Corona Purgatory
Until the previous week, “going viral” had a meaning associated more with a certain form of internet fame, but nature is not content playing second fiddle. Corona has forced us into isolation and Americans cannot stand it. The China virus spreads between us all.
So then, the wise observer asks, “Why can’t these Americans stay home, end their plans and put on hold their social life?” Baja Beaches, trendy downtown nightclubs, that cute girl with the dimpled cheek, Mickey Mouse and all his assorted entertainment empire of profit, all of it will be there in some facsimile or another when this viral outbreak ends. So why can’t Americans stay put?
Strength Is Weakness
I would submit two ideas. One, what has made America great is what endangers us most during this time. Enterprise, business and entrepreneurship requires a certain kind of person always out and about, on the go. As Alexis Tocqueville observed in his “Reflections on the Causes of the Commercial Prosperity of the United States” in Democracy in America, “America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion, and every movement seems an improvement… No natural boundary seems to lie set to the efforts of man; and what is not yet done is only what he has not yet attempted to do.” As Tocquevill observed even then, we are uniquely a people unconstrained. To both the future and nature itself we cry out in defiance and prize those aspects in our own citizens. Through this we have created a dynamic economic system which promotes those very faculties and harnesses the most resources and opportunities for their success.
Secondly, we have replaced natural relationships (children, spouse, parents) with relationships of “economic opportunity” (roommates and coworkers) has left us empty of the ability for sustained internment. On top of that, as echoed in my last piece, we now live in houses full of things, but empty of children. But things can only distract for so long. Give a child a toy and you will engage him for a week. Give that same child a sibling and he will be engaged, challenged, supported and comforted long after the China Virus has buried you.
Humans are relational creatures. We exist most fully in shared communities dedicated to shared principles from which we find our ultimate good. You, a normie, think “Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness” means living how you want and doing what you want, but you are wrong. Who is God and what is man in relation to him? What does happiness look like? What is the nature of virtue or of vice? How should we spend our lives? Even the hermetic monk whose vocation is his isolation is supported by the city which continues providing food, safety, and space for him. He is, in fact, the hermit because there is no other like him. If we are all hermits, the hermit doesn’t exist.
Paradoxes Abound
The paradox is that these tendencies and traits which Made America Great are the same traits which make us utterly unprepared to combat this virus. For evidence consider that while China was burning, our president vacillated between golf outings and reassuring us that, “This is all going away and will blow over soon.”
A cautious, careful society stands a greater chance of weathering the kind of pandemic we find ourselves in right now. Not a culture where our older generation realizes their age and decides, “Now’s the time to board that $99 dollar flight to Miami.” Or where young people had real concern about their own health and that of their aging parents. Instead we dress up in green and parade Pittsburg’s streets drinking and celebrating the….driving of snakes from the island of Ireland? Only a Brit can solve their problems after all.
But the paradox is that these very qualities — self-assurance, confidence, and unwillingness to stay put — are both the reason America succeeded as a settled state and also are the reason we are so woefully unprepared for this virus. As we become more and more isolated in our homes, bars and restaurants closed, amusement park rides shut down, even told to “shelter-in-place” or under military quarantine, let us think about how a nation of movers, shakers and doers can move to reconstruct a vision of human good conducive to more then our own impotence and juvenile pleasures.
What To Do?
Perhaps this time of interruption will cause those without children to realize the good of family. Go make an appointment to remove your IUD. Put down your Pornhub and place your seed in your wife. Perhaps the straying spouse will realize the good of marriage. Put down Tinder and visit your local church online. Perhaps the single mom will realize the good of a second parent. Go repair those relationships and rebuild those bridges. Perhaps the millennial careerist will remember where they came from. Reduce your fitness routine by 5 minutes and call your grandparents. Perhaps the elderly neighbor will realize the love of those around them. Young people, leave your apartments and visit those next door.
Or maybe they’ll all just watch Disney+, order dildos from Amazon, eat their single serving meals from Doordash and wait til the flames are at their front porch.
