A Shared Humanity: Covid Capitalism and the Future of the Human

…for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

-George Elliot, Middlemarch

Introduction: Economic Epistemology

An example of the unthinkable, lies in the debate on risking the elderly in order to stimulate the economy. Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, one of the first proponents of this position, proposed that the elderly, namely those among the most susceptible to the COVID-19 virus, should be willing to sacrifice their lives in order to allow the economy to resume for their children and grandchildren. Supporters of the Lt. Governor’s position cite suicide due to unemployment as well as the overall health impact of economic collapse as reasons to consider his claim. While these arguments contain important elements to consider, it does present a false choice to citizens.

However, this paper does not grapple with these arguments directly, which would be fruitless, but the implications of what I term “COVID Capitalism.” I purpose that the rise of COVID Capitalism shows a malformation in our humanity as a result of the particular economic thinking exemplified in the present crisis. COVID capitalism, as a discourse, is an isolated occurrence, but only emerges in the context of a form of economic thinking already operative in the present age, neoliberalism. Scholars struggle to define neoliberalism, but for the sake of this work, I utilize Wendy Brown, who defines neoliberalism as “a peculiar form of reason that configures all aspects of existence in economic terms” (Brown 2015, 17). The Lt. Governor’s call for the nation’s elderly to sacrifice their wellbeing for the economy arises out of this economic thinking, which encompasses and surpasses moral thinking. In short, when the good becomes synonymous with the economically advantageous, then human dignity becomes a secondary virtue. Thus, we must take Klein’s call concerning the unthinkable as an opportunity to rethink humanity not bound by the logic of neoliberalism.

This paper contends that the virtues of dependency and vulnerability are essential in a time of COVID Capitalism. These virtues are unthinkable in an age of neoliberalism and COVID Capitalism that instead cherish autonomy and competition. However, dependency and vulnerability are key components of a shared vision of humanity that provide an account of the good and goods necessary to sustain a virtuous community. In this time of crisis, an economic system can use the disorientation of a global pandemic to exploit the sick and place economic values above a shared humanity. The implicit account of competition and autonomy, embedded COVID Capitalism, prevent the embodiment of communal virtues that prove important for a pandemic like COVID-19. However, it is in this environment that a new way of thinking about the human, as in Klein’s assessment, outside the logic of economic reason alone, becomes possible. In short, dependence and vulnerability cast a vision for common humanity where individuals are not isolated in economic enclaves but rather held deeply inside shared humanity.

This paper begins by outlining the parameters of COVID Capitalism and its neoliberalist attitudes toward humanity. Though defining neoliberalism presents a difficult challenge, I focus only on two minor symptoms most relevant for our current pandemic, namely autonomy and competition. COVID Capitalism, as will be argued, thrives only on the idea that only through honoring competition and autonomy. I will next offer an account of dependence through a feminist interpretation of Western moral philosophy through the work of Carol Gilligan. She argues that dependency is not a moral weakness but rather an essential piece of moral discernment. Gilligan illustrates that we come to moral decisions by negotiating faithful responses to the complex array of social networks. In short, children and grandchildren need their parents and grandparents more than the economy to negotiate their moral decisions. I will then, with Gilligan’s feminist optic in place, turn to Alasdair MacIntyre, who makes a compelling argument for the virtues and shared goods in his account of vulnerability with particular emphasis on the elderly. Vulnerability illustrates our shared need for one another embedded within acknowledging the limits of our humanity. Together dependence and vulnerability will present readers with an account of care more human than the logic internal to COVID Capitalism and more capable of dealing with the present pandemic. I will conclude with a story of resistance to COVID Capitalism that makes possible a human way of vulnerability and dependency beyond a purely economic logic.

COVID Capitalism: Neoliberalism in the Present Crisis

COVID-19 is a once in a lifetime global crisis. Certainly, other crises defined generations previous to COVID-19, but this crisis has the potential to change lives in a way unseen for a century. Nevertheless, society’s ability to respond to this pandemic relies heavily on the ideas available to them. Even if those ideas prove to be inadequate, the changes needed in order to address the pandemic largely rely on testing and deconstructing the ideas presently available. As infamous economist, Milton Friedman writes,

Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable. (Friedman 2002, xiv)

Friedman, an architect of the economic logic known as neoliberalism, presents a compelling account of the crisis. Even though in these remarks, Friedman does not intend to address COVID-19; he nevertheless helps our contemporary society recognize the necessity of shifts to accommodate ever arising conflicts. In short, humanity can only respond based on the ideas “lying around” before it.

