cower inside or restart the damn economy?

There's a lot of fear out there, a lot of cowardice, despite what we now know is a disease that isn't all that deadly. Yes, it's highly contagious, but we're building up the much-vaunted herd immunity, and it's about fucking time we got the economic engine grinding back to life again. By "we," I really mean you, my fellow Americans in the States. I'm here in South Korea, where the economy took a hit in several sectors (hospitality, entertainment, public-school and university education, etc.), but is otherwise chugging along. In March, I had to endure three days' mandatory leave, but that's been about it for my company (which is half school, half publishing house). Work life is normal, and so is my walking life, except whenever the government closes down the Yangjae Creek for no obvious reason. Aside from that, I remain pleasantly surprised that the current leftist government has administered the nation with such a light touch. Maybe I need to be made aware of all the ways in which the Moon administration has strangled the economy, but from where I stand, I'm just not seeing it. Traffic is more or less normal; subways are crowded (which does make me nervous, I admit); restaurants are full with shoulder-to-shoulder clientele. I think I heard that churches are tentatively creeping back into normal worship mode, but with much mask-wearing and at least some token efforts at social distancing. Korea has barely been bloodied by the pandemic, and it's definitely unbowed. The US, by comparison, seems to be a confused mess.

Sure: part of that mess comes from the fact that President Trump took the federalist route and decided to let each state's government decide for itself how best to handle the pandemic. But as I was discussing the problem with my buddy Mike this past weekend, I thought about how astounding it was that there are cities with stores that have empty shelves. What the fuck is this, the Soviet Union? People don't have the brains or the will to maintain a supply chain? Mike patiently explained some of the issues as best he could, but I still couldn't fathom things like the utterly irrational run on toilet paper—surely the modern version of the old Tulip Craze from centuries ago: a collective insanity that may have been stoked, in large part, by both the mainstream media and the public's stupid trust in them, even though the media have repeatedly proven untrustworthy since 2016, if not before. Here again is evidence of rampant idiocy in the population: did you morons learn nothing after all the media lying in 2016?

I was just rereading some literature about the anthropological notion of high-trust and low-trust cultures. Experts normally make a contrast between, say, South Korea and the US by asserting that the US is an example of a high-trust culture, and South Korea is an example of a low-trust culture. High-trust cultures prioritize guilt (a private emotion linked to one's conscience, determining how one behaves even when no one is looking) over shame (a public emotion that links one's self-esteem to how others see one; Asian and Middle Eastern notions of "honor" are a function of shame); they also cleave to concepts like rule of law and objective truth. Low-trust cultures are clannish and collectivist, usually centering on family (witness how Korean conglomerates are rife with nepotism and cronyism; they aren't meritocracies because that would require a more objective measure of worth); the default assumption, in such societies, is that every stranger is out to fuck you over. There is no "benefit of the doubt" when evaluating strangers, mainly because there's no assumption that the law has any force when it comes to interpersonal interactions. In a low-trust culture, personal connections have force; the law is a mere background abstraction. Meanwhile, everyone is on his or her guard. I'm not inclined to be an instinctively suspicious person, but because that disposition basically makes me a sucker in Korean society, I've learned to adopt a far more circumspect, cynical worldview. I'm not a total convert to the Korean way of thinking, but I'm farther along the spectrum than I used to be.

It's obvious to me now, however, that this pandemic is laying bare the fact that the US is deteriorating into a low-trust culture. How else to explain all the irrational grabbiness, disgusting selfishness, and thieving opportunism on display these days? Trust, as a social value, is evaporating. The country is, more and more, a lumped-together ensemble of disparate tribes that share few if any values and feel no loyalty toward or trust in each other. And that's sad. Part of this may be because recent waves of immigrants have heard the siren song of leftism's "our government will give you everything" chant (look at what's happening in the UK: some documentaries show immigrant Muslim families—which are making zero effort to assimilate into the surrounding culture—living quite well on the government dole while actively and shamelessly avoiding real work). Part of this may be the limp-wristed way in which the right has tried to handle the demographic shift in the States, mainly by knuckling under to political correctness and the fear of being called a bigot. Pockets of rightie resistance are out there, and there's a thriving alt-media presence (that isn't composed only of righties, by the way), but it's not enough, I think, to stop the overall slide from high-trust to low-trust culture. It won't be long before America is almost totally the land of the bunker mentality.

