Monday, May 4, 2020

Social Distancing in a Free Society

I've seen a few things today where people (prominent voices, not simply people like me) have been pouring doubt on the science behind the two metre rule. Stating that there's no real science behind it, and that about a metre is probably more appropriate

This chimes quite neatly with something I've been thinking about in relation to all this. Namely the way that humans, polite humans that is, normally give other people a degree of personal space. This is normal behaviour in most civilised societies and I would suspect that perhaps it has its origins deep in nature itself. No doubt predominantly stemming from our need to protect ourselves from physical harm, but maybe also to protect us from the germs of others when we're out and about and interacting.

I wouldn't like to put a specific distance on what exactly "personal space" is, but I guess a metre would be a decent approximation. In fact, thinking about it I'd probably say "arm's length" would be a better measure, which is a bit less (unless you've got very long arms), but still close enough. So if we all just behave naturally, and chastise the few impolite people who don't respect the personal space of others, then we should be fine. Without the need for a formal rule dictating the behaviour that we're already practising anyway.

💓 ...however 💓

There is a flip side to all this ..and that's when we want someone to be in our personal space. Crazily we're now living in a time where it's pretty much illegal for two people not from the same household to hold hands with each other. Think about that. What sort of world is this where two lovers cannot hold hands with each other? Especially two perfectly healthy, otherwise law-abiding lovers.

Without wanting to get too corny here I think this goes to the heart (get it) of the matter. Surely if two consenting adults want to share their body space with each other no government in the world should ever be coming between that.

Of course, it also means that two people can't come together to create life. So in the supposed pursuit of stopping death we've brought to a halt the very thing that leads to life. How many births have not happened thanks to this? How many people destined to be together remain separated. It's not too hard to imagine some Romeo and Juliet type story where the two protagonists are separated by decree. Un-fair Corona.

Ironically if governments started banning people with sexual diseases from having sex for fear of spreading those viruses then I'm sure the same people demanding lock down would be outraged. In fact, if they even started advising that people avoid people who have sexual diseases there'd be outrage. Now again, I'm totally in favour of personal choice and would never espouse such a sentiment. However, we currently have a situation where a consenting adult can choose to have sex with someone with a serious sexual disease (assuming they're living in the same household at the moment of course lol). Yet a grandparent can't hug their perfectly healthy grandchild on the off-chance that they may have a flu virus. It's a bit insane.

We're on a very slippery slope at the moment, and anyone reading this that finds the idea of governments deciding who does and doesn't have sex terrible, yet thinks the corona measures are somehow justifiable. Then they might want to reconsider things. As once this precedent is truly set things will no doubt head in a direction where governments do indeed dictate the sexual and reproduction options of the individual.

Choose liberty.

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