I feel like Mario standing in front of a lake of lava, waiting for a moving platform to come when there isn’t a fireball flying over it. The fire and lava are the coronavirus pandemic and how various governments are dealing with it. And the end of the level is my exit back to the United States. But why do I want to leave Thailand, where things are basically under control, and the only new cases are found in state quarantine, and go to America, the country with nearly one third of the world’s cases and the highest number of deaths?
Because I’m a teacher. And because I’m an American.
The pandemic gives the world a very clear view of the state of things in America. The world can now see the true soul of not just America’s clownish leadership, but the population who put him in charge. As a teacher, I see this as an opportunity. We now have under the microscope, for close examination, where education has failed Americans for a few generations.
Anti-scientific Thinking
First, many Americans are anti-science. According to YouGov, 2% of Americans believe the earth is flat. Obviously, it isn’t. A recent Gallup poll found that 11% of Americans believe that vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they prevent. And for a long time, both Climate Change Theory and the Theory of Evolution have been hotly contested issues at the center of a cultural war. If you’re a conservative, there’s a good chance you don’t believe in either.
So is it any surprise that Americans would be ignorantly skeptical of pandemic control measures like social distancing and wearing a mask? Is it any surprise that they would be willing to repeat some of Trump’s false claims about injecting disinfectant into the body or taking hydroxychloroquine, while also demanding that Dr. Fauci, the only guy making any sense of all this, has to be fired?
There are two underlying problems leading to this rampant anti-science thinking.
Critical Thinking? Or Rebellious Skepticism?
First, Americans confuse rebellious skepticism with critical thinking. The main difference between these is attitude. Critical thinking is an attempt to truly understand. When they read something, true critical thinkers say “Interesting” and then look to verify what they read in another source. They try to expand their knowledge in order to build confidence in new information.
A rebellious skeptic doesn’t care about what is true. If the information fits their current thinking, they accept it. If it goes against their current thinking, the reject it. We call this “confirmation bias,” and American discourse is rampant with it. Refusing information is only useful if the information is verifiably false. Critical thinking is only useful if it’s used to make the world better. Many Americans think that by calling CNN “fake news” or implying that doctors have an agenda in “forcing” vaccines on children, that they are being critical thinkers. But they’re really just being rebellious skeptics.
Hyper Individualism
The other problem underlying the anti-science thinking of Americans during the pandemic is hyper individualism. Individualism is the belief that the individual is the most important unit of society. Society should not tell people what to do. A person should decide for themselves what they should do. So if a man buys a house, he should decide if he wants to build a deck and how big it should be. He doesn’t like the government telling him how big his deck should be or what it is made of or anything like that.
A good way to understand hyper individualism in the United States is to compare it to Asian cultures, which are collectivist cultures. In collectivist cultures, parents tell their children what career to follow. The village tells parents how to raise their children. If a member of a family acts badly, it brings shame to the whole family, and even the whole village. It’s because of this collectivist mentality that governments in Asia tend to be more authoritarian, which means that they tell their citizens what to do, and their citizens don’t question it. “For the good of society” is good enough for the average Asian.
Americans generally believe that freedom is the most important value to protect. This is why some Americans protested lockdown orders in many states. Being told to stay at home and risk their economic security goes against the American belief in freedom.
The Freedom to Swing my Arm…
It is often said that my freedom to swing my arm ends where the other fellow’s nose begins. In other words, you can do anything you want as long as it doesn’t hurt other people.
That reasoning applies to the pandemic. We know that the coronavirus can be asymptomatic, and we know that it spreads through the air. Without a cure or vaccine, and without enough testing to know for sure who has the virus, social distancing is the only way to control the spread of the virus. We also have seen in other countries, like Italy and Spain, that too rapid a spread can lead to overcrowding of the healthcare system. In these conditions, doctors have to choose who lives or dies. Social distancing is a way to control the spread so that hospitals don’t get overcrowded, and doctors don’t have to make this horrible choice. Honoring social distancing is not an individual choice. It’s a social one. The freedom to breathe ends where the other’s mask begins.
Unfortunately, not enough Americans understand this logic because they are rebellious skeptics. They choose to reject one or more part of the social distancing logic, all because it doesn’t fit their value for freedom.
Some don’t trust the scientific community with regards to the shape of the earth or the safety of vaccines, so they also reject the warnings of the danger of the virus or the logic behind social distancing. But I think many more just don’t want to give up their freedoms, and willfully ignore the experts and look to someone who says what they want to hear. In this case, that’s Donald Trump. He doesn’t wear a mask, so why should I? He said the pandemic isn’t going to be a big threat, so why should I be worried? He says the economy should reopen, so why is my governor still ordering a lockdown? Confirmation bias from the president himself.
As a teacher, I want to teach young people how to read carefully and think critically. I want to teach them to look for information that challenges our beliefs as much as information that supports it. I want to teach them empathy, too. I want my students to know that your freedom is not more important than another person’s safety. The pandemic has revealed the weaknesses in American thinking. Once we know the weakness, we can strengthen it. That will be my job.
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