Who wouldnt break a teeny rule A tiptoe through the moral minefield of lockdown
Right after a Herald photographer arrived to photograph our family for a story on home-schooling, the heavens threatened to pour. Iâd already been briefed on COVID-safe procedure: the photographer would shoot from outside our apartment. The balcony was our only shot but the rain was going to ruin the photo op.
I knew the current restrictions but found myself asking: did she want to come in to take the photo? The rationalisations were at the ready: sheâd come all this way, weâd keep our distance, itâd just be a minute. At least the photographer followed the rules. I was prepared to bend them.
Lockdown lesson ... Justine Toh and Vaughan Olliffe are home-schooling their children, Caleb, 5, left, and Rhys, 7, in their small Sydney apartment.Credit:Janie Barrett
Perhaps this is why weâre struggling to suppress the current Delta outbreak. Like me, plenty have been blasé about the rules, and often for far worthier reasons. âHeâs lonely, weâll just pop in.â âThatâs too much to carry. Iâll give you a lift.â Thatâs before we get to the hard choice facing casual workers: stay home or get paid.
Granted, the regulations have been somewhat hazy and Premier Gladys Berejiklian has mostly favoured a gospel of self-responsibility â" rallying us to do the right thing. But itâs too easy to make our individual circumstances the exception to the rule. Whatever our political views, we believe weâre free to do what we want so long as we donât hurt others. This assumes we can predict the consequences of our actions. Even those we donât intend.
Who knows if those removalists who ferried COVID into regional NSW also passed the virus on to their mother â" now deceased? In any case, her tragic death was just as unintended as every other COVID death.
While itâs easy to blame obvious rule-breakers, letâs not overlook our own interpretations of current restrictions, whether well-intentioned or self-interested. Even if our indiscretions never attract the glare of the national spotlight.
In their book Connected, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler grapple with the huge influence we have on our communities. Apparently, we sway each otherâs happiness, voting patterns, even our weight. But we donât just catch each otherâs habits. Connected may pre-date the pandemic, but its studies of network âcontagionâ seem especially grim amid this highly contagious variant.
Lockdown reminds us that weâre all players in a moral drama and watching the consequences of our actions, intended or not, unfold in real time. Love your neighbour, Jesus said. You donât have to be Christian to see the wisdom of his words. The pandemic reveals the welfare of others â" even unknown others â" is a necessary limit on our freedom.
I need to learn this as much as anyone else. But lockdown means Iâm not going anywhere. Thereâll be plenty of time for the lesson to sink in.
Justine Toh is senior fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity.
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