Human Evolution, and a Humanist Response to Crisis

Human Evolution, and a Humanist Response to Crisis

Final Report by Jessica Carlan

The current epidemic has been on all of our minds, and I think it's worth investigating the human response to this crisis. In the light of evolutionary biology, we know that the human species has evolved to become social creatures: we feed on the knowledge of those who came before us, and we easily mimic one another's actions and beliefs, often unconsciously. Thus, when we see toilet paper disappear off store shelves, we receive signals such as Must Acquire Paper Products For Safety Purposes. As much as we differ as individuals , in some ways we are simply wired to be a member of the herd. 

The herd mentality doesn't always work to our benefit. In the midst of a crisis, we desire to have a modicum of control over our lives. An invisible killer that can destroy our immune systems? We have very little control over such things. The best thing we can do is keep apart from people and wash our hands. But those measures don't seem drastic enough. Need Toilet Paper. Must Hoard Groceries. Five Hundred Cans of Lysol. And Gummy Bears, Just In Case, Because They Are By The Register. We respond to subtle suggestions, and much more so to not-so-subtle ones. When we began to see more people wearing masks, we bought them for ourselves. People who hadn't gotten the sewing machine out of the attic for years starting frantically sewing masks for themselves and everyone they knew. My grandmother even gave out extras at the doctor's office. We humans truly are social animals--there was no expectation that she should do something generous for those strangers. However, in times of crisis, we understand that mutual support is better than in-fighting. We play the long game to protect each other, and thus ourselves, like honeybees defending the hive. At the same time, we may do irrational things like load up on unnecessary supplies, even though it could be detrimental to our neighbors. It's as if our brains have evolved in multiple directions at once. We are both stingy and charitable; depending on the situation, either behavior may prove to be an advantage for the individual.

I overheard at the grocery store one night in March: a woman talking to her friend about another woman shopping: "Look at her with them gloves and mask, wiping down the cart, scared, but I'm sure she ain't got Jesus. How you think all that gonna help you without Jesus? Ain't none of that gonna help nobody if they ain't got Jesus."

This has been an interesting phenomenon to observe. We've seen churchgoers on TV ignoring calls to worship from home, and heading to big church services instead. On MSNBC one morning, watching with my roommates, I saw a woman leaving her megachurch parking lot, sans mask, and apparently unconcerned. "I'm covered in the blood of Jesus," she said to the news reporter. 

"But what about other people you come into contact with?" the reporter asks her. "What if you get them sick after getting the virus in church?" 

She didn't have a good response for that, just reiterated that she was covered. Presumably, the other people she's putting at risk should get their hearts right.

As recently as last week, a family member urged me to read the New Testament again. "It may help you see the truth," she said. She often forgets that in my younger days I attended Bible college. 

My typical response is to remind her I know all the "right" things, according to her view. I have the theology down. What I don't have is an answer for the problem of evil. 

"Why would God allow thousands of people to die from a virus?"

There's never a satisfactory answer. Still, some try.

If God, Why the Coronavirus? -Vince Vitale

In a YouTube search for atheism, Covid 19 and evolution, most of what I found was like the above: a theistic apologist attempting to explain the bizarre events of biological life with trite aphorisms. He says that God doesn't enjoy watching us suffer. The speaker uses the real-life analogy of taking his young son to get medical tests. The boy doesn't understand what's happening to him. All the father can do is say, "I'm here, I'm here," to reassure him.

This isn't an argument so much as a tug on the heartstrings. In this scenario, the boy's discomfort is not terminal, and serves an actual purpose. He has a heart problem and needs to be examined. Is a novel coronavirus God's way of checking on our lung health? It is highly unlikely that respiratory failures, lost jobs, recession and collective trauma will be better for us in the long run, as the boy's heart testing would benefit his health treatment. Besides, if the boy's father was the one who allowed him to become sick when it could have prevented, as God perhaps could have done, his reassurances would not be very reassuring.

from Why Overreacting to the Threat of the Coronavirus May Be Rational by Belinda Luscombe 

https://time.com/5801010/coronavirus-overreaction/

"Our guts are way ahead of our understanding,” [risk-communications consultant Peter] Sandman tells TIME. “Emotionally, we rightly sense that life as we know it has temporarily changed. But intellectually and behaviorally, the change hasn’t sunk in yet.” And in an era of eroding trust in traditional oracles—the media, the government, the medical profession—people are not sure who to turn to. So they do what most creatures do when they’re afraid and confused; they copy what everyone else like them is doing. At base, we are herd animals; if all our fellow gazelles are running one way, we run that way too, to insulate us from the hazard. When traditional institutions cease to seem trustworthy, people rely on those they do trust, their neighbors and friends.As a species, humans have survived by bullying their way to the top of the food chain, by outwitting predators and by being ingenious enough to withstand disasters. Also, evolutionary psychologists and sacred texts both say, we’ve thrived by communicating and working together. The species looks likely to withstand this novel threat as well, but perhaps at some cost to our common sense.

A mistrust of government institutions, a medical system with many flaws and inconsistencies, and the tendency to trust false information we hear from our neighbors can all contribute to poor decision-making. One of the "traditional oracles" not mentioned above is religious instruction. Luscombe kindly includes sacred texts as a way to build community and strengthen human bonds; however, as we see in some real life scenarios, religious teachings can encourage people not to be cautious. Thankfully most places of worship have remained closed, and switched to online meetings or other formats. My relatives, for example, were encouraged to "trust God but be smart." Thus, they hand out their extra masks, and go home to make more until they run out of elastic and fabric.

