I often wonder if there is any possibility that we could handle the Coronavirus situation in a way that, 50 years from now, people wouldn’t look at us like we were complete idiots.

It seems like every day information about it is changing, and the next day reveals that some government or some person has been hiding information. It’s hard to know what’s conspiracy and what’s the truth. Because of that, I’m surprised at the number of people I know that treat the information that they know as fact.

There is fact and there is truth, but it seems like very few of the things that were believed to be “fact and truth” 4 months ago are still fact and truth. It tells me that in this world of information technology and the ability for people to attain information from sources in every part of the world from every background, there is some misinformation.

A random thought that just came to me, what if anyone who was found to have shared information that wasn’t 100% accurate paid with a 10-year prison sentence? I’m not advocating that and I don’t think that would actually solve that many problems (probably just complicate it more) but what if that were the punishment. Social media for one would be a much quieter place, and all the big news orgs would likely go out of business. Or they’d at least have major downsizing

Back to the original question.

It seems people are taking hard lines that in 2 months are going to be seen as absurd, let alone 50 years. I believe that’s because right now, the entire world’s collective emotion is perhaps at the highest it’s ever been. Everyone has something that they seem to be passionate about. Whether that be things that affect their lives or things they see or perceive are effecting other’s lives. There were certainly other times in history when emotions ran high. The most obvious of these being during the two world wars.

There were so many uncertainties. Things that people thought were “the only way” now look like they should have been the absolute last thought to come out of anyone’s head. But people had so many emotions. Anger, fear, excitement, worry, uncertainty, pride, etc. These fueled them to make decisions that they in their stable mind may have handled completely differently.

In a podcast I listened to today, I heard an example that really stood out to me.

Many don’t know this, but In 1942, Santa Barbara California was bombed by the Japanese. The very next day, there were thought to be Japanese planes in the air over Los Angels, and anti-aircraft guns fired thousands of rounds into the night sky (information later came out that this was most likely a weather balloon from the US, not a Japanese place).

In any case, fear was thick on the mind of American’s on the west coast. After being bombed and then what they thought was an airstrike on them, they were no longer safe as they had so comfortably been the whole rest of the time in this war. Because of these high emotions, the US did some things that we look back on now as some of the most horrific possible. They relocated over 100,000 people from Japanese decent and sent them to concentration camps along the western part of the country. If the facts that I’ve seen are correct, the criteria for being moved was having 1/16 Japanese blood in you.

This move wrecked entire family’s livelihoods. They were forced to leave their friends, business, community’s and some may have never recovered. Out of over 100,000 people, over 60% of these people with Japanese background were American citizens. That means over 60,000 American’s were forcibly moved by American military to live in camps as prisoners.

This seems ludicrous to us. Unfortunately, most American’s today probably don’t know that story. It was VERY well known for several generations after it happened, and several presidents, including Ronald Regan, Gerald Ford, and George H. W. Bush, all made some sort of apology for the way America handled the situation after it was done.

I tell this entire story simply to say, are we really that different? We look at this story now and think, “that’s insanity. How could they do that? That doesn’t even make sense.” But we don’t understand and feel the emotion that were going on in the states at that time. When you feel like you’re under attack, you have a different brain that starts taking over for you. It’s in defensive mode and doesn’t know how to turn itself off sometimes. You do what you have to do to protect yourself, and sometimes those things aren’t rational, but if they have even a hint of protecting you, you’re willing to do it.

80 years removed, we don’t feel those emotions, and it’s much easier for us to judge and look at that as if we would never have even thought of that kind of treatment.

Whether it’s this example or others, I encourage you to try and put yourself in the place of decision-makers more often. We naturally think of things from our perspective, that’s normal and nothing to be ashamed of, but we need to be willing to take ourselves out of that perspective at times to understand what the decision-maker is having to face also.