The ultimate incarnation of low-trust society is the doomsday prepper. Well stocked with goods he has no intention of sharing, and armed to the teeth so as to face all strangers from a position of deadly strength, the prepper trusts no one except maybe his own family and best friends (sound familiar? do you hear echoes of nepotism and cronyism?). While I can see a certain wisdom in being ready for major catastrophes and the possible dissolution of the social order, I can't imagine a whole nation of preppers. The essential character of a prepper is averse to any sort of grandiose social organization; if anything, preppers are closer in spirit to anarchists: every man for himself, and fuck the rest. Is this ultimately where the country is headed? Total balkanization? I shudder at the thought.

Here's my formula for a healthy country. (Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments; I'm sure to have missed many things.) A libertarian's absolute respect for personal freedom and responsibility would be a core value in my ideal nation. Coupled to that would be a strong prioritization of the individual over the collective. The citizens of my country would operate as a pack, not as a hive mind. Rule of law would be in force because the law would be seen as an objective force to which all are subject. Implied in the aforementioned libertarian stance would be all the rights granted under the Bill of Rights. Government would be democratic in spirit, even if it ends up being a republic in practice. Freedom of speech would be paramount, with the central assumption that freedom of speech exists precisely to protect those who say things that offend, and absolutely no one would have the disgusting, immoral "right not to be offended." Diversity of opinion would always be of far more value than diversity of demographic (e.g., race, sex, religion, political leaning, etc.). There would be no prioritizing the latter over the former—ever. The dynamic tension resulting from the constant push-pull of conflicting ideas is part of what contributes to a country's health. Corollary: along with free speech would come the free exchange of ideas, including ideas that are unpalatable to some or to many. Whether those ideas persist will be a matter of holding them up in public forums and debating their merits in the manner of civilized people. Education would be a core value, but not merely "book smarts." Airy-fairy intellectuals have done enough damage to entire civilizations by leading whole masses of people down stupid and self-destructive paths. Education would include far more than book learning, and there would be a collective cultivation of that exceedingly rare commodity: common sense. Economically speaking, the free market would reign supreme, the role of government would be minimal, and maximal trust would be placed, by an act of faith, in the hands of an often-fractious but nearly always sincere citizenry. A healthy country would have a deep and proud sense of history; it would also openly acknowledge its mistakes and attempt, where possible, to redress its sins, or at least to learn from them. This ideal nation would also be about the business of envisioning the future—not the clinically delineated future mapped out by a small group of oligarch-intellectuals, but a grandiose, inspiring, compelling, and optimistic future mapped out noisily and contentiously by a throng of people who stand upon the past but look to the stars, and to all the frontiers that lie ahead. Implied in all of this is that my ideal healthy country would indeed be a high-trust culture, one that leans more toward guilt than toward shame. Shame is what the criminal feels only when he's been caught; any number of filthy, conscienceless politicians might feel shame in the midst of scandal, but I count that as no virtue at all. Guilt, though, is a function of that still, small voice that guides a person toward virtuous conduct because that person desires to manifest her best self. And it goes without saying that a nation of best selves is a healthy nation, indeed.

What I've described above is, in reality, a mess. There's nothing truly ideal about it. And that's kind of the point: an ideal system isn't apodictic: it's not composed of clean, geometric lines and shot through with beautiful, mathematical symmetry. It's as loud, chaotic, and organic as a farmer's market, but it's undergirded by a sparse network of powerful mutual understandings: the core values that keep the whole enterprise afloat. A society is a network of relationships, and all relationships must be built on a foundation of trust if they are to survive longer than just a couple centuries. Are we up to this task? Unfortunately, right now, I think the answer is no. But maybe this pandemic crisis will prove to be a crucible out of which an annealed America will emerge. Stranger things have happened. Let's start the annealing by reopening the goddamn economy.