The Man With The Gun

I posted the following hypothetical on Twitter, and the responses did not disappoint:

A few people speculated that the post was about vaccines, which it was not (at least not specifically). and others wondered why the guy didn’t just do the jumping jacks to save the waiter’s life.

But nowhere in the hypothetical does it say the gunman won’t just kill him anyway if you do what he says. To think it makes any difference whether you do the jumping jacks, you have to believe simultaneously that the gunman is capable of killing a person for no reason, yet still a man of his word. That for him killing the waiter is fine, but misleading you is beyond the pale.

Even so, people wondered why the guy didn’t just do the damn jumping jacks — I mean in the unlikely event this heartless murderer was a man of his word, maybe you could have saved the waiter’s life!

Another thing the hypothetical doesn’t imply is that the man with the gun, after seeing you comply with his request, will either relinquish it or leave the restaurant. In other words, even if you do the jumping jacks, and miraculously he is a man of his word, he still has the gun, and next thing you know he might ask you to do 10 pushups, maybe some squats and leg raises too. The man is still there, he still has the gun, and if for God knows what reason it is important to him to force you to exercise, it follows that the jumping jacks are unlikely to be his final request.

I also found it telling that people blamed the guy who refused to do the jumping jacks at all — he was merely at a restaurant eating his meal when a gunman burst in and killed someone for no reason. Any fair apportionment of responsibility for the waiter’s murder falls solely on the gunman, and not on the guy who refused to jump through an arbitrary and pointless hoop the gunman set up at his whim.

But one’s response to this hypothetical is a good indication of how one relates to power. The people who intuitively know might does not make right realize the gunman is the only violent actor and solely responsible for the shooting. But some have learned to be careful — run afoul of the powerful, and there will be consequences. To them, the gunman is an immovable and terrifying fact, and it is up to the guy to do the damn jumping jacks. That he does not do this simple act is unthinkable, and hence they see it as contributing to the waiter’s death. Going along with the will of the powerful is the best option, and those who rock the boat are merely making trouble for everyone. They prefer to keep their heads down, hope it passes, so that no one will get shot.

If someone does rock the boat, the careful, being unable to face the terrifying prospect of taking on power, will turn on the boat-rocker who they will see as the problem, the person making it worse for everyone, even though he is only the ostensible trigger — and never the actual cause — of the powerful person’s oppressive responses.

Even if the careful prevail in getting everyone to go along, as we established above, there is no basis for believing the gunman will be satisfied with jumping jacks, which are a pointless and arbitrary request that only serves as a precedent — that when he asks, you comply. It’s possible he will run out of uses for you — not necessarily a good thing given his proclivity for murder — but until he does, you can rest assured there will be further asks.

I brought up the hypothetical because after “three weeks to flatten the curve” something that did not seem arbitrary at the time, there has been ask after ask, and it’s become increasingly clear to me the asks are unlikely to end on their own. Zero COVID is not possible for what’s almost certainly an endemic virus, there are plans for digital movement licenses, and if cases tick up according to their latest benchmark/criterion, I would expect to see calls for renewed lockdowns in the fall. And that’s not even counting the usual — and often deadly — seasonal non-COVID respiratory viruses that can also be fear-mongered if we micro-track their spread in a similar manner.

The root of the problem is we did not take the gun away from the gunman in exchange for our jumping jacks, and while at one time, public health might have been the central aim, that phase has long passed, and pandemic measures — and even pandemic-specific rituals and behaviors — have congealed into a semi-permanent ecosystem. The gunman has made himself at home in the restaurant and has some of the patrons cooking his meals and washing his dishes, a few of whom are getting paid handsomely for their trouble.

There is only one thing that could end this hostage situation, and that’s to do what the man in the hypothetical did — decline his request. If he wants to shoot the waiter, that’s up to him — chances are he’s bluffing, and in any event, he was free to shoot the waiter at any point, no matter what we did. Once we stop fearing the gun, we can avail ourselves of whatever measures we deem necessary, including vaccines, medicines, masks or nothing at all. We are free to stay home, or go out, according to our own risk tolerance, and we will live with the consequences like free people always have.