Be decent with one another
- Reading a classic like Albert Camus’ The Plague has reminded me of the importance of acknowledging that everyone is fighting their own personal battles in these trying times
Recently, I finished Albert Camus’ The Plague, for obvious reasons. While it’s supposed to be an allegory about Nazi-occupied France, it has many interesting things to say about actual epidemics, or rather how people behave in such situations.
“Why should they have thought about the plague, which negates the future, negates journeys and debates?”
Strangely, that helps me understand the behaviour of some of the most indecisive world leaders today.
While we expect our politicians to anticipate problems and solve them when they arise, most of them are just like us.
They are creatures of habit and hate to adjust and change until it’s too late. Trapped in their own heads, many mistake their own preconceptions for realities.
But with rapidly rising death tolls, he has finally acknowledged the severity of the crisis. At least for Trump and all the president’s men, there is always China to blame if anything goes wrong in America.
Against the advice of his own health ministry, he has refused to impose lockdowns and has even discouraged self-isolation, except for the elderly.
Now I don’t want to be too judgemental about anyone any more, as we are all living through this “plague”. Maybe the best each of us can do is to be a little like the civil servant, Monsieur Grand, in the novel: “This insignificant and self-effacing hero who had nothing to recommend him but a little goodness in his heart.”
As Camus wrote: “It may seem a ridiculous idea, but the only way to fight the plague is with decency.”