For example, the United States, one of the wealthiest nations in human history, relies heavily on the idea of free-market capitalism. This form of economics, for better or worse, plays a role in how citizens of this country respond to COVID-19. It is this idea that guides responses and determines what will matter in society and the forms of labor necessary for humanity to continue. As Robert and Edward Skidelsky write, “a free-market economy both gives employers the power to dictate hours and terms of work and inflames our innate tendency to competitive, status-driven consumption” (Skidelsky and Skidelsky 2012, 13). Of course, the free-market ordering of the economy does not impact each individual proportionately but drives the means of production and the objects of desire. Capitalism forms the moral imagination central to a time of crisis.

Free market capitalism is not a monolithic economic system. Instead, it has many iterations and expressions. Therefore, it is necessary to focus our inquiry on the mode of free-market capitalism most relevant to our pandemic, namely neoliberalism. This form of capitalism, which turns all thinking into economic thinking, contains specific practical rationality inherent in its deployment. Neoliberalism, as Adam Kotsko writes, “maintains the conditions necessary for vigorous market competition, trusting in the price mechanism to deliver more efficient outcomes than direct state planning ever could” (Kotsko 2018, 12). Neoliberalism, then, relies on the individual freedom of consumers and producers to operate independently of direct state interference in order to set the terms of rules of the economy free of external coercion.

Kotsko, then, helpfully sets the terms of neoliberalism as one that offers the most freedom. Though neoliberalism has many elements to be considered, I focus on two elements, namely competition and autonomy, that illustrate this account of freedom. Autonomy arises as a virtue in direct relation to society’s preference from external coercion or intervention. This virtue arises, at least in part, in the Enlightenment doctrine of heteronomy, which affirms the good will’s ability to choose independent of external coercion (Kant 1996, 82–83). However, the autonomous freedom from coercion also includes one crucial feature when extended into the economic sphere, namely the freedom from dependence. To be sure, the state preserves a specific capacity for autonomy, but neoliberalism hijacks autonomy to perpetuate an economic account of everything. For example, take friendship in economic terms. We are not dependent on friends to help us live the moral life but instead serve as a type of utility (Skidelsky and Skidelsky 2012, 165). The prize of autonomy can find no use for others because they serve the interests of the autonomous self. Authentic and lasting friendships cannot exist in an economy of autonomy and mobility because they can infringe and challenge that autonomy through accountability and differing accounts of the good life. The one with friends does not choose alone, but in a neoliberal economy, the centrality of the individual’s ability to choose, free from coercion or dependence, undergirds the basis of the neoliberal economy. The logic of competition, thus, feeds off this idea of the idea of autonomy because it only those offered unhindered, independent access to the market can fully compete.

Competition enables autonomy in one other key instance, namely insofar as it provides a clear rubric in which to judge oneself over and against one’s neighbor. As theologian Kevin Hargaden writes, “[w]e embrace the logic of competition because it promises us we can be winners” (Hargaden 2018, 23). Winning allows for the individual to be recognized over and against their neighbor. As Skidelsky and Skidelsky write, competition becomes “zero-sum game, because everyone, by definition, cannot have high status. As I spend more…I gain status but cause others to lose it. As they spend more to regain status they reduce my own” (Skidelsky and Skidelsky 2012, 37). Such a cycle never ends, more status equates to more autonomy and less status less autonomy. Therefore, autonomy speaks back into this desire to win in the mimetic desire created by competition. There is, as the neoliberal economy suggests, a scarcity of resources. Therefore, humans must compete to attain what is available. At their base, consumers do not want to depend on their neighbors for these items they desire. Depending on one’s neighbor is a lack of autonomy. Competition drives autonomy, and autonomy energizes competition. Therefore, consumers compete in order to win these items over their neighbors, so they do not need to be dependent upon them.

