Being People in the Time of COVID-19

One of my coworkers has a saying that I’m fond of. She says, “Being people is hard.” She’s right. Being people is hard.

And being good people is even harder. Especially in times of crisis. There’s such a conflict between what we know we ought to do and what we want to do, between what we feel and the way we know we should think, that being good people is incredibly hard. None of us is perfect at it, despite our best efforts. And the sooner we face up to that fact, and admit that we all have ugly little thoughts that we do the best we can to mitigate, the better.

Why am I saying this? Well, with this COVID thing upon us, and people scrambling, panicking, making bad decisions, and acting downright horribly, I thought about the fact that Passover is also coming, and thinking of the ten plagues of Egypt, I posted on Facebook:

Suppose the coronavirus could be guaranteed to pass over your house if you painted your doorposts with the milk of human kindness…

Some of which you had partaken of first.

As of this writing, I had four likes, and not a single dislike.

Of course, the dark, implied back side of this was that if you weren’t able to demonstrate that the milk of human kindness existed in your house, then you were screwed. But still...no one took me to task for that sentiment.

Contrast that to the response I got to my comment on a friend’s post about people who were making this whole thing worse. I said:

I know this is an evil thought, but wouldn’t it be nice if the only people taken out by this were the idiots, assholes, and deniers?

I got immediately slammed for wishing a horrible thing upon people. But really, it was no different from what I said about painting your doorposts. I attempted to clarify the situation by saying that I wasn’t wishing this on anyone, but if we know that, barring a miracle, some people have to get it, I’m pretty sure that there are some people we’d rather see get it than others.

Slammed again.

But let’s be real folks. I may try to be my most logically Spock-like at all times, but I’m still human, and I have emotions. And emotionally, I don’t want good people to suffer from this. And knowing logically that a certain number of people are gonna get this thing, I would much rather have it be the person who’s gonna try to shoot up a school or house of worship than some little old lady who never harmed anyone in her life.

Of course, the Grim Reaper is gonna pass right by Margaret, the lady who gives out full-sized Snickers bars at Halloween.

You may not want to admit this, but we all do this kind of moral calculus. We do it every time we ask “Why do the evil flourish while the good are cut down like the grass?” We all implicitly say that if there’s any suffering to happen, it should be to those people.

Not that we want that anyone should suffer. Ideally, no one should. But if there is suffering to be doled out, let’s be honest, and admit that we’d all prefer it to be visited upon the evil, the selfish, and the mean-spirited.

Because we’re human. We’re people. And being people is hard.

And being good people is especially hard.

Now as for me and my family, we’re gonna start painting our doorposts.

And we’ll help you paint yours too.