There are other community responses that offer a different perspective. For example, journalists and progressive politicians are using the crisis to point out the disparities in disease treatment and showing the flaws in our fractured healthcare system. A Medicare For All solution, they say, or a government plan to pay for all COVID 19 treatment, would go a long way in helping reduce the spread of the disease and mortality rates. Many people wait until the last possible minute to seek treatment, when it is more difficult and dangerous to try to save them. With fewer difficulties in accessing hospitals (such as in rural or impoverished areas) and getting treatment, there would be fewer virus fatalities. 

from Why Some People Get Sicker Than Others:

COVID-19 is proving to be a disease of the immune system. This could, in theory, be controlled. 

by James Hamblin

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/coronavirus-immune-response/610228/

While America’s deepest health disparities absolutely would require generations to undo, the country still could address many gaps right now. Variation in immune responses between people is due to much more than age or chronic disease. The immune system is a function of the communities that brought us up and the environments with which we interact every day. Its foundation is laid by genetics and early-life exposure to the world around us—from the food we eat to the air we breathe. Its response varies on the basis of income, housing, jobs, and access to health care.

The people who get the most severely sick from COVID-19 will sometimes be unpredictable, but in many cases, they will not. They will be the same people who get sick from most every other cause. Cytokines like IL-6 [proven to be connected with COVID-19 symptoms] can be elevated by a single night of bad sleep. Over the course of a lifetime, the effects of daily and hourly stressors accumulate. Ultimately, people who are unable to take time off of work when sick—or who don’t have a comfortable and quiet home, or who lack access to good food and clean air—are likely to bear the burden of severe disease...

Often, it’s a matter of what societies choose to tolerate. America has empty hotels while people sleep in parking lots. We are destroying food while people go hungry. We are allowing individuals to endure the physiological stresses of financial catastrophe while bailing out corporations. With the coronavirus, we do not have vulnerable populations so much as we have vulnerabilities as a population. Our immune system is not strong.

Hamblin points out that our trouble is not individuals within the community, but our existing social structures which create problems with COVID treatment. We have "vulnerabilities as a population" that show us we still have much work to do to create a more equitable society. For many people, staying home and away from danger is impossible. 

The current White House Administration has proven haphazard in its approach to the outbreak. Much more could have been done much earlier to help quell the rise of infections. However, some of the responses have been not only short-sighted, but alarming. 

from Trump Administration to Redirect WHO Funding to Evangelist Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse, Putting Lives at Risk

by American Atheists

https://www.atheists.org/2020/04/world-health-organization-franklin-graham-samaritans-purse/

Washington, D.C.—Today, the church/state separation watchdog organization American Atheists denounced the Trump Administration’s alleged plan to steer nearly $400 million in World Health Organization (WHO) contributions to private organizations, including Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse.

“WHO conducts coronavirus vaccine trials, distributes test kits, and advises countless governments. A divisive Christian organization whose leader claims this pandemic is due to ‘man turn[ing] his back on God’ cannot be trusted to replace WHO’s critical mission,” said Alison Gill, Vice President for Legal and Policy, who wrote a scathing indictment of Samaritan’s Purse, warning about discrimination against vulnerable groups, such as women, LGBTQ Americans, religious minorities, and nonreligious people.

“Let’s be clear about Trump’s motives,” said Nick Fish, President of American Atheists. “To improve his reelection chances, he’s scapegoating WHO and is rewarding his most ardent evangelical supporters, like Franklin Graham, for literally demonizing opponents. This is a dangerous quid-pro-quo involving hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding and, more importantly, thousands of American lives.”

The American Atheists are a group dedicated to promoting the separation of church and state in the U.S. Often this line is blurred, particularly during conservative presidencies. Events such as the National Prayer Breakfast and the National Day of Prayer observed in schools, as well as tax breaks for religious institutions, can make for a strange landscape in our politics. However expected these inconsistencies may be, the act of withdrawing funding from the World Health Organization during a global pandemic to be funneled into a religious organization is not only hyper-partisan, but appalling and dangerous. The administration, perhaps, feels they have something to prove to their constituents. However, our immediate concerns are more pressing. This is a time for the nations of the world to be rallying together to fight a deadly disease. 

I find myself wondering what the appropriate Humanist response would be to this crisis. Clearly, to protect the vulnerable is a moral imperative. I will stay home when possible, wear a mask, keep my distance, wash my hands, offer assistance wherever I can. But I also believe that when the worst of this is over, we will have a lot of soul-searching to do. What are our priorities as human beings? 

The secular humanist believes in promoting the welfare of his fellow humans. This may look different among individuals, but on a large scale, at the very least we should be pushing for a society that can look after its citizens, and is also willing to do so. The American concept of individual liberty and pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps only works if everyone has a pair of boots to begin with. The attitude shown by some, with cries of "Let the weak perish!" only serves to remind us of how calloused humanity can become to its own kind. We show our true quality when we are willing to sacrifice the old, the weak, and the immuno-compromised for the convenience of the capable. Our society has still to overcome to evils of racism, classism, and ableism to evolve into the kind of creatures we out to be. To be less like praying mantises, beheading our rivals, and more collaborative like the honeybee, will, I believe, be the next necessary step in human evolution if we wish to continue living fruitful and meaningful lives on our planet. 

Thanks for a great semester, everyone.

Here is some housekeeping:

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I believe I scored about 18 runs for the semester.