If, as Friedman argues, we use the ideas available to us, the goal lies in creating conditions of competition and autonomy, then how does neoliberalism propose confronting a global pandemic? In short, what is COVID Capitalism? I define COVID Capitalism as neoliberalism taken to a logical extreme of internal economic self-preservation as the means to combat the COVID 19 crisis through the full logic of neoliberalism, which further entrenches competition and autonomy. Though many private businesses have made it a priority to show their support of medical professionals, the clearest example of COVID Capitalism lies in the recipients of the first stimulus package. The first stimulus package attempted to vivify the stagnant economy through a massive bailout to specific sectors of the economy. Though the bailout attempted this individual revitalization of consumers as well as corporations, it was not equal among each member of society. As Klein writes,

This crisis — like earlier ones — could well be the catalyst to shower aid on the wealthiest interests in society, including those most responsible for our current vulnerabilities, while offering next to nothing to the most workers, wiping out small family savings and shuttering small businesses. (Klein 2020)

The logic of competition runs through Klein’s assessment. If competition provides the means for winning, then the package must continue to affirm those winners. It is a bailed-out competition that encourages all individuals to keep competing. The stimulus package illustrates COVID Capitalism by maintaining the intensely competitive nature of neoliberalism, which rewards the already wealthy “winners” of its economic process. The primary concern of such a system is not only the maintenance of its means of exchange but also assured the outcome of competition.

Lt. Governor Dan Patrick’s comments exist within this central emphasis on competition and autonomy. The economy, for better or worse, secures one’s status and security. As theologian Philip Goodchild goes as far as to observe that in modernity, the economy replaces God as the objective guarantor of value (Goodchild 2009, xiii). Therefore, listeners must hear the internal logic of neoliberalism in Lt. Governor Patrick’s statements,

No one reached out to me and said, as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren…And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in. (Rodriguez 2020)

The “America” referenced by Patrick is the neoliberal economy because that is what he wishes to preserve. This logic drives it. It is not Patrick’s potential choice that stands out most, but rather why the choice seems necessary in his mind. Patrick continues, “And that doesn’t make me noble or brave or anything like that…I just think there are lots of grandparents out there in this country like me…that what we care about and what we love more than anything are those children” (Rodriguez 2020). The grandparents who risk their lives through exposure to the COVID-19 virus illustrates the most profound love of a grandparent. One must see how COVID Capitalism operates here. The grandparent’s “sacrifice” keeps the economy alive so that their grandchildren might experience the same guarantee of competition and the satisfaction of autonomy. In short, the flourishing of the nation’s grandchildren is less contingent on the presence and wellbeing of their grandparents, and more dependent on their unhindered access and assimilation into the full presence of the economy.

The shift from intangible generational communal fellowship to tangible competition exemplifies COVID Capitalism. If Klein’s assessment provides correct, new ideas must become “thinkable” in our time. The future of humanity, in COVID Capitalism, lies in unhindered access to the economy. The end toward which neoliberalism becomes directed during this pandemic, therefore, is destruction for humanity. To be clear, I do not argue that joblessness is an insignificant problem. However, the fact that the economy, in our present COVID Capitalistic structure, cannot aid both the vulnerable to the disease and those most economically impacted by a planned, temporary rest for the economy is not an argument for its continuance. One need only pay attention to how the present conversation concerning the common good shifted from inherently shared goods to economic access alone in order to recognize how life is not good in it of itself in neoliberalism (Reich 2019). Such a situation should, at a minimum, encourage a reflective pause and at most turning the world upside down. Therefore, a different account of the human must emerge outside the logic of COVID Capitalism. As Klein would argue, this is the unthinkable that must become a reality.

Dependency and Vulnerability: Unlearning Neoliberalism

A means of making a new account of humanity readily available requires flipping the equation offered by competition and autonomy. To make such a move relies on a reconsideration of specific Western philosophical ideas that undergird both competition and autonomy. One need not rewrite Western philosophy, but rather resituate ancient wisdom for contemporary society. Gilligan’s turn resituates our efforts in the context of an ancient view of ethics as well as in the neglected voices in moral philosophy. In the place of competition of autonomy, this resituating of moral philosophy allows for a new “thinking” centered around two different virtues, namely vulnerability and dependence.

Carol Gilligan, a Harvard University Professor of Education, illustrates the shift necessary to overcome competition and autonomy in her analysis of moral decision making. Gilligan, as she states, has always “sought to represent the voices of contemporary American girls and women as they talked about moral conflict and choice, and to amplify and validate these voices by associating them with the voices in western literature” (Gilligan 1994, 172). By focusing on women’s voices, Gilligan offers a tangential account of moral discernment free from many of the pitfalls of western philosophy, and thus, neoliberalism.

