A year of Covid lockdowns: The life and death tradeoff
Channel: Quest for a Meaningful Life
Date: 14/03/2021

So I've been talking about human domestication, and how appropriate that it fits in with this one-year anniversary of the Covid lockdowns.
It was right around a year ago that suddenly everything changed, the biggest interruption to normal life, in many parts of the world, possibly ever.
Any part of the world, with the exception of direct impact by war, when bombs actually in your city: with the exception of that - which hasn't happened in my city for over 200 years - there really hasn't ever been a change this big.
And over this past year, I have been cycling in and out of I get used to it.
And it's amazing how we are very adaptable creatures, that we are able to get used to almost anything, which can be both good and bad.
We can adapt as necessary to survive, but it also can mean that we let ourselves adapt even to things that maybe we shouldn't.
But regardless, in this case, I've gone back and forth between this sense of just being used to it, and this is normal now, even just forgetting that it was any different, just accepting it, and then I go into this sort of feeling of "Wait a minute.
This is no good.
I'm sick of it, it's wrong, and it's a big problem, and I can't believe it's still going on."
So it's been back and forth over the past year.
The first six weeks, I made a video every day.
I couldn't talk about anything else except the situation, even though I don't want to talk about any content that is only short-term.
I want things I talk about to still be valid a decade from now.
But I couldn't help it, couldn't help myself, because it was just such a big shock.
And I haven't talked about it much recently, because what can I say?
It's the same thing dragging on.
We have lockdowns on and off, and I haven't really had much to add, and maybe even what I say today will kind of be repeating.
But in recognition of this one-year anniversary, I look back and I think about how does this connect to the idea of a meaningful life?
And it really highlights- well, there's so many different angles we could talk about it, but to me it really highlights this idea of safety.
We want to be safe.
We want a guarantee of safety.
We want to avoid risk.
We want to preserve life.
But what does it mean to preserve life?
What does it mean to be safe?
What are we willing to do to be safe?
And is that really the highest goal?
Now, it's being treated that way when it comes to policies.
We have the standard policy position is "Health experts will decide what to do."
We are putting our lives in the hands of health experts to decide what is the best policy, the best policy to protect our health, to protect our lives, as if this is the most important thing.
Now, of course, in a way it is, because if we don't have health, or if we don't have life, then what else are we going to do anyway?
If we're not alive, forget about it.
And if we don't have health, what would be more important?
When anybody is sick, there's nothing more important than becoming healthy again.
So health, in many ways, is the most important thing.
So it's hard to argue against it.
But putting aside the question of whether the health experts actually know what they're talking about, or are we all just kind of guessing and maybe they make slightly more educated guesses than others- but even assuming that health experts have complete knowledge, and a full knowledge of health issues, this past year has made me think that- it's really that there's a limit to how far we can take health.
Because health is not a complete life.
Even if health is the most important issue, and even if there is no other issue more important than our health, health itself is not enough for life.
Preserving life is not itself living life.
Establishing the conditions for people to avoid dying is not a complete environment for life to happen.
How much are we willing to shut down in order to not die?
That is the question that we all have, and we all have to decide.
And the fear of death is so strong that it's hard to argue against it, and almost anything can be accepted if it's seen as an alternative to death.
So in some ways, the path is simple, that we simply have to continue to avoid dying, and that makes total sense.
But it's now becoming more clear as every month, every season, goes by, with lockdowns carrying on, the question becomes stronger of Is this OK?
Is it worth it?
Is it worth preserving life?
And in most cases, the answer is yes.
Because is it worth preserving life to not be able to go to a live music event, or go to some kind of a shop, to not be able to travel?
Is it worth your life to not be able to go to a bar? [...]
Clearly, no. [...]
But when you put it all together, you put all the restrictions together, and you keep them going for a very long time, eventually the calculation, it seems, starts to creep in, the calculation starts to arise: is it worth it?

#covidversary #covidlockdown #shouldwelockdown