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We Are Losing The Coronavirus Battle

A healthy amount of skepticism is well, healthy. You should not always accept conventional wisdom unthinkingly. You should reexamine life, because the unexamined life is not worth living.

That said, you should also hold firm convictions and let the well-earned truth guide you.

That is all to say that you should wear a mask.

I have family and friends and co-workers who lean conservative and feel the mask-wearing suggestion is an infringement upon their rights as Americans. Honestly, I feel similarly about seat-belts. I can understand righteous indignation about facile things.

Wear a mask to save yourself.

No one wants to be told what do do, but to rehash a meme/criticism/joke/truism: WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY. We have a duty to each other under our social contract. We are not all sovereign persons operating outside of a collective. Humans are social animals — yes animals — and we necessarily operate within that framework. While operating with self-interest — you know the whole Invisible Hand — we propel our economic model forward. But we have a managed capitalism wherein we rely on the collective to enforce the rules to allow peaceful commerce.

Wear a mask to save your family.

AT&T does not send goons to your house to collect their payment for this month’s exorbitant UVERSE bill. That’s because we operate in a societal framework that allows for peaceful interaction. We do not need to live brutish and short lives to defend our food for this same reason.

Wear a mask to save your neighbor.

When I was in elementary school I was taught to sit “Indian style” and I still have to catch myself before correcting to “cross-legged” or some such. Habits are hard to break and I did not know that the name for sitting like that was embedded so deeply. Perhaps there is some truth to that biblical “train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he shall not depart far from it” thing? Habits are hard to break.

Wear a mask to save a fellow American.

I do not blame you if recent societal changes are difficult to accept, or very unusual compared to the norms of life when you were young and full of potential. Maybe life is just different than the way in which you are taught by your parents and grandparents and school teachers. I get it. It is not easy to change.

Wear a mask to save a fellow human being.

I do have to judge you if you do not try to improve. No one can be expected to be perfect and any young, hip, edge-of-the-knife person grows up to be out-of-touch even just a little. All these Millennials like me are now getting dunked on by Gen Z, who do not care for the things we liked. Just like we dunked on Gen X, who dunked on the previous generation. And so on.

Wear a mask because its the right thing to do.

Jazz seems like old people music. But at one time it was cutting edge. Bach was once the new hotness also. Now it is old as hell. Some time way back some person was banging on a rock and that was amazing. And someone came a long and out rock-banged. People did not like that, probably. So it goes.

Wear a mask, please.

Take a breath. Remember when you were not so angry. Remember when things were simpler. Consider that things were never simple, and it was just our perception and ability to process the world that made it seem so.

Wear a mask because it makes us all strong, even if you think it makes you seem weak.

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