Yoda's pandemic advice

wiscoaster

Well-known member
I'm currently running through all the Star Wars movies. Something Yoda said to the Jedi Council in Episode #1 "The Phantom Menace" struck me as particularly relevant to the Covid-19 pandemic: "Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering."

Very appropriate to how we handled it here in this country.
 

wiscoaster

Well-known member
Fear is never a good reason for doing anything. Reasonable informed sensible and logical precaution as a justification and a basis for undertaking a certain course of action (ie being armed for self protection) isn't the same thing as fear by any stretch of definitions. Fear is an emotion and emotions interfere with logic and bad logic leads to bad decisions that result in harm. Yup ... Yoda was right.
 

WrongHanded

Well-known member
Fear is never a good reason for doing anything.
I disagree. In evolutionary terms, fear keeps animals out of danger. Fear is your subconscious warning you that there may be a present danger. However, blind fear where logic is completely ignored is not good. There's a balance to be maintained.

You should consider reading "The Gift Of Fear" by Gavin De Becker. It's very good.
 

wiscoaster

Well-known member
... There's a balance to be maintained....
I think that was Yoda's point.

Though your point about fear as an instinctive self-preservation reaction is valid, I think it applies to immediate and unknown dangers, not to something of long duration, like the pandemic, where the dangers are known and the mitigation is known, but where fear of the virus over the duration of the event leads to all kinds of adverse effects having nothing to do with avoiding it.
 

WrongHanded

Well-known member
I think that was Yoda's point.

Though your point about fear as an instinctive self-preservation reaction is valid, I think it applies to immediate and unknown dangers, not to something of long duration, like the pandemic, where the dangers are known and the mitigation is known, but where fear of the virus over the duration of the event leads to all kinds of adverse effects having nothing to do with avoiding it.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Which is because I see your OP and this follow up post as ambiguous.

Certainly we can identify a danger, and put into places ways to mitigate that danger in the form of safety procedures and PPE. As long as vigilance is maintained concerning these things, there is little to fear. And that's one way to take your posts.

The other way, would be that the virus isn't that dangerous to most people, so the safety measure can be casually ignored as can the fear of contracting a disease that will most likely not kill most people.

So what exactly are you getting at?
 

wiscoaster

Well-known member
I guess what I'm getting at is that fear of the pandemic as the primary driving force in dealing with it is irrational and ends up being counter productive. And it has been the primary driving force. And has resulted in a lot of negative consequences. We need to get over being afraid of it. It's no longer useful as an instinctive reaction to unknown danger. A point I attempted to communicate in a light-hearted fashion using the Star Wars Jedi metaphor, a technique that apparently failed to communicate my point.
 
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WrongHanded

Well-known member
I guess what I'm getting at is that fear of the pandemic as the primary driving force in dealing with it is irrational and ends up being counter productive. And it has been the primary driving force. And has resulted in a lot of negative consequences. We need to get over being afraid of it. It's no longer useful as an instinctive reaction to unknown danger. A point I attempted to communicate in a light-hearted fashion using the Star Wars Jedi metaphor, a technique that apparently failed to communicate my point.

I think being scared of something your senses cannot detect but which can kill you, or that can be passed unknowingly to loved ones and kill them, is quite reasonable. And so precautions taken to mitigate the potential of that happening whilst still maintaining a functioning society (which we are), are also reasonable. I've not personally experienced an over-abundence of fear, past a point I would consider prudent.

But, you mileage may differ. If you feel people are being unreasonably fearful, rather than speaking of it in broad and unspecific generalizations, perhaps go into detail about precisely what you see as being unnecessary and why. If you do so, you may even find that we agree on some of those details.

But saying "we need to stop being afraid of it", is like saying we need to stop being afraid of the man eating tiger that got loose from the zoo and has been preying on our neighbors, because it's been eating people for months. Normalizing a known hazard is simply not smart.
 

wiscoaster

Well-known member
...But saying "we need to stop being afraid of it", is like saying we need to stop being afraid of the man eating tiger that got loose from the zoo and has been preying on our neighbors, because it's been eating people for months. ...
Oh c'mon, that's such an outrageously inappropriate analogy I can only assume you're goading me into trying to respond to it. Nothing doing.
 

WrongHanded

Well-known member
Oh c'mon, that's such an outrageously inappropriate analogy I can only assume you're goading me into trying to respond to it. Nothing doing.
Yep, it is an outrageous analogy. But it still represents a clear and present threat, that is no less dangerous because time has passed. Which is the reality with Covid. It's still putting people in the hospital, intensive care, and the morgue. And it's doing that not just to old people in poor health, but sometimes to healthy young people. It's not become less dangerous because we're a year into it. We're on a downward trend, but that's from a massive peak of daily cases, hospitalizations, and deaths per day. As a Nation, we really aren't handling this well.

To put the potential for exposure into some kind of perspective, the virus swept my place of work in a matter of days. Before the first person tested positive, we had almost all been exposed and passed it to family members. It's a small company, but it amazed me how quickly it spread. Fortunately the worse case known to me from that outbreak was a trip to the emergency room. I'm not emotional about it, just pragmatic. It went from one guy being off work for a day, to the whole shop testing positive within 3 days. No one knew til it was too late, and that's how it goes. If it weren't for the safety protocols we have, that's how it would spread across the country.

