Delta: Not Gonna Help Ya

It’s not the summer or fall we hoped for everyone, that’s for sure. As news spreads of the more deadly COVID Delta variant and the political punditry heats up again; it’s hard not to feel a reboot of last year’s angst. Still, there are lessons learned from the past year that make me feel optimistic. First, we are all in fact tougher than we think we are. Second, there are incredible people out there working hard to get us through this together. Third, there is potential for enough learning to take place from this experience in order for us to be collectively better than we were heading into this mess.

I choose optimism because I need these thoughts to keep me going. It’s easy to fall into a state of pessimism right now. It would be a mistake to think by choosing optimism I am being unrealistic in my assessment of my surroundings. I understand there is much to find disappointing in the way humans operate, particularly in the wake of COVID. I just don’t see a purpose in choosing more, self-inflicted, suffering along the way.

I spent years of thinking I was personally responsible for other people learning and doing better things in the world. When I look at responses to the pandemic and compare it to my own life experience, I am reminded how absurd it was for me to ever think that way. Don’t get me wrong, I did assume very real and important responsibilities as an educator and activist; and I took them quite seriously. The intended result was that the world would be a better place and I was proud to work toward that goal. I meant completely well in doing my work; but I was simultaneously laboring under the delusion that we can predict (and therefore control in some way) if/how people change for the better. I was not at all prepared for that brick wall I ultimately hit.

Over and over I see how a perceived need for power and control (even with the best of intentions) can corrupt individuals and organizations trying to affect change – from every point on the ideological spectrum. That’s a legitimate source of skepticism about people’s intentions and pessimism with regard to our potential for change. Where we are fortunate enough to feel free; that freedom we feel is precious to us. Exerting power and control over others is all too tempting for those who have access to it, as a means to expedite the process of making a desired change (for better or worse). For those who like the change, that’s sometimes acceptable. For others, it will never will be acceptable. The exercise of power and control compromises our precious freedom, at least, if it doesn’t take it away. Free people will intuitively resist others when they perceive them as attempting to control them or take away their freedom. For change to take place without exerting power and control over others, people must remain free to choose change.

Where freedom is understood as part of the social contract, people don’t generally have to fear that they will be killed for resisting control or even resisting change – and of course this is a good thing. (And we can see where those who aren’t actually safe resisting control from state entities like the police don’t feel so free in our society). Free people generally get to stay alive long enough to decide if the consequences of a choice are acceptable to them and are free enough to re-evaluate their choices over time. Those hoping for change are always hoping the opportunity to freely choose over time will yield better results. It’s a long process.

Complicating the process of change is the reality that free people are also free to remain ignorant at all times concerning the consequences of their choices upon others. This is the perennial challenge of balancing the freedom with responsibility to others as free people. You can see where this is a particular problem in the age of COVID. Sometimes we simply cannot wait for people to figure all this stuff out. Free people who choose not to get vaccinated may actually be killed by COVID for resisting control over their vaccination status. Free people cannot evaluate the consequence of a decision to resist COVID vaccination when they’re dead. If they are lucky to survive, they still may never know or appreciate the deadly consequences they may have inflicted upon others.

Being confident you won’t be killed for resisting is generally a very good thing–but it is something that only the most privileged in society have experienced for any significant length of time in our history. Maybe that is why some of the most privileged today overestimate their chances while they continue to resist vaccination from this deadly virus. Those who do not have a similar history of social privilege are baffled by the sheer hubris of believing you’ll be protected from consequences even when you deliberately fail to protect yourself during this pandemic. We don’t need to look hard to see where this twisted mindset comes from in our society. Those who have historically maintained social control and determined how consequences are assigned in our society certainly have benefitted greatly — by not experiencing many themselves. COVID has changed this calculation entirely but those with privilege are generally loathe to accept they should be treated the same as everyone else.

When our patience grows thin with the constant give and take of a system that allows resistance, our desire for control grows. That desire has the potential to corrupt our thinking about the entire system and how it should operate. We must be clear about our intention to preserve freedom and democracy while also preserving life. Thankfully, with more freedom the courageous have acted in ways that are critical for making progress. For example, some put themselves out front to resist autocracy and white supremacy and some put their livelihood on the line to resist the coercion of a sexually harassing boss. Some resist bullies and some resist being forced to submit to someone else’s harmful beliefs about people like them. With a prolonged effort comes a tacit expectation that we will grow and change away from insulating privileged people from experiencing consequences for the type of dreadful acts that have been perpetrated in the past with impunity.

COVID will hopefully fall away from being a deadly force. Will the COVID pandemic help us learn about addressing other deadly forces in our society? Or will we simply lose our patience? What happens next?