The last post
ended with a question - picked up by my fellow-blogger Boffy whose reply (posted
as a comment on my blog) deserves a spotlight –
It wasn't a
conspiracy that led to Salem, and so on. Popular delusions and mass panics
have their own dynamic….. Once a
critical mass is achieved no one dare say the Emperor has
no clothes, as Wobarg says (at the end of
the video link)
In the past, I
have written about the
work of Milgram and others who showed how the natural human desire to conform - natural because it developed
as a herd response so as to survive on the ancient grasslands - leads people to simply accept the current
meme, no matter how insane. Its why people would accept and go along with
the holocaust, or as Milgram showed why they would be prepared to administer
fatal electric shocks to other human beings and animals, so long as an
authority figure said it was okay for them to do so!
No leading
scientist is going to stand out against the crowd in current conditions,
because they would be crucified for doing so, and that applies equally to
politicians who have been pressed into all channelling into the same course of
action, which itself makes it all the more difficult for anyone to reject.
My guess is
that, just as with 2008, there will in a couple of years time be plenty,
however, who will write important articles in Medical Science and Statistical
Journals saying how they were sceptical all along about what was really
happening, and had in their own quiet way raised questions, and that if they
had only had the grants they had previously asked for to conduct their
epistemological studies they could have shown why what by then will be seen to
have been a wholly avoidable crisis - both health crisis and economic and
financial crisis - was indeed avoidable.
The point is
well taken – I’m not a conspiracy theorist either. Actually Boffy’s reply
starts on a note of appreciation for the “extensive, rational and supportive” nature
of my last post - which had taken the trouble to copy and paste his 5 previous
posts on Covid19 and then try to capture their essence. Clearly he has been the
subject of some abuse for daring to challenge the prevailing wisdom on the
subject.
I would like to think that “Extensive, rational
and supportive” captures the spirit of my blog. Particularly these days,
tone matters – so does common decency and treating others with respect. Twitter
has inflicted great harm on our discourse.
On a separate matter, Journals are
offering some great bargains and freebies these days.
A week or so
ago I took advantage of an offer from the famous FAZ newspaper for daily access during the
next couple of months for only a dollar a month
World Literature Today
showcases the all-too-often unappreciated work of translators and has just come out with a special offer of only 2
dollars a month - and the last 3 years’ archives
The New Yorker is on offer with the same deal
and the entire archives - although my PC is having problems which didn’t allow
it to take advantage of the offer. But I can access its special coverage of
Covid19 which it’s making available free of charge
I had already
mentioned that the UK Prospect mag has free access for the next month to its entire
25 year archive
And today I was
notified by Bergahn
Journals that all of their journals will be free for the entire duration of
the shutdown. I’m on their mailing list because of the interest I had expressed
in German
politics and society and I see now that several other titles are of interest
eg
Finally, Dr Campbell’s
Friday video starts with a
short video clip of a tearful Spanish doctor’s reaction to ventilators for
older patients being switched off
Addendum
I’ve just been
reading Chris Grey’s weekly Brexit
Blog – which makes a link between “denialists” and
what is reported to have been the PM adviser Dominic Cummings’ initial
response to coronavirus and his (and others’) ‘disruptor’ view of Brexit. Both seem to grow out of
an idea that any shock to ‘the system’ is to be regarded as desirable simply
for being a shock. Adverse consequences are just so much collateral damage to
be ignored if not, indeed, welcomed.
That’s not quite the same as the ‘disaster capitalism’ idea, in which massive shocks such as
this pandemic represent an opportunity for economic and political exploitation
- it’s more a kind of adolescent infatuation with instability as ‘exciting’.
And it links to the wearisomely
predictable ‘contrarianism’ of the peculiar, yet peculiarly influential,
leftist-libertarian Spiked Online sect who have lashed out against the coronavirus restrictions and who, of
course, tend to be ardent Brexiters. One might speculate on the affinities
between such an infatuation and the psychology of the “misfits and weirdos” who are Cummings’ preferred hires.
Tim Martin is one of the relatively small number of leading business people who vocally supported Brexit, who has made simplistic pronouncements about the coronavirus crisis. It links no doubt with the deep-rooted English aversion to intellectuals, who make things complex when they need not be, and also to a perhaps related machismo so that Martin is “happy to take his chances” with catching the virus.
The same attitude is evident in the comments of Paul Bullen, former UKIP leader on Cambridgeshire
County Council and Brexit Party candidate. He thinks “the majority don’t care”
about coronavirus and wants to just “get back to normal”. It might be called a
‘hand washing is for sissies’ mentality (which could have important consequences for coronavirus spread (£) given
the higher infection and mortality rates amongst men). Another
variant on the same theme is, like Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson, to condemn alarm about
the virus as “scaremongering” just as she (and countless others) dismissed warnings about Brexit as ‘Project Fear’ (£).
I hold Chris
Grey in very high respect but actually clicked the Spiked
Online article and found it an eminently sensible piece - as is the Peter
Hitchen’s extended analysis in the Daily Mail mentioned by one of the
discussants of that piece.
Clearly
accusations of exaggeration cut both ways….I don’t think it helps one bit in these times to label a
journal a “wearisomely predictable… peculiar…. sect”
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