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plmanseau's profile
Peter Manseau
Peter Manseau
Peter Manseau
@plmanseau

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Peter Manseau

@plmanseau

Historian, novelist, @Smithsonian @AmHistoryMuseum curator of religion. Author of many books, next two with @PrincetonUPress and @AAKnopf. Views my own.

petermanseau.com
Joined April 2020

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    Peter Manseau‏ @plmanseau 17 Apr 2020

    Reading @JeffSharlet’s and @QuinceMountain's tweets today about the covid death rate & reopening the country, I realized the dynamics at play in this debate are eerily similar to a story I thought about a lot as a kid. It was of course from the Twilight Zone.pic.twitter.com/tpkXGzG6PV

    5:13 PM - 17 Apr 2020
    • 408 Retweets
    • 828 Likes
    • sedar Michèle Sharik 💉 - "Unity"? Accountability 1st! Aches Tons Kayleigh Lavender Colominipiccolominipiccolominipiccolominipiccolomi Bunker Bill シ 🦇🦠B1.1.1.7, B.1.1.248 Erika with a K PapaKonzan Leslie Gnadinger
    14 replies 408 retweets 828 likes
      1. New conversation
      2. Peter Manseau‏ @plmanseau 17 Apr 2020

        In the 1980s Twilight Zone reboot, “Button, Button” told the tale of a financially struggling couple visited by a mysterious man. He gives them a box with a button that when pressed would kill “someone they do not know” & they get cash in return.pic.twitter.com/DryVvPtiTX

        14 replies 238 retweets 685 likes
        Show this thread
      3. Peter Manseau‏ @plmanseau 17 Apr 2020

        At first they’re appalled—who would kill a stranger for money? But the more they think about it, the more they rationalize: “People die every day, what’s one more?”

        1 reply 16 retweets 183 likes
        Show this thread
      4. Peter Manseau‏ @plmanseau 17 Apr 2020

        “Button, button” was adapted from a 1971 Richard Matheson story, but it’s based on a much older moral dilemma, which is often given the unfortunate name “the Chinaman box”.

        2 replies 11 retweets 185 likes
        Show this thread
      5. Peter Manseau‏ @plmanseau 17 Apr 2020

        “Chinaman box” is bit on the nose given the recent “China virus” rhetoric, but it once stood for the idea that the person killed when pressing the button would be someone on the other side of the world—not only a stranger but someone impossible to know.

        1 reply 9 retweets 179 likes
        Show this thread
      6. Peter Manseau‏ @plmanseau 17 Apr 2020

        In 1974 CBS Radio Mystery Theater made an audio drama that put a fine point on the rationalization necessary to kill a stranger and then get on with your life. “You might call it murder before you press the button, but after you’ll call it something else.”

        1 reply 50 retweets 335 likes
        Show this thread
      7. Peter Manseau‏ @plmanseau 17 Apr 2020

        In 2020, we might call pressing the button "reopening the country." Those arguing 2-3% mortality is a price worth paying tend to assume this 2-3% will include people other than their families and friends--not only strangers but those impossible to know.

        8 replies 142 retweets 694 likes
        Show this thread
      8. Peter Manseau‏ @plmanseau 17 Apr 2020

        But the twist in “Button, Button” is the logic of contagion as well. After the couple presses the button & they get paid they’re told the box will now be given to “someone they do not know” – someone who will rationalize their deaths just as they have done.

        2 replies 30 retweets 343 likes
        Show this thread
      9. Peter Manseau‏ @plmanseau 17 Apr 2020

        2-3% of the population may seem like unknowable others, but they are always ourselves – maybe not immediately, maybe not our own individual selves, but the larger community of which we’re all a part.

        2 replies 34 retweets 302 likes
        Show this thread
      10. Peter Manseau‏ @plmanseau 17 Apr 2020

        No doubt sooner or later we will press the button, but when we do we should remember that we are all strangers to others, and yet we choose to look out for each other just same. /END

        14 replies 21 retweets 372 likes
        Show this thread
      11. Peter Manseau‏ @plmanseau 23 Apr 2020

        Adding a couple footnotes because this thread is finding new readers today: 1. The 1980s Twilight Zone episode “Button Button” is online & worth watching. Great as it is, I bet a @JordanPeele remake would be something to see.https://youtu.be/TBEC2A1uwt4 

        1 reply 5 retweets 47 likes
        Show this thread
      12. Peter Manseau‏ @plmanseau 23 Apr 2020

        2. The 1970s radio drama “The Chinaman Button” is also online and worth a listen. It is in some ways even darker because the moral test makes a good man turn bad and then, well, there will be blood.https://youtu.be/zSKT-REprtw 

        1 reply 1 retweet 34 likes
        Show this thread
      13. Peter Manseau‏ @plmanseau 23 Apr 2020

        3. Finally, a reminder from @FunnyorDie that for many people this moral dilemma is unfortunately no dilemma at all. h/t @emceegocryhttps://youtu.be/y7rzIwrEqpw 

        1 reply 5 retweets 29 likes
        Show this thread
      14. Peter Manseau‏ @plmanseau 23 Apr 2020

        Last word on this, I swear. The original source of the would-you-kill-a-stranger question is François-René de Chateaubriand's "The Genius of Christianity" (1802). Adding it here because 1980s television made me who I am, but history is what I do for a living.pic.twitter.com/PTpiYREsWk

        4 replies 5 retweets 51 likes
        Show this thread
      15. Peter Manseau‏ @plmanseau 15 Jul 2020

        We keep finding new ways to push the button, still confident the dead will never be us. @thebafflermaghttps://thebaffler.com/latest/the-finger-on-the-button-manseau …

        0 replies 1 retweet 5 likes
        Show this thread
      16. End of conversation

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