Idle or Idol Economy (458)

Medical anthropologist Monica Schoch-Spana has studied how the 1918 flu epidemic affected Baltimore. It overwhelmed the city’s medical system. There were reports of people desperately begging for help, even trying to bribe doctors for treatment. In one month alone, 2000 people died of the flu. Funeral homes didn’t have enough caskets and when bodies did reach cemeteries, there weren’t workers available to bury them. This all happened, with the ability of 20-20 hindsight, because there was so much pressure on business owners to remain open. People didn’t heed public health experts, which would’ve slowed the flu’s transmission. This epidemic also evidenced people at their best. People sewed medical masks and extra hospital sheets. People shared food. The epidemic also showed the worst in people. Rumors spread that German-American nurses were deliberately infecting people (some things never change) and African-Americans, this being the Jim Crow era, were denied medical treatment.

A classic episode (“The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”) of The Twilight Zone popped into my head after reading about 1918 Baltimore. It plays out entirely on one block of Maple Street, a peaceful suburban enclave. When all the electricity goes out at dusk, neighbors spill into the street. Soon, a rumor spreads that aliens have invaded and taken over the power grid. Then one family’s house has their power return and they’re accused of being aliens. This being America, people go get their guns. They begin threatening one another. They all stop when someone shouts: “Who’s that?” Down the block, a lone figure walks toward them. Someone yells: “It’s an alien!” Someone then shoots the “alien.” They run to where the “alien” has fallen and discover it was just one of their neighbors coming home. A riot ensues of neighbor vs. neighbor. The camera then pans to a hill overlooking the street. Two real aliens have witnessed the mob. They have a device that’s able to manipulate the power grid. One alien says: “All we have to do mess with their lives and they’ll take care of the rest with their paranoia and panic. We can conquer Earth one neighborhood at a time that way.”

People are beginning to declare “we need to get the economy going again,” something we’d all like to see happen. But those people are using a rather unchristian philosophical ethic to justify doing so. It’s called utilitarianism, which in its most heinous application, is a form of Social Darwinism. It posits that the probable deaths of many elderly and health-compromised people are worth it in the long run; that it’s a sacrifice society needs to make for the sake of us all. Such thinking masquerades as “doing the most good for the most people,” but in reality, it’s just a distant cousin of Hitler’s Final Solution where some are deemed more socially valuable than others.

There are no aliens (Deep State or otherwise) manipulating us. God has given us all we need, and that’s one another, to love and cherish. But we can be our own worst enemies when we give into paranoia and panic. I trust we all will resist with every bone in our bodies this profoundly unchristian ethic. The economy isn’t an idol to be worshiped. Yes, waiting longer to go back to work may deepen the economic hill we must climb later, but we’ll be able to look at ourselves in the mirror without shame or guilt.

+Scott