Lockdown Musings

Thanks to avoiding newspapers and cutting off TV, I am invariably late on any news. And what I do get to know comes from Social media, which as you all know is well-known for its impartial and neutral accuracy and completeness of information. Which accounts for the fact that I first came to know of this Covid-19 menace from Social media shares about people hoarding toilet paper and guns. Obviously, it gave me the impression that this was a diarrhea epidemic and people were, therefore, stocking up on toilet paper; and the guns were so that they could defend their stocks against all comers. It's funny how all the layers of altruism get peeled off in a jiffy when something threatens to affect your lifestyle. Take all this hoarding for example. It's not like people think that the poor malls are running out of storage space for all the goods that they stock and, so, it would be a favor to buy it and stock it at home. Obviously, you think they are going to run out of goods and you may not get what you need if you worked on a business-as-usual basis. Which, essentially, means that you think some people WILL end up having to do without those goods and are rushing to ensure that it is not you. Which, when someone else does it in some other country, you would deride as 'the devil take the hindmost' attitude of selfishness. But, then, that's the truth of most of the morality that we preach. When it is something that does not directly affect you, you can readily see the right thing to do. The moment it starts affecting your own lifestyle, your reaction varies from 'ideal, but impractical' all the way to 'totally stupid and probably not even moral'. That, perhaps, is the reason why there is a schism between how the intelligentsia sees the world and how the rest of the world does. From the vantage point where any of the choices do not seem to affect you, it's easy to assess the fairness and the morality of the choices. From where you ARE the affected party of a moral choice, it's difficult to see beyond your own loss. The child from whom you take a candy to give to its sibling can only see that it has lost the candy to the sibling; not that the act has ensured that both children now have an equal number of candies. AND when you take away its lone candy to give it to a poor child... Privilege is something that all of us find easy to see in other people. Never in ourselves.  And to be in a position where the choices do not affect you is a big privilege, a privilege that you cannot see. But, then, when you see privilege as a fault, it's quite obvious that this is the way it will work. Since when has any person been able to see his own flaws or admit to them?