Stealing Our Faces

 From The Imaginative Conservative:

The issue of mask mandates has been gobbled up by our polarized nation. There are fierce arguments about the medical effectiveness or need for masks. Some people go blindly insane when they see others not wearing a mask in public. On the other side, many people sense that masks are just one more thing that the ruling elites are imposing on the unquestioning masses. The battle-lines over masks have drawn up largely according to political lines now. However, most of the controversy does not really address the true meaning of what is happening. Whatever the motives are, the effects of mask-mandates transcend health and safety.

It seems that official parlance has now settled on the term “facial covering.” This subtle shift and coordinated resolution regarding a more precise term is telling. It reveals the deeper effects and perhaps the motives of the mandates themselves. There is a significant distinction between masks and facial coverings. Historically, masks have been associated with playing a role, like in the theatre. In fact, the Latin word persona comes from the Greek word prosepon, which means mask. From this understanding, wearing a mask is more like putting on the face of another or portraying someone else. In moving to the precise term “facial covering,” instead of “mask,” it becomes clearer that the effect is to blot out the human face and ultimately blot out God from our sight.

In continuing to reflect upon my realization in Charleston, the C.S. Lewis book, Till We Have Faces, came to mind. I have to admit that even after reading the work twice at different times in my life, I still don’t really understand it. However, among the multiple levels at work in the book, Lewis is undeniably trying to connect the discovery of self through the gods to discovering the One True God ultimately. The intersection point lies in the title. Toward the end of the book, Orual says, “How can [the gods] meet us face to face till we have faces?” Lewis tries to draw this connection through a retelling of a pagan myth. The connection between God and man becomes fully concrete in the Incarnation. God becomes man and bears a human face.

Icons are commonly known as “windows to Heaven,” but what do they usually feature? The majority of icons feature the face of Christ or one of the saints. Usually it is exclusively the face. The theology behind iconography further illustrates the connection between the human face and the face of God. (Read more.)

From The Conversation:

Seemingly everyone has an opinion on masks: when to wear them, how to wear them, which ones are best and even whether we should be wearing them at all. For those in this last camp, a popular argument is that the coverings aren’t the problem, but being forced by a government entity to wear one is. It’s the mandate, not the mask, some might say.

Some anti-maskers have claimed that being forced to wear a face covering violates their religious rights. Back in May, Ohio State Rep. Nino Vitale, a Republican, publicly rejected mask-wearing on the grounds that covering one’s face dishonors God. This view is echoed by some individual faith leaders, with churches flouting requirements that congregants wear masks. Meanwhile, media-savvy pastors have put anti-mask posts on Facebook that have been viewed millions of times. And a recent study revealed that the rejection of masks is higher in populations that associate with conservative politics and the idea that the United States is a divinely chosen nation. Is it that masks are a religious matter, or is religion being used to suit people’s political agendas? Socially speaking, both things can be true. (Read more.)

 

From AEIR:

Each year, 650,000 Americans die from heart disease, 600,000 die from cancer, 430,000 die from lung disease, stroke, and Alzheimer’s. To fight these diseases Congress allocated $6 billion for cancer research to the National Cancer Institute and another $39 billion to the National Institutes of Health in 2018. 

The lockdown will cost us more than three hundred times this amount. For a three-hundred fold increase to NCI and NIH budgets, we might well have eradicated heart disease, cancer, lung disease, and Alzheimer’s. Over just a couple of years, that would have saved far more than two million lives. 

The lesson here is a simple one: There is no policy that just simply “saves lives.” The best we can do is to make responsible tradeoffs. Did the lockdowns save lives? Some people claim they did – at a cost of $7 million per life saved if the initial estimates were correct – while others fail to establish any connection between lockdowns and lives saved. 

Regardless, there are all manner of other tradeoffs here. The lockdowns didn’t just cost millions of people’s livelihoods, they also cost people’s lives. Preliminary evidence points to a rise in suicides. Nationwide, calls to suicide hotlines are up almost 50 percent since before the lockdown. People are less inclined to keep medical appointments, and as a result life-saving diagnoses are not being made, and treatments are not being administered. Drug overdoses are up, and there is evidence that instances of domestic violence are on the rise also.

But what if the lockdown actually didn’t save 2 million lives? There is strong, if not irrefutable, evidence that the initial projections of Covid-19 deaths were wildly overstated. (Read more.)

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