Gilligan’s shift occurs through her proposed reframing of the moral question. Traditionally moral discernment occurs through presenting an agent with a moral problem and asking, “How would you resolve it?” (Gilligan 1994, 173) This method, Gilligan argues, arises in Piaget’s analysis of a child’s development. In most of the Western tradition, especially post-Enlightenment, moral development “consists of a system of rules” (Gilligan 1994, 173). Through learning how to deploy rules, a child can learn how to respect the rules. However, Gilligan proposes a new means of judging one’s moral sensibilities. She writes, “I did not begin by posing a moral problem and asking, ‘How would you resolve it?’ Rather, I asked people how they would define what a moral problem is” (Gilligan 1994, 173). Through experience and decisions made in the individual’s life, Gilligan finds a different account from the moral life than a system of rules.

Studying primarily young pregnant women considering an abortion, Gilligan found that these individuals did not first approach a system through a system of rules, but instead, these women made their decisions through their understanding of “responsibility” (Gilligan 1994, 173). Responsibility shifts the entire narrative of moral decision making. The group’s moral discernment concerning abortion did not match the system of rules approach sustained by the wider public. This is significant in Gilligan’s approach because it offers a new way to think of moral discernment. She writes,

The whole view of choice, of the relationship between other and self, was fundamentally different. Choice, rather than being seen as an isolated moment, was a moment in an ongoing narrative of events, which in the abortion decision were specifically the events of relationship. (Gilligan 1994, 173)

The events leading to the pregnancy, the events during the pregnancy, and the possible events that would occur if the birth would or would not occur are all considered in the choice. Therefore, the agent makes decisions in the context of the community and relationships in which the agent exists. “There was,” as Gilligan continues, “no way to separate self and other into a distinct opposition” (Gilligan 1994, 173). Any rules or norms are negotiated not in isolation from one’s community of support but only within them. In short, the agent uses the moral resources of their community as a means to determine conduct.

Gilligan’s different voice in moral discernment comes directly against the moral thinking embedded within COVID Capitalism. As already stated, COVID Capitalism relies heavily on autonomy. In this logic, it is morally distasteful to rely on others, and in fact, lasting friendships hinders the ability to choose. Instead, one must possess economic mobility and detachment as two means to express autonomy. The resources one accumulates are for the expressed purpose of self-sufficiency, and individuals compete in order to become the most autonomous beings. Therefore, the rules of neoliberalism are themselves a system that must be applied even in a pandemic.

In defiance of autonomy, Gilligan’s new method of moral discernment uncovers another virtue in its place, namely dependence. Gilligan recognizes that this term carries significant baggage in our culture because autonomy is the highest virtue (Gilligan 1994, 175). However, when Gilligan asks a different group of young women for the meaning of dependence, they reveal a different account. She writes,

the girls conveyed the assumption that dependence is positive, that the human condition is a condition of dependence, and that people need to rely on one another for understanding, comfort and support…Dependence, rather, was created by choices to be there for others, to take care of them, to listen, to try to understand, and to help. (Gilligan 1994, 175)

Dependence, then, in the eyes of these young women, expresses a relationship of care. Furthermore, dependence is not the malformed “passivity” of our natural capacities in favor of overreliance on others (Gilligan 1994, 176). Instead, dependence means to these women that “[s]omeone would be there when you need them” (Gilligan 1994, 175). Therefore, dependence is an “active” choice that sustains relationships of moral community and care (Gilligan 1994, 176).

Klein argues that a new unthinkable idea can become thinkable in our time. Dependence provides such an idea, though not operative in the broader culture, that already exists on the ground in the lives of young women. However, why should this account, though different, become the new, thinkable way that replaces the COVID Capitalistic one already normative in our time? In short, why is it preferable to COVID Capitalism?

Gilligan’s account of dependence is preferable to COVID Capitalism because it leads to human flourishing in a time of the pandemic. Evaluating Gilligan’s shift to dependence will require an account of goods capable of adjudicating between different claims to the good in neoliberalism. This capability will necessarily lead to the formation of a practical reason that can correctly discern in a world of differing goods. Practical reason, like one embedded in COVID Capitalism, requires a complete treatment than can be provided here. However, I can provide an account of virtues that enable correct discernment between COVID Capitalism and Gilligan’s shift to dependence.

