The Wittgenstein's Rulers
The “Wittgenstein’s ruler” expression comes from a remark made by the philosopher Wittgenstein about the fact that when you measure the size of a table with a ruler, how do you know that you are not in fact measuring the ruler with the table? But *ruler* has another meaning in english:
ruler /ˈruːlə/
noun: ruler; plural noun: rulers
a person exercising government or dominion.
a straight strip or cylinder of plastic, wood, metal, or other rigid material, typically marked at regular intervals and used to draw straight lines or measure distances.
In this essay I am going to talk about rulers in the sense of persons exercising government. For this acception the Wittgenstein’s ruler remark is very astute too.
All for one, and one for all
The motto of the Musketeers, “all for one, and one for all”, derived from an ancient latin proverb, can be interpreted as an internalization of the Wittgenstein ruler. It underlines the commutative aspect of the social contract. A new version of this proverb, in the social area, is gradually appearing during this neverending COVID-19 crisis. The idea goes like this
One for all is the substitution of all societal issues by a single societal issue. This is the monomania around a single disease: COVID-19.
All for one is the multiplication of rules and regulations that individuals must respect in order to be part of the society.
A Wittgenstein ruler is a fervent user of this technique to deal with societal management. Let’s examine some features of this new way of governing that I denote by the neologism Ludwigism in the honor of Wittgenstein. But first let’s notice that the new information technologies play a central role in Ludwigism at many levels. First there is this technical possibility to gather statistics in quasi real time (think daily number of COVID-19 contaminations) offered by those new technologies. Second they make it possible to display those statistics continually and make them accessible by anyone, anywhere anytime through internet and smartphones. Those technological artifacts also can be updated live. Just like your operating system downloading and installing new versions, your smartphone and vaccine passeport can incorporate new rules at each second of the day. The smartphones have cameras, so it is easy to use them to scan things like QR-codes: the direct effect of this technological fact is that everyone can check everyone: this is the combination of camera with the software and the possibility to access a central database (the database containing *good* people). From selfie to self-owned may come to mind.
Ludwigism as a political black hole
The monomany around a single issue is useful when you take decisions to avoid discussions. Take the exemple of masks. You can unilaterally decide that COVID-19 is the only threat we have to adress in our lives, and that within that threat only reducing contamination is important. Now you decide to mandate kids to wear masks all day long at school because : “it reduces contamination”. Let alone that this very claim is debatable as such. By doing so you don’t take into accounts the following (non exhaustive) list of effects
Do masks have drawbacks with relation other disease? One can think of the fact that kids are snot producing machines (there is a whole genre of comic literature devoted to that): is it wealthy for them to breath their snots all day long? How about facial acne?
To what measure do masks hamper kids from learning how to speak and communicate? Not being able to see the face of your interlocutor is not nothing especially when you are in the process of learning how to speak and to behave in society in general.
Is the sickness they are supposedly protected from spreading/catching an issue for them in the first place? Because if it is nothing more than a cold why didn’t such mandates were edicted before for other diseases? If it is for others then why there is no explicit discussion about the fact that you make the kids pay for those others?
Is the mandate real? Because kids … are kids and thinking they are going to wear masks as in a controlled experiment is laughable at best. My 7 years old daughter already told me how she actively cheat with masks because wearing them constantly bothers her. Maybe she already learned that blindly following authorities might not always be a good thing but I don’t think it was the expected outcome.
I could go on for screens. Those are legitimate remarks and questions. But only considering one threat allows the power that be to avoid complex discussions and nullify every other arguments. Ludwigism was already used after 9-11 where stupid things were done in the name of “security reasons”. But the use of this technique was not as widespread as it is today. Every aspects of our lives is impacted, not just when you board an airplane or cross a frontier. Therefore the fact that large demonstrations have produced almost no effect is not surprising. Because demonstrations are not on the agenda so they do not exist in the public sphere.
Ludwigism as a societal hurdle race
On the other side of the spectrum is the multiplication of small rules that apply to the individuals. You can think at the new rituals of the COVID-19 era: wash your hands (even when we know it has essentially 0 effect), the numbers of people on a public event allowed is (numbers changing regarding whether it is inside, outside etc.), rules for local transportation are not the same as for inter city travels (while the time of the travel may be equivalent), rules for cinemas are X but for students are Y (both are about the same number of people in similar amphitheaters) etc. You can add to the mix the fact that rules are constantly evolving. The exemple of protocols for schools in France is laughable. I think we are around the 40th something different protocole since the inception of the crisis. This is just insane. This other part of Ludwigism creates a myriad of issues that simply did not existed before the rules were edicted. It makes people busy integrating those new rules. They are mechanically losing the ability to step back from the instant and contemplate the global picture. By making having to adapt to new conditions on a regular basis makes them easier to manage.
The Doppler effect
The cherry on the top of the cake is that, of course, things never stay the same. The example of the public about vaccines is a pitch perfect illustration. It all started with the war of 90+% efficacy. At the start *efficacy* meant: you are not going to catch the disease. The implication was so you do it for yourself. Then as time was passing by and infections among vaccinated people started to show that those claims of efficacy were visibly not correct, the narrative evolved to: but you won’t spread the disease (hence all the political pressure for you to get vaccinated). The implication moved to: do it for the others. But it also didn’t hold as expected because vaccinated people spread COVID. So it became: but you won’t be seriously ill… The most disturbing thing being that the past is revisited and you have many vaccines supporters saying that the current state of affairs was always the same, and that the sole intent of vaccines were, ever, to prevent severe forms. This is demonstrably false (just check the declarations from fall 2020). The problem is that political decisions were made under a set of *scientific facts* that were revealed later as incorrect. It is not an issue in itself: we make errors that is what life is about. But the political decisions are not reverted or re-examined. This is especially visible in France with the shift from “pass sanitaire” to '“pass vaccinal”. At the beginning it was presented as health measure, then those measures became harder and more political: a negative test is no longer valid whereas it has more value than a vaccination status with relation to the epidemics. As the modification of the sound (due to the Doppler effect) that a police car make when closing to your position it evolves slowly and became totally different when the police car has passed you and moves away from your position. The shift is gradual, impercetptible on a day by day basis.
There is no magical recipe. There are always going to be discussions about what is relevant and what is not. New rules for making the life in common better will have to be voted. The only thing I know is that the situation we are living right now is not harmonious. We should consider more large scale problems and not just fixing our attention to a very limited set of problems. COVID is all the rage but global warming is lurking behind. On the other part of the spectrum we should alleviate the burden of the myriads of measures that are more theatrical than really about health and that hamper everyday life.