So come on, get specific about what you think is going too far any why.
 

wiscoaster

Well-known member
So come on, get specific about what you think is going too far any why.
I've already done that in posts #3 and #7 above. If you don't get the point then you don't get human psychology. I don't need to list specific instances as examples. Adverse consequences of decisions based on fear and not on logic and facts are entirely individual and circumstance dependent.
 

WrongHanded

Well-known member
I've already done that in posts #3 and #7 above. If you don't get the point then you don't get human psychology. I don't need to list specific instances as examples. Adverse consequences of decisions based on fear and not on logic and facts are entirely individual and circumstance dependent.
That's what you call specific? You and I must have different dictionaries.

But if you're saying the difference between fear-based and logic-based decision making is "individual" and "circumstance dependent", then I really don't know what the point of the OP was. How can you possibly say what you perceive as fear based on the part of an individual, isn't simply logical and based in facts that you are either unaware of, or don't believe?
 

roscoe

Well-known member
I'm currently running through all the Star Wars movies. Something Yoda said to the Jedi Council in Episode #1 "The Phantom Menace" struck me as particularly relevant to the Covid-19 pandemic: "Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering."

Very appropriate to how we handled it here in this country.

I agree. We pushed back against science, and turned it into some sort of conspiracy about the government controlling people by making them wear masks, and made it a complete fiasco.

Estimates are that we doubled the deaths due to this fear that the government wanted to control us (250,000 more dead than we would have had if we had followed recommendations). That is why we have the worst death rate in the 1st world.

And now that we have the vaccine, the CDC has relaxed mask recommendations, completely falsifying the conspiracy theory. But make no mistake, fear-mongering cost us a quarter of a million extra dead.
 

Swampman

New member
I agree. We pushed back against science, and turned it into some sort of conspiracy about the government controlling people by making them wear masks, and made it a complete fiasco.

Estimates are that we doubled the deaths due to this fear that the government wanted to control us (250,000 more dead than we would have had if we had followed recommendations). That is why we have the worst death rate in the 1st world.

And now that we have the vaccine, the CDC has relaxed mask recommendations, completely falsifying the conspiracy theory. But make no mistake, fear-mongering cost us a quarter of a million extra dead.
I don't disagree with your basic premise, but can you support the claim "That is why we have the worst death rate in the 1st world."

According to the BBC and CNN the United Kingdom, Belgium and Italy all have higher death rates per capita than the United States. (The above countries all qualify as 1st world by the original definition, i.e. NATO members during the cold war).

Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia and several other countries considered as "First World" by current definition have also experienced higher death rates than the U.S.


 

Selena

Active member
I guess what I'm getting at is that fear of the pandemic as the primary driving force in dealing with it is irrational and ends up being counter productive. And it has been the primary driving force. And has resulted in a lot of negative consequences. We need to get over being afraid of it. It's no longer useful as an instinctive reaction to unknown danger. A point I attempted to communicate in a light-hearted fashion using the Star Wars Jedi metaphor, a technique that apparently failed to communicate my point.
Eventually another philosopher Aesop will come to play... Familiarity breeds contempt. Live with a perceived danger long enough and it will become less fearsome. I have patients point out that the ambulances haven't had too much extra use and the local funeral director hasn't tried to add on. Which brings still another philosopher's corollary to Aesop - The reason we hold the truth in such great respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.
 

wiscoaster

Well-known member
... and the "experts" have played the "expert" and "science" cards far too often and those cards have proven to be bluff cards for an empty hand.
 

roscoe

Well-known member
I don't disagree with your basic premise, but can you support the claim "That is why we have the worst death rate in the 1st world."

According to the BBC and CNN the United Kingdom, Belgium and Italy all have higher death rates per capita than the United States. (The above countries all qualify as 1st world by the original definition, i.e. NATO members during the cold war).

Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia and several other countries considered as "First World" by current definition have also experienced higher death rates than the U.S.


Yes, true, we are not quite the worst. I was referring to the COVID-related death rate, in aggregate. But here is the relevant data (through February). I am guessing things have improved in terms of our rate relative to other countries, due to our vaccination rate:
1624925594200.png


Our infection rate was the worst documented:
1624925936496.png
 
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I'm tired of the whole "leads to the dark side" schtick they're on in the franchise.

Yeah, yeah, yeah..."fear..." I get it.

But this, from Yoda to Luke:

"Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is…Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose."

And this from Ahsoka to the Mandalorian, Din:

“His attachment to you makes him vulnerable to his fears, his anger.”

“I’ve seen what such feelings [feelings of attachment] can do to a fully trained Jedi knight [referring, of course, to Anakin] —to the best of us. I will not start this child down that path.”

Sheesh... EVERYTHING leads to the dark side:

Love leads to the Dark Side

The fear of loss leads to the Dark Side

Emotional attachment leads to the Dark Side

There's a lesson to be learned here with respect to COVID: Quit believing EVERYTHING leads to the "dark side" on this.

20210704_183435.jpg
 
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