The virtues necessary for the account of discernment are simultaneous with the virtues that encourage the recognition of shared vulnerability. In order to unpack the necessity of virtue, I turn briefly to the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. In MacIntyre’s work, one finds an account of virtue which undergirds all ethics (MacIntyre 2007). However, MacIntyre recognizes that any virtue ethics that does not consider those impacted by “bodily illness and injury, inadequate nutrition, mental defect and disturbance, and human aggression and neglect” is inadequate to the task of moral reflection (MacIntyre 1999, 1). In his work, much like Gilligan, MacIntyre strays from traditional narratives of autonomy and competition toward dependence-based ethics. However, MacIntyre places this emphasis at the beginning of his ethics due to the equal weight he places on vulnerability. Practical reasoners are vulnerable at one stage or another and thus are dependent upon others. In short, our vulnerability, due to sickness or other deficiencies in our ability, desires, as Gilligan already expressed, to know someone will be there.

This desire to know the presence of another illustrates the importance of vulnerability as it leads to dependence. Even though the first and most basic moral impulses of communities lies in desire satisfaction, MacIntyre acknowledges that desire satisfaction is merely egocentric (MacIntyre 1999, 68–69). This impulse easily maps over the competition/autonomy of COVID Capitalism. Furthermore, the charitable actions of those who are the economy’s “winners” can be read as benevolent, but only insofar as they already possess these goods as their own. In our world, we prefer the benevolent winner over goods held in common. As MacIntyre writes, the division

between self-interested market behavior…and altruistic, benevolent behavior on the other, obscures from view just those types of activity in which the goods to be achieved are neither mine-rather-than-others’ nor others’-rather-than-mine, but instead are goods that can only be mine insofar as they are also those of others, that are genuinely common goods, as the goods of networks of giving and receiving. (MacIntyre 1999, 119)

Under the two themes of competition and autonomy, such recognition of shared networks cannot exist. MacIntyre argues that vulnerability provides a kind of anamnesis of these shared networks of giving and receiving obscured under the lens of competition necessary for moral rehabilitation.

COVID Capitalism would argue that share goods are fiction, and any goods available in the market are finite and, thus, one must compete for them against one’s neighbors to obtain them. Furthermore, the weak must be sacrificed so the competition can continue. The death of the old and vulnerable only signals who will lose in this economy and the necessary sacrifice in order to keep the system of rules known as neoliberalism moving for the winners. However, MacIntyre challenges this by placing shared recognition of vulnerability at the center of communal life. As MacIntyre writes, “the basic political question is what resources each individual and group needs” (MacIntyre 1999, 144). The point is, then, not which groups can be saved through the market, but how the market obscures vulnerability. The problem emerges when communal relationships are placed in necessary conflict with one another rather than participating in a shared vulnerability (MacIntyre 1999, 144).

The competition allows, to some extent, recognition of a shared vulnerability but ultimately requires that one chooses between them. On the one hand, there is the vulnerability associated with the economy, and on the other, there is vulnerability, particularly of the old. The COVID Capitalism of the present pandemic pits these two groups against each other, and it adjudicates which group must be saved according to their productivity (MacIntyre 1999, 146). For MacIntyre, this is a counterfeit moral discernment because it fails to encourage the virtues of “giving and receiving” necessary for the awareness of the “common goods and common needs” (MacIntyre 1999, 146). Vulnerability encourages these virtues instead of a shared recognition of our common needs and goods. As MacIntyre writes, “those who are [not yet old must] recognize in the old what they are moving towards becoming” (MacIntyre 1999, 146). In the case of COVID-19, one must adjudicate between age groups based on which group can be eliminated and still maintain productivity. In vulnerability, there are shared needs, but these needs are not a barrier to shared goods. In short, vulnerability places care for each other before economic calculous. Without the virtues essential to giving and receiving this “awareness [of shared vulnerability] cannot be achieved” (MacIntyre 1999, 146).

Vulnerability, thus, leads us to an account of the good preferable to COVID Capitalism. It is not preferable because it enables a better means to decide who lives and dies, but rather it rejects the decision altogether. In COVID Capitalism, one cannot both save those most susceptible to COVID-19 and the economy. This either-or strategy does not exist in MacIntyre’s account of giving and receiving in recognition of shared vulnerability. In order to flourish despite COVID Capitalism, one needs both MacIntyre’s vulnerability and Gilligan’s dependence. As MacIntyre writes, “we would need…to be able to receive from others what we need them to give to us and to give to others what we need to receive from them” (MacIntyre 1999, 155). We recognize our vulnerability, namely our need, and in turn recognize our dependence on others to fulfill that need as they depend upon us to provide for them.

