{"id":11052,"date":"2022-01-04T13:36:40","date_gmt":"2022-01-04T02:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/?p=11052"},"modified":"2022-09-07T22:54:16","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T12:54:16","slug":"has-the-pandemic-fundamentally-changed-our-ethics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/2022\/01\/04\/has-the-pandemic-fundamentally-changed-our-ethics\/","title":{"rendered":"Has the pandemic fundamentally changed our ethics?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past two years, our lives have changed in unprecedented ways. In the face of the pandemic, we have been required to obey demanding new rules and accept new risks, making enormous changes to our daily lives.<\/span><\/p>\n

These disruptions can challenge us to think differently about ethics \u2013 about what we owe each other.<\/span><\/p>\n

As we head into the third year of the pandemic, debates continue to rage over the ethics of vaccine mandates, restrictions on civil liberties, the limits of government power and the inequitable distribution of vaccines globally.<\/span><\/p>\n

With so much disagreement over questions like these, has the pandemic fundamentally changed the way we think about ethics?<\/span><\/p>\n

Ethics became more visible<\/b><\/h3>\n

In daily life, ethical decision-making often isn\u2019t front of mind. We can often just coast along.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the pandemic changed all that. It highlighted our human inter-connectedness and the effects of our actions on others. It made us re-litigate the basic rules of life: whether we could work or study, where we could go, who we could visit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Because the rules were being rewritten, we had to work out where we stood on all manner of questions:<\/span><\/p>\n