Is China to blame for the Covid-19 pandemic?
- Most of us are not in the blame game for scientific precision, but to satisfy petty desires, an ideology, a personal hatred and distaste, or just blind prejudice
In times of trouble, whether personal, national or international, I often take out my old copy of Charles Kindleberger’s classic Manias, Panics and Crashes for spiritual comfort and intellectual guidance.
Ostensibly, it’s a history of financial crises, but it’s really about human nature. It seems to me especially relevant today when the world is plagued by both viral and financial contagion.
I can usually find useful lessons or parallels taken from the book on problems that life has thrown at me. I imagine that’s what the Bible or the Koran are like for other people.
Take this heated debate: China is to blame for spreading the novel coronavirus around the world – an ultimately futile but all the more acrimonious and over the top argument because the stakes involved, as Henry Kissinger used to say, are so low for those most worked up about it.
People naturally look for someone or something to blame in a crisis, whether financial, health, or otherwise. But just as Aristotle teaches us there are different kinds of causes, so Kindleberger advises people to always distinguish between causa remota and causa proxima.
He uses the example of the damp squib, a kind of firework: A throws it at B, B at C, C at D and so on, until Y throws it one last time and it explodes in Z’s face. Who’s to blame for Z’s injuries?