A Dangerous Dichotomy

Maybe you need to wear a mask.  Maybe you don’t.  Maybe you should stay at home and maybe not.  Maybe the government has usurped power from the people and maybe not.

We face a lot of dichotomies these days.  It’s either this or it’s that, and there are arguments on both sides.  Some chose one over another.  Some straddle the fence.  Some bounce from one side of the fence to the other and back again.

There is a dichotomy that concerns me above many others.  It is this.  Are we being defined as people or as carriers of contagion?

Are you a person, a human being?  I would say a person made in God’s image, but even among the godless, are you defined as human or simply as a carrier of contagion?

This is a lens, a paradigm, that defines so much more.  As we decide so many other things, are those decisions made for the good of people or just rules for the control of carriers of contagions?

Doing things for the health and welfare of others is a noble endeavor.  Rules and regulations to control carriers of contagion may or may not be effective but they suck the humanness out of humans.

Let us beware of the subtlety of how we are defined by the world.  It’s more than it appears at first glance.