You Must Obey!

There follows a guest post by retired dentist Dr Mark Shaw.

At school I remember the best teachers. More so when I look back from the benefit of experience in judging who to trust.

There are some teachers, leaders or rulers who are prepared to give the time and the respect to answer the most seemingly dumb or obvious questions with an open mind and from the viewpoint of understanding that the individual concerned wishes to learn and hopefully, as a consequence, make the right decisions in life.

A bad educator might respond to a person lacking experience or certain knowledge with impatience and a ticking off for asking ‘such a silly question’. But in my school days I look back and remember that some of the questions young children were asking were actually brilliant.

Likewise, a bad teacher or ruler may provide an answer that is either black or white or an answer that is definitive and not open to question. Time has told us that many of the so-called facts that we once learned turn out to be wrong or not as clear-cut as we thought. So a heavy dose of humility and acceptance of human ‘expert’ ignorance is a fine thing and I guess it is why the great philosopher Socrates said “A wise person understands that he knows nothing”.

What we could do with seeing and hearing on mainstream media is that, despite our incredible achievements, we humans are merely tinkerers or dabblers in the grand scheme of things. As humans we cannot make a single human cell from the basic elements. We can use stem cells, we can clone or culture biological tissue to produce more of the same. But give scientists all the basic ingredients that make human life and ask them to make one ‘simple’ skin cell from scratch and they will be stumped. Making an organ? Never in a million years. And getting organs to function in the mind-boggling harmony that it does (in what physiologists terms ‘homeostasis’) should make all of us question our attitude that we know how to control and medicate our way to health beyond what has already been provided in the process of natural development.

This process of natural development, though fallible, always seems to win out in the broadest way in the end. We may now be able to build from scratch the most sophisticated robot that a few years ago might have seemed impossible but a human being is infinitely and more bewilderingly complicated. So we should be honest about this and tell the public, with regard to tackling an airborne virus, that there is infinitely more we don’t know than we do actually know. Any action taken that is different from the ways we used to tackle such issues have unknown consequences, some or many of which may make things worse – how much worse, we do not know. Actions that we used to take like staying at home to recover when ill and doing our best to prevent such illnesses through exercise and diet was the simple, common sense approach. Ensuring we had adequate healthcare staffing, isolation wards and surplus provision for viral outbreaks and emergencies another.

So when I listen to politicians and their expert advisors dictate and instruct in the way that has been all too familiar in the last two years it only confirms my suspicion that they may have made catastrophically bad decisions.

“There is no debate,” they seem to say. “You are to follow these lockdown measures and have this medication because it is obviously good for you and there is little or no more to discuss so don’t ask any silly questions or be in any way sceptical. And do as you are told. You really ought to be sensible and obey. I’m sorry but if you decide not to conform you will be severely punished.”

This is the way, with the benefit of some experience in observing bad teachers, I believe the current rulers and their expert advisors are acting. But then again I could be wrong.