1. Metaphysical explanations
As far back and as widely distributed around the globe as we have found written records, divine wrath has been just around the community corner for peoples so prone to angering their metaphysical potentates. Today is no different: I have done a google search for “coronavirus as divine punishment” and had 903,00 hits spanning world religious sects—and even climate activists. A major feature of such animadversions is the high frequency of competing organized religious groups devoutly painting the finger at rival groups, including within their own historical traditions.
It all makes me want to roll up my sleeves and write a multi-volume, carefully footnoted text on those arguments. (Since many may overlap, the actual number of separate claims is probably well under 100,000.[1]) All signs are that my self-isolation will continue long enough to complete such a work.
The troubling part in this tradition is that aside from punishing Jews, Moslems, LGBTQ, people of different colored skins, uppity women, and other peoples long established to merit censure and/or elimination (and hence by their very existence capable of triggering a divine punishment), members of those very same holy, finger-pointing chosen peoples seem simultaneously to be shuffling off to posthumous rewards.
Here, I shall set forth three possible mitigating factors, and I invite readers to add their own:
- A first model is provided by the precedent of the Exodus in the Hebrew Bible, where an entity called (in translation) “the angel of death” is reported to have marked Jewish first-born sons for bypass during the imminent slaughter of first-born sons of elite (and apparently, via guilt by association, also ordinary) Egyptians (and presumably all non-Jewish, non-Egyptian first-born males as well, since the angel didn’t mark them).[2] So it may well be that the divinity/ies in existence today is/are using his/her/their power(s) to single out such people to be safe from the virus and those people just aren’t telling us.
- Secondly, it may be that members of whichever sect is right about divine punishment are included in the suffering to become honored martyrs, like early Christians thrown to lions.
- Of particular interest is whether divinity/ies of the Chosen sect expect worshippers to initiate massive self-examination followed by action to remove the pollution that is prompting the viral spread among them.[3]
Those who remain in a post-viral world shall have to see how all that shakes out when the True Divinity chooses to lift the current viral plague (if indeed humanity is ever adjudged worthy of such redemption).
2. Darwinism in action
Some years ago, a clever young fellow created the Darwin Awards for posthumous presentation to human beings whose reckless behavior removed them from the danger of reproducing—or as the site (https://darwinawards.com/) says, for “the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it in a spectacular manner!”
With that context as a background, let us consider coronavirus victims in relation to their service to the human gene pool.
- Of those who die, neither the elderly (like your current author) nor immune-compromised folk will have any direct role in reproduction (though some might help raise children and influence their cultural behavior as they proceed through life, which in turn will harm or enhance reproductive fitness of said offspring).
- Among healthier folk who adhere to self-isolation and related principles (e.g., proper hand-washing, keeping distance from others), reproductive success rates should be relatively stable.
- Of those who may accept the reality of COVID-19 and its consequences but DON’T adhere to prescribed behavior, reproductive success should be significantly compromised.
- Of those who deny reality of the virus or its publicized effects, the most common repudiation of self-isolation and related principles appears to be[4] among the same religious people prone to see the virus as divine punishment (see topic 1). Moreover, they are presumably among those most likely to attend religious services in large, tightly packed numbers. ERGO: Their reproductive success should be significantly diminishing, as should the size of their congregations. ERGO: they should decreasingly collude in opposition to that social value of some repute that I’ll call “social justice.”[5]
- Depending on the brain genetics of who flouts and who honors prescribed precautions, the overall intellectual of the world’s population may be raised as well.[6]
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[1] To be critically thorough, I must acknowledge the highly unlikely possibility that Google missed some hits so that the actual number is much higher than 903,000. Still, as the hoi polloi say, beggars can’t be choosers.
[2] A parallel example would be the frequency throughout the history of war of the efficacy of prayer to the winning side’s divinity.
[3] This would help explain why gun stores are considered to be providing essential services in the increasingly great United States of America. (Is it the case that gun ownership and 2nd-amendment acolytes tend to be towards the fundamentalist end of American religion?)
[4] Other groups, like young people who view themselves as immortal or at least sure to recover from any illness, don’t seem to be as frequent in such self-destructive behavior.
[5] Any offspring that manages to result, or already has resulted, would be less likely to be raised with the kind of values such parents embrace and thereby would weaken long-term embrace of any retrograde values.
[6] I say this with the acknowledgement that measuring “intelligence” varies widely and can itself be used in service of discrimination against one undesirable group or another.