There is a point of view expressed by various folk in the covid debate that goes something like..
"We need to have a conversation about how many deaths we're willing to accept". I may be paraphrasing but the current exemplar is Tony Abbot.
So what's the problem?
The problem is that this point of view is based on a fundamental assumption that works for narcissistic personality but which does not hold when extended to a society. Let me explain.
The narcissistic point of view divides the world into a group around the individual narcissist (me/us/we) and other. The other may be a homogeneous other or many small and large groups of others. However they are all outside the group that the narcissist recognizes as extensions of themselves.
So, in essence, us and them. The division between the two groups is that the "us" is connected to the narcissist, has utility/value or relationships that the narcissist identifies with. The concept of identity is very important as it allows the narcissist to recognise and relate to people they have never met, but still can allocate into the "us" group. Similarly, the narcissist is able to very quickly allocate identity and group membership to people in the "other" group. Those to whom the narcissist has no relationship and thus, no value. This is essentially an impairment of the ability to perceive or comprehend networks of value above a certain number of links. Try playing "six degrees of separation" with this kind of personality and you will quickly see how they struggle to articulate how there is any commonality between their "us" group and their "them" group.
This crippled ability to understand or value the connections in the network allows the narcisist to rationalise all sorts of policy and behavior that would otherwise be unacceptable.
Again, what's the problem? The problem is that this social structure is centered around the narcisist. It does not generalise. It's the "king" at the center of the world. The king decides who is in and who is out, and when the king is replaced, all the rules change because a different king decides a different set of "in" and "out".
Watching our former prime minister articulate his mental illness on the international stage was pretty sad. He wants to have a conversation about how many deaths a country is willing to accept. The implicit assumption made by people trying to have this conversation is that the potential death(s) will not include his.
This is where the narcisist point of view always falls down. When the rules are applied to everyone fairly the logic fails. If Tony had said, lets all draw straws for who will die and who will live, and the drawing was actually fair. (random with replacement) and he took his chance the same as everyone else it would have been more convincing. However he is not capable of that. By some chain of rationalization he will always be above the rules. His skill as a politician was not that he was crazy, but that he was able to conceal it as much as he did.
His logic is perfectly sound, as long as you accept the assumption that there is an "us" and "them" divide and "us" can live perfectly well (or even better) without "them".
There are so many fallacies that disprove this assumption but you cannot fix mental illness with "talk". There are never enough words to fix whatever went wrong in his childhood.
So what's the converse point of view and will the world end?
The converse point of view (one of them atleast) is that the majority of people are connected via a network of trade, personal relationships, family relationships, cultural obligations, location sharing, legal entities, social group memberships etc. The point is that this network is what we call "society" and you can't have the benefits of many parts without all the supporting messy networks.
This is not to say that every part of the mess is positive. It's just to say that there is interconnected-ness that does not go away no matter how much anyone wishes. There is good and bad. And there is interplay between the good and bad. There are many emergent phenomena that could not exist without the tension between positive and negative.
Anyway... its a very big picture and its scary. There are lots of folk who for whatever reason are struggling to deal with the picture right in front of them, so I don't begrudge them not wanting to deal with one that encapsulates the whole of our collective time and space. Simplification can help get you through some difficult times.
And why is cannibalism a conundrum? Because once you pop, you can't stop. There's no natural limit once a group applies a strategy of cannibalism. It's always an option to pick off the weakest member when rationalisation demands. But there's always a weakest member until there is only 1.
Once you start to rationalise that the group can do without a weakest/oldest/youngest/stupid/poor/blue eyed/crazy/ugly/sick etc... and the people making that rationalisation get a win from it... then its just a matter of time before they go back to that well and try again.
Because at the end of the day, if it was about food or survival, there are natural limits. But when cannibalism is for political or economic outcomes, its simply becomes an attractive option for a weak politician when other options are hard. Because it gets multiple wins. The first is that it reduces potential opponents. The second is because it induces fear into other potential opponents and encourages self-censorship. Lastly there are the resource benefits (these are used as the rationalization for the behavior, but the intangibles ability to control death are often more "politically" valuable to the politician personally) Imagine the step for a poitician who has previously had to battle their opponents using all the usual indirect, underhanded arguments, bullying and competition to suddenly get the idea that they can directly influence the death of some of their unwanted "enemies within".
Keep in mind that this is not a unique moment in history. The cannabalism strategy has been confronted by every society and organisation ever. The current COVID pandemic is just the current reason. Watching large organisations go through various staff reduction programs is just the same rationalisation. "We can survive... but only if "we" change the definition of "we".
This kind of survival shedding of people is not anything unrealistic. The main issue that I object to is the deception both of the person proposing the strategy and those who agree. The deception is that the "we" who remain are the same "we". They still identify with the same identity as they did prior to the split. It would be more honest to modify the identity to reflect the trauma. This acknowledges the event and gives something to both the survivors and those who got pushed off the liferaft. By failing to acknowledge this in the organisation or group identity, they are not dealing with the fact that the event even happened and everyone who went through it will carry some of the scars. The only people who do not carry a scar are those who were mentally ill in the first place. Those who never conceived of the fact that it might be them who get selected to be sacrificed for the good of the group.
