ToySoldier
Forum Supporter
People don't do well wrapping their heads around how they factor into large population-level phenomenon. This virus has a very small chance of being lethal to any given individual, yet at the same time is guaranteed to kill thousands a day.
Unless that risk hits close to home it takes an enormous sense of social responsibility and abstract thinking to look at that equation and choose self-sacrifice and inconvenience either short term or long term.
Fatalism also runs deep in the United States. If it happens, then it was meant to be. If I get sick, then I get sick.... Yet, few people would choose such an outcome prior to it becoming a possibility.
Very few things about life today in the developed world encourages patience, delayed gratification, or self-sacrifice for a common good.
We're already quite used to rationalizing our individual actions as either inconsequential or excusable while "everybody else" is the problem.
Unless that risk hits close to home it takes an enormous sense of social responsibility and abstract thinking to look at that equation and choose self-sacrifice and inconvenience either short term or long term.
Fatalism also runs deep in the United States. If it happens, then it was meant to be. If I get sick, then I get sick.... Yet, few people would choose such an outcome prior to it becoming a possibility.
Very few things about life today in the developed world encourages patience, delayed gratification, or self-sacrifice for a common good.
We're already quite used to rationalizing our individual actions as either inconsequential or excusable while "everybody else" is the problem.