What the ‘selfless’ can learn from the Great War

The newest progressive insult is the epithet “selfish”, which appears to mean ‘not doing what the experts say is best for everyone’. The fallacy here is it discounts the effect of personal experience and feedback on behavior. The reason many people are being ‘selfish’ about Covid is disillusionment with the assurances and warnings issued by the politicians or with hideously expensive policies that seem to have no decisive effect.

Masks. More masks. Quarantine. More lockdown.

Today more than a 100 years after the Great War it is instructive to remember that at first men went over the top without prompting, then later with a lot of prompting and finally under the threat of being shot. They became ‘selfish’ not from some lack of moral fiber but because they learned that the experts underestimated the cost of frontal attacks.

When the Great War was finally won it was not because the soldiers grew less selfish but because the generals acquired the humility to learn.