Week 2.

Context for
Our Responses

What did you think of the US Government’s instructions for dealing with Influenza? What does that tell you about the understanding (or lack of understanding) of the pandemic?
How do you assess the divergent approaches to dealing with the Spanish Flu in Minneapolis and St. Paul? What worked well or didn’t work well in each city?
What memories do you think people will carry with them from their COVID-19 experience? What would an oral history of this moment sound like in the year 2100?
Finally, in what ways is it useful to compare the Spanish Flu to the current pandemic? What are the benefits and limitations of such a comparison?

Is a spiritual narrative helpful in the face of the present pandemic?
If so, what are some helpful elements, suggested in the readings, in shaping one's spiritual narrative?
What do you make of the treatments of "suffering" in the readings and in Buddhism? How can such teachings be useful to your spiritual narrative?
A task: Continue working on your narrative to the pandemic using both spiritual/secular elements.

1. Video 1:

During this pandemic, what examples have you seen of people being naively optimistic? How has this influenced their ability to approach the challenge in ways that recognize the complexity of the situation?
Have you felt pressured by what Barbara Held calls the “tyranny of the positive attitude in America” to gloss over negative emotions? How has this affected your experience of the pandemic?
What examples have you seen of people being hopeful (in the sense described by Orr of “doing what needs to be done in the spirit of thankfulness and celebration”)?
Which of the two views of life described by Joseph Meeker in his Comedy of Survival best describes your take on life—the tragic or the comedic? How has the metaphor (either warfare, or sport and courtship) influenced your thinking about how to engage with the pandemic?

2. Video 2:

When have you experienced hope, as described in Snyder’s “Hope Theory?”
- What was it about the goal that engaged your brain and made you feel happy and hopeful?
- When have you experienced false hope? Or had your hopes dashed?
In relation to the current pandemic:
- What goals could you imagine setting for yourself during this pandemic that would be likely (at least according to Snyder’s “Hope Theory”) to make you feel hopeful?
- What examples have you seen during the pandemic of people being dishonest in an attempt to promote false hope? What has been the effect of that dishonesty on your levels of hope?

3. Video 3:

In relation to the current pandemic, where do you find yourself on Latané and Darley’s five-stage model of helping?
- If you’re not actively helping, how has that affected your emotions?
  - Do you feel despair?
  - Do you find yourself using emotional-management strategies like literal, interpretive, or implicatory denial?
What, specifically, would it take to move you (or others) all the way to stage five?

How could we apply a statistical value of human life to international aid decisions? For reference the estimated cost of saving one person from dying of malaria is about $4,000.
Do you think that there is a point where the cure will be worse than the disease, and we’ll need to reopen, even if it does mean more deaths from COVID 19?
Should local/state governments be responsible for providing relief, or is this primarily the role of the federal government? What kinds of needs, and what kind of responses, have you observed in your local area?