The Golden Rule: It’s Universal, but Is It Golden? 

I’m sure you’ve noticed that most religions have, as a core principle, The Golden Rule:

* Christianity – “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” (the Bible, Matthew 7:12) 

* Judaism – “What is hateful to you, do not to others.” (the Torah) 

* Taoism – “Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own.” (T’ai-Shang Kan-Ying P’ien) 

* Hinduism – “One should never do that to another which one regards as injurious to one’s own self.” (the Mahabharata)

* Buddhism – “A state that is not pleasing or delightful to me… how could I inflict that upon another?” 

* Confucianism – “What you do not wish done to you, do not do to others.”

* Islam – “None of you has faith until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.” (Imam an-Nawawi’s Forty Hadith)

And most of the great ethical philosophers advocated the same idea. Two examples:

* Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative – “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”  

* John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism – “Always do whatever will bring the greatest amount of well-being to the greatest number of people.”

There are, of course, nuances of difference. And they provide for interesting discussions among nit-picky intellectuals. But it seems to me that they are all fundamentally the same. They describe an ethical principle so universal that it could be located deep inside our consciousness, perhaps in the reptilian brain.

Equally universal, it seems to me, would be the number one tenet of the Golden Rule: Thou shalt not kill. And yet, if you listed the top three accomplishments of religion over the ages, you’d have to say that justified murder/genocide is one of them.

Why?

Has the Spike Peaked? 

You might not know this if you rely on the media for your news and views, but the spike in cases and deaths from COVID-19 seems to have peaked and is heading down.

The daily case count peaked on July 17 with 77,638 cases and was down to 46,321 as of August 3. The 5-day average death count, which always follows the case count by a week or two, peaked on July 25 at 1096. On August 3, it was down to 984.

And this pattern is true for the states that experienced the biggest surges: California, Florida, and Texas.

If the decline continues for another week or so, we will have in Florida, Texas, and California pretty much the same pattern that we saw in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, whose cases peaked around April 7 and whose deaths peaked about two weeks later.

What’s really interesting to me is the fact that those states that peaked in April have had no surge in cases since then. You could attribute that to more masks and social distancing – a claim I’ve yet to see any evidence for – or it is possible, as I speculated in March, that the reported case count is still a fraction of the real count, and we may be closer to herd immunity than we think.

The Two Worst Ideas of the 20^th Century 

I’ve been thinking about it. The 20^th century was not nearly as great a century as I had somehow assumed.

It had its positives. There were some very significant achievements in terms of science and technology. And people generally got richer. And work got easier. And there were more conveniences. But it was also the most murderous century in the history of humankind. And the general level of happiness went down – especially in “advanced” countries.

Prior to the 20^th century, I’d say that the worst ideas (in terms of life and happiness) were religious ideas – e.g., “My religion is better than your religion,” or “My authority, as your ruler, comes from God.” In the 20^th century, this sort of thinking lost its power to destroy and decimate. But it was more than amply replaced by two ideas that have the same evil little seed.

I’m talking, of course, about communism and psychoanalysis, two hugely influential schools of thought based on a very similar (and very appealing) untruth: that the troubles in our lives have causes, and those causes are something or someone other than ourselves, and that the way to deal with these issues is to understand, first of all, that we are not responsible for them. In the case of communism, they are caused by systemic oppression on a class level. In the case of psychoanalysis, they are caused by early childhood trauma, usually imposed on us by our parents.

The obvious problem with this idea, besides its patent absurdity, is that it liberates the individual from personal responsibility and excuses him for his bad behavior.

The idea of communism is responsible for more than 100 million deaths in the 20^th century. The core idea of psychoanalysis is probably responsible for a billion miserable lives.

More on this as I chew it over.

The hydroxychloroquine imbroglio is just one of a dozen confusions that have emerged from the political and media exploitation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In past essays on the subject, we’ve discussed several others, including the conflation of case fatality rate and real fatality rate, the argument over the effectiveness of intubation, the WHO’s and CDC’s back-and-forth positions on face masks, the lack of reporting on the relationship between viral load and severity of symptoms, the misinformation about the risk to people under 18 and children in particular, and the patently illogical recommendation of sheltering in place.

Given that, one has to wonder: Whom can I trust?

Have you asked yourself that question? Yes, of course you have. Every one of us has asked that question many times in many different contexts. We asked it first as toddlers, then again as teenagers, then again as young adults… and we are still asking it.

The question, properly posed, is: “Can I trust authority? Can I trust my parents, my teachers, my political leaders, my doctors, and my friends?”

For most of us, the answer to that question was determined long ago. Which means that, for most of us, the answer to the question of whom we are going to trust for answers about COVID-19 has already been made.

Some will always trust the LLP&M. Some will always trust the RLP&M. But if, like me, you don’t believe what either of them is saying, whom do you trust? There is only one answer to that. You have to trust yourself.

“A graduation gift for these unique times” 

That was the subject line of a recent email from The New York Times. It was followed by this…

“The class of 2020 finds itself in a unique moment – and a gift of The Times can help them understand it. Now more than ever, facts are indispensable, and The Times delivers essential information, expert analysis, and practical guidance on a daily basis.”

Hilarious!

I used to venerate the NYT — when it was a NEWSpaper.

Now that they’ve learned (from Fox News and others)  how much money you can make by switching to advocacy journalism, I read it only for laughs. (And to keep my enemies closer.)

Four more on my contact list tested negative. I’m starting to think I’m not the super-spreader that I thought I’d be. One of those that tested negative, an old friend, had been banned from work and relegated to the basement while waiting for his test results. Now, he can get back to his prior life. He hasn’t said so, but I’m sure that in some portion of his subconscious he blames me for putting him in COVID Prison for a week.

As for the virus itself, it seemed to hit a peak yesterday. If this surge follows all the others, it should come down at about the same rate as it shot up… then, at least for this “wave,” hover at the low end of the scale for a while… and then… well, we’ll see.