We now return to the specific comments made by Lt. Governor Patrick. Doubling down on his first position, Patrick states, “there are more important things than living. And that’s saving this country for my children and my grandchildren…we’ve got to take some risks and get back in the game and get this country back up and running” (Samuels 2020). In this, he recognizes his shared vulnerability, and he does not want to die. However, Patrick’s self-preserving desire is not his error. Patrick’s error lies in the assumption that his children and grandchildren benefit more from economic advantage than from the presence of their father and grandfather. Of course, they too are vulnerable, but, as Gilligan argues, he helps them negotiate their moral development. He can be one who would be there if and when they need him. As MacIntyre stipulates, the elderly cannot be neglected due to their lack of productivity. The value that Patrick brings his children and grandchildren cannot be quantified. This much appears in his willingness to die for them. They are both share their need of one another and, thus, are vulnerable. In turn, they are dependent on one another to fulfill their need of one another. Dependence serves not only a need for presence but of moral discernment and virtues of giving and receiving capable of orienting the economy to our shared goods rather than shared goods to the economy.

Conclusion: A Shared Humanity

I conclude with a brief illustration of the moral shift away from COVID Capitalism to an ethic of dependence and vulnerability. Much like Patrick, it is one that illuminates our shared needs, but one that bravely embraces the risk not of economic stimulation during a pandemic but of the unease of dependence and vulnerability. During the rise of COVID 19 cases in eastern Kansas, a young social worker in the Veteran Affairs Hospital in Kansas City, KS was assigned the role of maintaining the cases of veterans nearing the end of their life. One such elderly veteran was within a few days of death and wished to communicate with his wife. This man’s wife was confined to a nursing home since she too was advanced in years and could not visit without fear of contracting the disease herself. The man was blind and hard of hearing and thus could not talk to her over the phone or quickly write her letters. Therefore, this young social worker offered to communicate on his behalf with his wife and communicate the information back to him. In the final days, the social worker communicated messages of love, gratitude for a lifetime of memories, and the fidelity to the very end only glimpsed in a covenant of old. In these moments of awkward communication of deeply personal messages, witnesses glimpse the profoundly human thing not found in COVID Capitalism. In the moments of exchange, not only are the elderly veteran and his wife dependent upon the social worker for messages from his beloved, but the social work depends on the couple to illustrate and embody the virtue faithfulness. They share needs and goods and remain dependent on one another to fulfill them. The couple and the social worker share in something inexplicably sacred and, dare we say, good. This sacred value is not supported and guaranteed by the economy, but this is because the sacred character of this profoundly human experience cannot be bought. Instead, it can only be shared as the love between them.

The lesson learned in this story is the virtues of giving and receiving necessary for dependence and vulnerability. The act of kindness embodied in the social worker illustrates her recognition of her vulnerability in this space with these individuals and their dependency on her and vice versa. The couple’s commitment to love shows their need to be vulnerable and dependent on the social worker as well. Mutual dependence and vulnerability by both parties accommodate shared humanity. Humans are not pricing points on a spreadsheet, but intensely fragile fellow creatures. Unlike neoliberal rationality, the goal is not autonomy governed by competition. It requires its opposite. Only as we recognize the unique need of our neighbors, especially the elderly, do we begin to think the idea currently unthinkable by our present crisis. Therefore, we must envision vulnerability and dependence not as cute sentimentality but character traits that define our actions in this crisis. As MacIntyre writes,

To identify an occurrence as an action is in the paradigmatic instances to identify it under a type of description which enables us to see that occurrence as flowing intelligibly from a human agent’s intentions, motives, passions and purposes. It is therefore to understand an action as something for which someone is accountable, about which it is always appropriate to ask the agent for an intelligible account. (MacIntyre 2007, 209)

Generations after our own will look back to us to give an account of our actions. One may hope that vulnerability and dependence will hold the key to such an account. Gilligan’s insight teaches that humans negotiate moral decisions in relationship to others. For better or worse, they will look to us to help. We are their tradition, and we are their ancestors. As the social worker, these actions might be “unhistoric,” but I hope that we will contribute to the growing good of shared humanity for the world and that things one day might not be so ill as most of us live these hidden lives.

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