Fear sells and those who market with it to sell their wares have no larger motivator than death to motivate consumers to purchase their goods. A casual perusal of commercials aimed at today’s consumers easily proves the point. Need to buy a car? Pay attention to those safety features! And make sure that insurance policy will take care of your loved ones once you are gone. In advertising it is called “fear appeal” or “fear appraisal” and is one of the recognized strategies used to motivate consumers. Food safety, personal beauty, body order, or just the fear of missing out on the next new shiny object has no competition when it comes to avoiding death.
The contemporary struggle against the Corona Virus pandemic raises fears to a new level. There is not only the fear of getting sick but the fear of dying is very real. The fear of causing someone else to die motivates individuals to stay home to prevent spreading disease and death. Everyday there is a new count of those who have tested positive for having the virus and a death count from complications from being sick with COVID-19. Thereby we are reminded that sickness and death are only around the corner seeking to devour us. Appealing to this fear is used by leaders and authorities to motivate the public to take actions that presumably protects public safety and preserves life saving resources.
The response to the Corona Virus and COVID-19 pushes leaders and the general public to put into place policies that often don’t make sense and even seem comically incongruous. You can walk on the public walking path but you cannot ride a bicycle. You cannot go to your local barber but your local pot shop selling marijuana is open for business. You cannot shop at your favorite independent clothing boutique or shoe store but you can shop all day long in a crowded WalMart or Target store. You cannot continue your construction business or job but you can shop all day long at Lowe’s or Home Depot or pick up items at the local plant nursery to get those home projects done.
Until a vaccine is created or there is a enough public exposure so that most people carry antibodies to the disease, we will continue in some limited freedom of movement and conducting business. Already many economists speak of the negative economic impact from this pandemic as being greater than anything we have experienced in modern history. Only time will tell if their prophesies will come true. What is true at this point is the rate of dying from exposure to this disease will remain constant until one of those things happens.
The public response to this news usually falls somewhere between two extremes. On one end are those who believe that all risk of any kind should be avoided and people should stay home and venture out only for emergencies until the experts find an answer through a vaccine or cure. On the other end are those who are willing to live and conduct business with a certain amount of risk and believe that everyone should conduct their own lives according to their comfort risk level. One set believes that everyone’s fears and vulnerabilities should be everyone else’s concern. The other set believes that everyone should take necessary precautions only as is necessary for their own personal safety. For one set, public health and safety is a communal concern and effort. For the other set, public health and safety is the concern and effort of individual actions and beliefs. On one end: Your health and safety is my responsibility. On the other end: You’re not the boss of me and cannot dictate how I live. Unfortunately, these two extremes only yell and scream at each other on today’s social media platforms and no one appears to be listening to each other.
Is the choice between paralyzing fear or a cavalier attitude? Or is there a healthy middle ground that provides balance in self-care and community-care? What can be the organizing moral principle that guides our social attitudes and behaviors? Because there does not seem to be any moral principle or belief that binds us together as a society today. In a pluralistic society is it possible to have one? Or are we to settle upon “every person doing what is right in their own eyes” to borrow a phrase of biblical judgment against a culture in moral chaos (Judges 17:6; 21:25).
Without moral clarity we will end up becoming something akin to George Orwell’s 1984 or William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. In times of stress a people’s true morality shines through their actions. Unfortunately for our day, the culture divide and tribalism propagated for the past several years has not helped create a cooperative atmosphere so that we can work together. Instead, we close ourselves into our chosen echo chambers and rail at the voices we cannot hear and will not listen to. So, perhaps, George Orwell got it right when he wrote in his book 1984, “The best books…are those that tell you what you know already.” At least those are the only ones we seem to like to read.
The Christian community, unfortunately, has failed to provide a cohesive voice in how to respond. This is probably just a reflection of its already fractured state as denominations and movements compete for consumers in the religious marketplace. Beyond the occasional call to reasonable and prayerful responses during the pandemic to “love thy neighbor,” the religious sphere seems to have grown silent. Perhaps it is because even the Christian community is hotly divided between left and right political spectrums and clergy persons are unwilling to risk alienating congregants and thus their livelihood. Whatever the case, without someone appealing to our better natures we seem destined to devolve into our most basic animal natures. It is a story as old as the Garden of Eden when the Lord God warned Cain that “If you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door, it desires to have you, but you must rule over it (Gen. 4:7)”. This is something that William Golding captured in The Lord of the Flies when one of the characters observes, “Maybe there is a beast…What I mean is, maybe it is only us.”