So, the most recent Coronavirus conversation seems to be about whether it makes sense to continue to throttle our economy, potentially causing a major recession (which would have serious, even potentially deadly consequences), or if we should instead let the disease run its course, even if it costs some people their lives. Some people hint, and some outright say that we have to acknowledge that the fact that it’s the elderly who will suffer the most makes this a somewhat more acceptable compromise to think about making. Most aren’t this blunt (or heartless) but here’s a tweet I saw this morning which sums it up in about as cold-blooded a way as I can imagine:
I immediately thought about a favorite teaching from my favorite rabbi, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. In his essay, “To Grow in Wisdom,” Heschel makes a point which is so powerfully obvious that I couldn’t believe I had never thought of it before I read it*.
* Heschel is especially good at making these kinds of should-have-been-obvious points. It’s one of the many things I love about his writing.
Trying to define the worth of human being by his or her contributions to society, or productivity, or anything of the sort, is ridiculous. People are not valuable because of what they can add to society. People are valuable because they are people. Period. End of discussion. That’s what it means we say that people are created in the image of God — that each one of us has infinite value simply because we are.
It really is a fabulous essay, and it’s available in a couple of anthologies of his (I couldn’t find the text of the essay online, although it may be out there somewhere). I could quote from it for pages, probably, but let me just offer one snippet:
Just as the grandeur of the sun or an oak tree is not reducible to the functions fulfills, so is the grandeur of a human life not reducible to the needs it is capable of satisfying.
Look, the question of how much damage we can allow to our economy and society, compared to how many lives it might save is actually a terribly difficult one. Probably no one would argue that we should throw ourselves back into a full depression (which would cost many lives in its own way) in order to save one life. And no one would argue that it wouldn’t be worth a 1% drop in the Dow in order to save 1 million lives. Trying to find that middle point between those two extremes is where it gets tricky, and I wouldn’t blame anyone for being willing to have that difficult, awful conversation.
But, if you start implying (or saying) that we shouldn’t really worry about old people because they aren’t “productive enough,” then it is possible that your Capitalism has become your idol. God forbid.
Tehom El Tehom 