Another Memorial Day
It was Memorial Day, yesterday. A near-traditional Memorial Day for us, with the very first hot weather of the upcoming summer, family at the house for early dinner and a “low country” boil on the back deck.
But, of course, it wasn’t traditional at all. We remain under a cloud, even under the hot May sun. It’s the COVID-19 pandemic, changing life in all sorts of big and small ways. The crisis seemed to have frozen time: it’s a little bit of a shock to see that summer came anyway. The weather, and the world, felt like it was going to be March rain forever.
But here we are, on the cusp of summer.
2001 – the Future
When I was a young man, I became fascinated with science fiction books. Clarke and Asimov were my favorites, though Frank Herbert crept in towards the end. Some created whole new universes, but the authors I related to most were those that showed what life here on earth would be like only a dozen decades ahead of today.
Many of them prophesized some kind of world crisis, when the people of earth made some dramatic decision on how to live their lives. For a few, it was an atomic war; a reasonable prediction given the way the 1950’s and 60’s were going. Gene Roddenberry, creator of the Star Trek franchise, showed earth rising from the ashes of a nuclear war that ended in 2053. That seemed so far away back in 1968.
Several authors anticipated mankind’s crisis of confidence in science. Isaac Asimov recognized this in his Robot series. He constantly dealt with the fear that somehow robots would use their superiority over humans to “take over”. He developed an entire “moral” code for robotics to convince mankind they were safe. And while we aren’t quite to the point of his andromorphic helpers, we do depend on artificial intelligence for growing parts of our daily living. From “smart houses” to “Alexa” and “Siri,” AI has infiltrated our daily routines. It’s listening and responding to our every word.
Anti-Science
Like any good 1960’s science fiction novel, we find a backlash in our society to these advances. For many, Microsoft creator Bill Gates has become a bête noire, “threatening” to put “chips” in our body to somehow gain control. As if we aren’t already allowing access to all of that information already, instead of a “chip” in our arm, we carry a little box in our pocket with all of that data. We call it a “phone”, but that little computer we all carry is constantly in communication with an interconnected world, revealing our location, our likes and desires, our calendar and our images, fingerprints and sounds.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise that there is a backlash against science. It was already happening before COVID-19 was even named back in February. Anti-vaxxers have been crying out for years, their conspiratorial theories amplified by celebrities and led by a name that echoes other great crusades, Kennedy. Climate change deniers have ignored scientific research for decades, well financed by a petroleum industry whose profits are vested in the status quo.
And now, with COVID-19, we have accelerated the war against science. Just as we have folks who are willing to close their eyes to the damage we are doing to the climate, we now find many who refuse to take the advice of our leading scientists as they offer a less painful path through this crisis. Like the petroleum industry, we have a political party who has embraced the “anti-science” view. It too is led by a “name”, the President of the United States.
2020 – The Present
Clarke and Asimov would find our current situation strangely familiar. There is a commonality in the fear of those educated in the arcane “secrets” of viral epidemics. They know and understand what has happened and can confidently predict possible futures, knowledge most of us do not have. The virus seems capricious, and like the Judaic angel of death, passes over many. And that gives President Trump an advantage, the virus as an “unseen enemy”. It’s easy to doubt something you can’t see, and create doubt in the scientific prescriptions. Invisibility allows manipulation for daily political gain.
But the “laws” of science are as inexorable as the changes of the season. The virus will do what it’s going to do, regardless of the political ramifications. Perhaps it will mutate itself “away” from infection, the miracle that President Trump wishes for. Or perhaps we will find that “herd immunity” doesn’t exist for this particular virus. We really don’t know. What we do know is what the best science tells us: social-distance, masks, and testing.
Decades from now we may well look back at 2020 is a pivotal year, a turning point where the “people of earth” made decisions that altered our future path. Science is competing with immediate self-interests: Clarke and Asimov had faith we would choose wisely. I hope that faith was right.
