The Lilliputians of Gulliver’s Travels, Our Covid Divide, and a Thought Experiment

Short Post

In Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels,” one of his greatest satirical flourishes was his description of the constant civil wars among the tiny race of Lilliputians. Lilliput had an official religion whose text called for all “true believers” to eat their boiled eggs by first breaking the egg at the “convenient” end.” Whether the convenient end was the big end or the small end of the egg was left for posterity to decide. And since the citizens of Lilliput were prone to being disputatious, some insisted that one should open the big end of the egg first, some the small end. This doctrinal disagreement divided the people into two warring tribes, the “big-enders” and the “little-enders.”

Swift’s satire, published in 1726, was aimed specifically at the doctrinal differences in British religion that had led over the years to so much violence and suffering. But his larger truth is that humans are by nature a tribal people and will seek to bind with people who are like-minded in matters large or small. The only requirement to form an effective tribe is to have another tribe to disagree with, disparage, and fight against.

When Covid struck, it was a reasonable hope that the pandemic would be a force of cohesion. After all, the virus is its own tribe which all Americans should naturally have despised. The human tribe vs. the virus tribe. It seemed so natural as to have been almost inevitable.

Instead, attitudes about Covid divided us, with tragic consequences.

One of my favorite and funniest sub stack authors is Matt Labash who, in his latest Slack Tide post, asked why the pandemic has been so divisive.

The question led me to think of Gulliver’s Lilliputians, which in turn led me to think about the early days of Covid and of masks. Since the beginning of Covid, masks have been an unmistakably visible sign and symbol of where one stood with regard to the pandemic. Maskers vs. non-maskers slid all too easily (with exceptions of course) into vaxxers and non-vaxxers. Fauci fans and Fauci haters.

Here’s a thought experiment. What if a new sumptuary law was passed requiring every person in the country to choose whether to wear, at all times, a red MAGA hat or a blue “I Hate Trump” hat. Wearing no hat or a different hat is not an option.

Wouldn’t that be awful?