The Tribune

An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head. - Eric Hoffer

THERE is a well-known episode from the 1912 sinking of RMS Titanic involving the wealthy Scottish landowner Sir Cosmo Edmund Duff-Gordon (1862-1931).

Sir Cosmo, his wife and her secretary, Laura Mabel Francatelli, survived the sinking of the superliner on its maiden passenger voyage by escaping on Lifeboat No 1, which had the capacity for 40 people.

The small company of three was among only 12 people in the lifeboat, despite the capacity for 28 more. Approximately 1,500 perished in the infamous disaster, while 705 survived.

Many of those who died in the brutally cold waters of the North Atlantic, froze to death or drowned after passing out from the cold.

The inquiry into the maritime mishap found that a number of the lifeboats turned away from drowning passengers and the plaintive cries for help from some in the ocean and the pleading of some on the lifeboats to go back to rescue others.

A number of the lifeboats had the capacity to rescue more of those struggling in the nighttime waters. One of these was the lifeboat carrying Sir Cosmo, his wife and her secretary.

An inquiry after the accident heard claims that Sir Cosmo paid or bribed its crew not to turn back for other passengers, a contention he forcefully denied and for which no evidence was found by a Board of Trade inquiry.

“Sir Cosmo denied his offer of money to the lifeboat’s crew was a bribe, and the [Board’s] inquiry into the disaster accepted his explanation that it was a charitable contribution for crew members who had lost not only their possessions but their jobs.

“The inquiry nonetheless concluded that, if the lifeboat had returned to the wreck site, it might have been able to rescue others.”

The notion of lifeboat ethics is a classic in ethics courses. There are a number of case studies and scenarios employed to probe how students or participants view a particular ethical dilemma or trilemma. There are also a number of well-known films which invite viewers to do the same.

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced volumes of ethical case studies in medical ethics and bioethics, resource and food distribution and the availability of health care.

In terms of social ethics there is a surplus of social questions concerning the many societal deficits and the needs of the poor, minorities and the most vulnerable during the pandemic.

From Pope Francis to the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and others have come impassioned pleas about galloping inequality and access to basic goods, medicine and vaccines for the developing world and the poor.

But alongside the meta and major ethical questions to which the pandemic has given rise, are the individual ethical choices which confront us all.

While governments can mandate various public health measures, it cannot force citizens and individuals to make choices that will redound to the greater good.

The state of Florida has now passed one million COVID-19 cases, with one person in America dying every minute as the virus spreads like a climate change-induced season of wildfires during an autumn that is growing deadlier by the day.

Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, repeatedly asked, begged, pleaded with, invited and warned Americans not to travel over Thanksgiving because such travel would make a dire public health crisis exceedingly worse. He feared there would be a surge on top of a surge.

While some listened to the respected Fauci, others simply didn’t give a damn. They are in their individual lifeboats watching as the Titanic collapses around them, indifferent that their behaviour may endanger or kill others, including their loved ones.

We are living through a period when many are in their secure and secured lifeboats, while many others suffer from the metaphorical Titanics caused by COVID-19, which continue to sink because of the many icebergs and dangerous waters of the pandemic.

A supernova level of selfishness and herd stupidity are endemic in peoples around the world and here at home. Whether at a nightclub on New Providence or a private party in Lyford Cay, a self-absorbed mindset reigns.

Such a mindset will never ever yield to the pleading of public health or government officials or religious leaders.

There is a diabolical self-absorption and indifference from some whose empathy appears to end no farther than the reach of their fingertips. This is a part of the human condition with which public officials must perennially contend.

Calls for a common good or even an enlightened altruism simply fall on the deaf ears of those who have not heard the pleading of hospital patients dying alone on their beds or whose eyes refuse to see the massive economic depression and dislocation visited on their neighbours and fellow-citizens.

Meanwhile, in Florida, residents of that state and visitors, including a good number of Bahamians, are distracting themselves with retail therapy and magical thinking.

A friend recounted the observation of another in the United States over that country’s recent Thanksgiving holiday, who noted the number of people not wearing masks nor physically distancing in stores.

The Florida visitor, who wears his mask, has been startled by the number of non-mask-wearing individuals who have verbally abused store entrance security personnel and clerks who have requested potential shoppers to don a mask before entry.

Of course the reply is: “My right to not wear a mask supersedes your right or need to remain healthy and to stay alive.” When such a mindset is blended with a penchant for conspiratorial thinking, there is an explosively unhealthy dynamic in an individual and in a country, whether in the U.S., The Bahamas or elsewhere.

If one grows up in an environment that ascribes outcomes to some unseen malevolent hand and comes to believe that one is powerless as opposed to someone who believes that they live in an environment that suggests causes and effects are knowable and therefore predictable, preventable or mitigable, the worldview of two such individuals will be markedly different.

Another friend recalled the remarks of an acquaintance who told him that a general election campaign he was involved in was a brilliant campaign – but just not for The Bahamas.

After he absorbed her critique, she went on to explain that she was an “expert” on the content of local talk shows and if they reflected any significant proportion of the views in the country, then his party’s messaging did nothing to address the spate of conspiracies that filled the airwaves.

She observed that there are large numbers of people in The Bahamas who were far more comfortable jumping from conspiracy to conspiracy without any evidence, and anyone who offered evidence to the contrary was surely among the conspirators.

She was convinced that far too many Bahamians are “trained” to believe in conspiracies from a very early age. By “training” she meant that there is constant reinforcement in one’s environment of such beliefs early on in life, reinforced by a herd mentality of misinformation, disinformation and sometimes sheer stupidity and mass hysteria.

Some believe that to spout conspiratorial thinking makes them look clever or in the know, though in truth what they claim is often asinine and dangerous.

A former newspaper editor continues to be amazed at the level of supposedly educated Bahamians who will receive a poorly worded, misspelt, grammatically incorrect message on WhatsApp or dubious Facebook post, who rushes to believe what they just read and to quickly pass it on.

But presented with a well-written and documented article from a reputable magazine, that same individual will express doubts and wonder whether the article is part of a larger conspiracy by the elites.

And many friends report that when they correct a post by others in various chat groups that may be riddled with errors, the person who originally posted the piece never admits they were wrong or corrects themselves. They just keep returning with more errors.

So what is the next battleground for selfish lifeboat thinking and conspiracy theories? Well, the COVID- 19 vaccine of course. Eric Hoffer, the social philosopher cum longshoreman was spot on: “An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.”

There are vaccines, good treatments and cures for various diseases. But curing or treating conspiratorial and magical thinking and virulent selfishness is a decidedly more difficult task for Homo sapiens, the latter designation of which often appears dubious and questionable.