(no subject)
This weekend's biggest accomplishment was managing to survive the heat. It's now 73 F (just under 23 C) and past midnight on one of the coolest days we've had in a week and change. Most days it gets to 87-88 F / 31 C if not higher. That's not totally unreasonable for July I guess, but there's a reason why areas where it's regularly that high have central AC. The South will probably be worse, I'm sure, but they're built for it.
I have figured a somewhat decent way to get as cool as I can. Smart clothing choices, yes, and short periods in the bathroom running the shower on cool (think like a sauna but cool). Smart dietary choices, avoiding the oven and all that; I'm an old hat at all that. But I think I've finally worked out how to use one of those cooling fans with the ice-water reservoir on top. You can definitely feel the diffrence if you hold your fan right in front of it, but the word "fan" is a true misnomer. There's just no force to the air blowing out and it reaches maybe three inches. But I've found if I put another fan at angles to the cooling one so it kind of "catches" the cool air and blows it over to me. It works. Sort of; certainly better than the alternative. But it takes such careful placement and staying in one specific spot and only in a certain part of the apartment, it's hard not to escape the thought of it simply being too hot to be allowed being my focus all the time. It's less miserable, certainly, but certainly not a headspace conducive to doint much of anything else.
I did read an article from several months ago, about a public health spokesman who was raked over the coals for going out to dinner with friends maskless. It was talking about what it called mismoralization: basically blaming victims of a disease for whatever risky behvior got them sick, rather than the institutional aspects (but without an individual to blame) that had a much bigger impact on public health. And there was this specific statement they used: that there's nothing right or wrong about going out with friends without masks every once in a while, or having sex once without a condom (they were drawing an analogy with the public response to AIDS).
That fascinated me, because with my philosopher's hat on, I'd say there absolutely is something immoral about both those things. Very few things aren't right or wrong at all, there's almost always some good thing that our choices won't bring us nearer or further from. It may be so minor it's better to let people make whatever choice they want, and I think in the long run we lead better lives by not being so rule-focused and sweating over every decision. We risk turning ourselves into Doug Forcett's (for those of you who know The Good Place). And definitely, I think asking why someone got sick and turning it into a character assessment is missing the point in a big way, and also letting those truly responsible off the hook. COVID is less about selfish people going around maskless once every so often, and more about lack of preparedness, lack of support so people had the means to socially distance adequately, all of that.
Still. To say our choices there are totally disconnected from right and wrong is just an odd thought to me as a philosopher. Clearly some choices are more moral than others. But I think from a psychological or sociological perspective, the article was really on to something, because if you make right and wrong too onerous it loses its ability to get people to act responsibly. It's the difference between identifying what's right or wrong, which is the work of philosophy, and motivating them to actually do it. Mostly I came away thinking there's such a difference between how I approach these questions and how people with a different focus do. I still think I was right, that it's sloppy and inaccurate to say right and wrong don't apply just because it's counterproductive to focus on those questions. But also it left me feeling very much like an odd duck for approaching things so literally.
That's the most of thinking or doing or anything along those lines I've managed this weekend, beyond "too hot; hot damn" or some variant. First and foremost I'm the live version of that Simpsons gif with the fan; or would be if there were more of me.
