The First World Gambit

Are we humanitarian, where we indeed are concerned legitimately with all human beings that exist throughout the globe?

Or,

Are we humanitarians in the sense that we implicitly have an idea of a hierarchy of humanity, where “human beings“ effectively exist within the bubble of those who are privileged or otherwise have access to the privileged situation, such as health and health care?

This ethical question may indeed play out, may indeed be playing out, in the distribution of the vaccine for COVID-19.

Specifically, along the question of whether people should get a third booster shot. Arguments against that say that they’re already billions of people who haven’t got the first shot. And that to sequester vaccines to the privileged, necessarily will create a incubation pool for further variance of COVID-19 in the less privileged and poor communities across the world. And that these variance will escalate past modern science ability to develop effective defenses against them.

The gambit is that upon whether research into the vaccine for those who are in a privilege to sector of the globe, supported by giving boosters, will outpace the variance that are arising in the petri dish of communities From which the vaccines are being withheld.

I believe that we already know the answer to this. The irony of being human is that we are always concerned with ourselves first. Think of the emergency precaution when you’re in a plane that’s in crisis. What are you supposed to do? You put the oxygen mask on yourself first and then you try to help other people.

Yes, it seems very sensible and I’m not making an argument that this shouldn’t be done.

But I am suggesting that this philosophy of the being human itself trickles up to healthcare and the distribution of the vaccine.

The key issue involved with modernity is irony. There is no other existential significance.

And if I may step slightly into my more philosophical arena –

The significance is that flat and definite outcomes given specific choices is the defining feature of the modern religion. It is not a feature of humanity in general as human beings might have extended out through history; it is a feature of knowledge which applies only now, correlating with questions that we have presently. For, if we have not asked certain questions, then we cannot possibly know the answer, nor can we understand ourselves or the world in that specific way. The thinking that this is not the case, that there are things that are affecting us that have not entered into our ability to find them yet, is the feature of the modern religion. It is a fact by the very nature of our ability to know anything about ourselves and the universe.

But you can look elsewhere in my blog for that kind of discussion.