What Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air” Can Teach Us About the COVID-19 Pandemic and Why We May Be Doomed to Repeat It Leigh E. Rich Abstract Book chapter for the edited volume The Twenty-First Century and Its Discontents examining the novel coronavirus pandemic and the U.S. response through the lens of Jon Krakauer’s 1996 book, […]
The bureaucratization of dehumanization is nothing new. Examples can be found in many eras and places and during both wartime and peace. Modern warfare, however, has meant innovations in the techniques of killing as well as the “framing” of those being killed, whether accomplished by separating the act through distance or technology or training soldiers (and the public) to “see” the enemy differently. The U.K. anthology series Black Mirror revisits this question in an episode titled “Men Against Fire,” a direct reference to S.L.A. Marshall’s controversial 1947 book of the same name, Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command. Marshall observed the battlefield as a lonely and traumatic place and portrayed this isolation—and an individual’s moral upbringing—for soldiers’ hesitancy to fire on an enemy, even when ordered or in danger of losing their own lives. What was needed, according to Marshall, were “well-trained foot soldiers” freed from such burdens. While bureaucratic techniques that dehumanize or obscure the Other can be particularly “useful” in war, they are perhaps more insidious beyond the bounds of war. Primary examples include Jim Crow and eugenics, with reverberations of both still felt today. Examining the Black Mirror episode, not in relation to war or Marshall but when men are not “against fire,” sheds light on why health disparities and other inequities persist and the need for movements like Black Lives Matter or new waves of feminism. In civil society, the “problem of battle command” has been understood by certain policymakers and powerbrokers as a hesitancy to limit safety nets (“entitlements”) or reproductive and civil freedoms of the “undeserving” in the name of protecting the financial and corporeal health of the social body. Viewing “Men Against Fire” through examples such as eugenic thinking reveals how discriminatory rhetoric against poor, minority, and other stigmatized populations has lingered during peacetime through the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. Unlike Marshall’s conclusion, the answer to ending such policies and practices is rooted not in overcoming a sense of morality but engaging in it.
“What are the consequences of a digitally-created society in the psyche of the global community?” By Leigh E. Rich, Michael A. Ashby, and David M. Shaw [V]isibility is central to the shaping of political, medical, and socioeconomic decisions. Who will be treated—how and where—are the central questions whose answers are often entwined with issues of […]
Should health care providers be forced to apologise after things go wrong? By Stuart McLennan, Simon Walker, and Leigh E. Rich The issue of apologising to patients harmed by adverse events has been a subject of interest and debate within medicine, politics, and the law since the early 1980s. Although apology serves several important social […]
Legal protection is not enough By Stuart McLennan, Leigh E. Rich, and Robert D. Truog There has been an important shift toward openness regarding adverse events and their communication to patients. Recent research suggests that saying sorry is a key element of successful disclosure practice. However, fear of legal action has been identified as a […]