing here is that you’ll have to take a stand on one side or the other and the decisions that you’ll have to make to take a stand will be terrible but if you don’t take a stand both sides will be catastrophically effected.
As I write this I’m reminded of the football team that I coach (as I often am as a metaphor for life) I can’t look after the best players and look after the least able, in trying to do that I look after no one. I can’t look after society and look after every individual; in doing that I will look after no one.
Blog Post Number - 2507