If one has to be permanently isolated just to be socially responsible, if one has to be cut off from their love ones just to be socially responsible, if one has to stay away just to be socially responsible, what is the quality of life for them? Let's not connect how they had contracted the disease to how they should lead their life thereafter. The sheer fact of being infected is a price paid, not forgetting there are also innocent victims. Maybe, for these people, the environment they once trust becomes unfamiliar, the people they once loved becomes distant just because they try to be socially responsible. "Please be socially responsible"....a so morally-weighted statement. An important cultivated behavior but a harsh one too if you are at the other end of the spectrum.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
A reflection
An incident yesterday made me reflect on these 2 words, "socially responsible". These are such morally-weighted words. It is easy to tell someone with influenza to be socially responsible and rest at home until one is well. However, the 2 words will weigh a ton on people with diseases such as AIDS. What does being socially responsible mean for these people? Maybe, it could mean stay away; minimum contact please; your absence is for the good of your love ones; isolation etc. Why this perception? I guess "socially responsible" is not given due justice as our environment is not ideally forgiving. Let me explain. Assuming the community fully understands how HIV can be transmitted, trust the probability of accidental infection is negligible, is inclusive of the infected and discrimination is unheard of, being socially responsible would be a by-product. Yes, this may be Utopian. But remember the quote, "every action, there's a reaction"?
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2 comments:
AIDs is a very bad example here. HIV, like Hepatitis B, can only be transmitted through sex, blood transfusion, sharing of needles and from mother to child during childbirth. HIV/HepB carriers cannot be termed as socially irresponsible when they appear in crowds, unless of cos they are going to engage in acts that will cause transmission as listed earlier.
Social responsibility will however be taken in very different light when highly contagious diseases are concerned. Examples would be SARS, pneumonia, chickenpox, some strains of gastroenteritis (one of the leading cause of death for children below 5yo).
For such cases, being socially responsible would require some form of self-quarantine. Which should not be taken as a punishment but an act of love for fellow mankind.
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