Moral Lessons for a Post-Covid World
Moral Maze
BBC
4.4 • 623 Ratings
🗓️ 5 August 2020
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The past five months have turned our lives upside down. In the early days of the lockdown, idealists saw the pandemic as an opportunity for moral improvement; they thought it would reinforce our shared values and confirm our common humanity. As it has turned out, Covid-19 has not been the great leveller they were hoping for. You could argue that, on the contrary, it has taken our social inequalities and made them worse, adding a greater danger of death to the burden already borne by the most disadvantaged. It has escalated the culture wars and eroded our collective trust in authority and in each other. Optimists still see opportunities for a better world, as long as we draw the right lessons from this unsettling experience. It may have things to teach us about the right balance between social responsibility and individual freedom, between amateurism and expertise, between community rootedness and global collaboration, or between the nation’s wellbeing and the health of its economy. In this 30th birthday edition of the Moral Maze, each of our four panellists will propose one moral principle, relevant to the crisis, that they believe would serve us well in a post-Covid world. With Lord Andrew Adonis, Professor Linda Bauld, Ross Clark and Geoff Norcott.
Producer: Dan Tierney.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a program from BBC Radio 4. You can download many more BBC Radio 4 programmes for free. |
| 0:07.7 | Find these at BBC.co.com.uk slash radio 4. |
| 0:12.4 | Good evening. A special programme tonight to mark the 30th anniversary of the Moral Mays. |
| 0:17.4 | When it started in August 1990, we were still locked in the Cold War and Margaret Thatcher was in Downing Street, though the days of both were numbered. We live in a different world, a generation of more later, but you can say that about the last six months. The COVID virus has told us a lot about the moral state of the nation. For sure, there's been social solidarity in the face of ubiquitous threat, |
| 0:38.2 | but it's arguably made our inequalities worse, undermined our trust in authority, and stoked the |
| 0:43.8 | culture wars. It sharpened all sorts of moral issues. Where to balance social responsibility with |
| 0:49.8 | individual freedom, for instance? Where should our primary loyalty lie, the local community or global |
| 0:55.7 | humanity? How far should we prioritise national well-being over the economy? What's the proper |
| 1:02.0 | role for specialist expertise? In this programme, each of our panellists will propose a moral |
| 1:08.1 | principle they see arising from this crisis that would serve us well |
| 1:11.7 | in a post-COVID world and argued out with those who disagree. It's our 30th birthday, Moral Mays. |
| 1:18.5 | The panel, Mono Siddiqui, Professor of Islamic and Inter-Religious Studies at Edinburgh University, |
| 1:23.5 | the historian Tim Stanley, Melanie Phillips, social commentator at the Times, and the priest and |
| 1:28.9 | palamacist, Jars Fraser. |
| 1:30.9 | Okay, Tim Stanley, what do you think you've learned from the last five months that should |
| 1:35.3 | guide us after it's all over? |
| 1:37.5 | Well, I'm a columnist, so it's no surprise that I've learned that we need to stand up for |
| 1:41.8 | amateur commentators. |
| 1:43.5 | People who have questioned the lockdown and the |
| 1:45.5 | science behind it have been labelled irrational, arrogant, even dangerous. Now, I'm not a COVID-sceptic |
| 1:52.6 | myself, but I want to defend the right to be skeptical. After all, in the last few months, |
| 1:58.3 | politicians have definitely made mistakes, and the science behind |
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