The CDC, Interstellar, and the Blight in Our Souls

Scientism sees itself as "saviour to an abstract sense of 'humanity' that erases individual humans—a view shared by dictators across time."

From Crisis

By Veronica Burchard

Many trendy social causes are steering our sentiments away from individual people and toward vague, universal concepts like "humanity." This shift positions abstract ideals over tangible human needs.

In his resignation-by-tweet from the CDC, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Monkeypox Czar and LGBTQ+ advocate Demetre Daskalakis, made a telling comment: “Public health is not merely about the health of the individual, but it is about the health of the community, the nation, the world.”

His words paralleled the words of fictional scientist Dr. Mann from the film Interstellar who, just seconds before his own recklessness sent him into the vacuum of space, declared: “This isn’t about my life, or Cooper’s life, this is about all mankind.”

And President Biden made an eerily similar statement in 2021 as he decried the “pandemic of the unvaccinated”: “This is not about freedom or personal choice…. My job as President is to protect all Americans.”

As if one can protect all Americans without protecting individual Americans. 

Dr. Daskalakis seems to believe, like Biden and the fictional Dr. Mann, in himself as savior to an abstract sense of “humanity” that erases individual humans—a view shared by dictators across time.  

In the movie Interstellar, we’re introduced to a post-war America in which a blight has wiped out all food except corn. Life is mostly miserable, with farmers torching their blighted crops and baseball games ruined by fierce dust storms. Joseph Cooper, a widowed father of two who flew for NASA before the war, is a sign of hope, industry, integrity, and familial love. 

When Cooper encounters a secret group of NASA scientists, they give him bad news: the corn will die. “We’re not meant to save the earth,” says Professor Brand, the lead physicist. “We’re meant to leave it.” 

After mocking the “unshakable faith” of those who believe the earth is ours, Brand claims to be on the brink of solving an equation that will allow people to break free of gravity and move to another planet. All Cooper must do is don his space suit again and spend decades (or more?) exploring a distant galaxy where previous scientists, including Mann, were sent as scouts a decade earlier. 

“I’ve got kids professor,” says Cooper, reluctant to leave his motherless children.

“Get out there and save them,” replies Brand, mercilessly striking where Cooper is weakest, appealing to the sacrificial love of a father.

Convinced, Cooper leaves his children (in one of the most heartbreaking scenes in modern film). Eventually, he finds Dr. Mann on an ice planet.

That’s when he learns it was all a lie. 

Their true plan, revealed by Dr. Mann, was manipulating Cooper into bringing hundreds of frozen embryos to the new planet to then, via forced surrogacy, plant a colony. (This plan is not recognized as horrific by any of the characters.) NASA led Cooper to think he could save his children because it was the only way he would have made the trip “for the sake of the species.” Mann laments: “We can care deeply, selflessly about those we know, but that empathy rarely extends beyond our line of sight. Evolution has yet to transcend that simple barrier.” Mann thinks he can save humanity but not save humans. 

The Covid years revealed that too many CDC scientists think like Dr. Mann. They seem to believe that there can be something truly good for the individual or the family that is not good for the community. Even more, they believe that there is something lacking in us—something holding humanity back!—about the drive to protect our children and families with more intensity than we might give strangers. The theological concept of ordo amoris, or “order of love,” recently referred to by J.D. Vance, is a bug and not a feature of humanity.

To those with this mindset, a father who protects his wife and child from an experimental injection claimed to prevent a disease which poses no risk to them is a reprobate. 

So, too, is a parent who objects to LGBTQ+ propaganda in schools. Even a parent who reads to his child is bad because it imparts an unfair advantage. The nuclear family itself, it follows, is bad for society because people will prioritize their spouse and child over strangers. 

Our CDC and Mann also pervert the meaning of “sacrifice.” Of course, any virtuous society values sacrifice for the sake of the common good. But sacrifice is, by nature, the voluntary giving up of something good for the sake of another good. When George Washington put aside his desire to retire to Mt. Vernon for the sake of his country, that was a sacrifice, rightly understood. 

You don’t sacrifice by sinning. But to Mann and, as we all know, to the CDC, a lie can be a good. They told us in 2021 not to compare flu deaths to Covid deaths because they inflate flu death numbers to encourage vaccine uptake. To them, that lie is not a bad thing but a good one! They believe the ends justify the means—a lie is good (even elevated to a sacrifice if it’s big enough) if it is intended for a good outcome. Mann explains the lie is a sign he “was prepared to sacrifice his own humanity,” so the human race might continue.

But Cooper, who understands the meaning of words, says, “No, the sacrifice is being made by the people on earth who are going to die, because you declared their case hopeless.” 

It’s not surprising that many framed masking and vaccine requirements in terms of sacrifice for the greater good while branding individuals who objected as specifically selfish. Biden bellowed in 2021: “The unvaccinated overcrowd our hospitals, are overrunning the emergency rooms and intensive care units, leaving no room for someone with a heart attack, or pancreatitis, or cancer.” 

Vanity Fair put it succinctly in 2021: 

There are two groups of people in the U.S.: those who take the virus seriously and are willing to do what it takes to stop it, and those whose own selfishness and ignorance will ensure we’re still dealing with this thing for God knows how long.

Back to Interstellar, the viewer wonders: Did they even really have to leave earth, or was that also a lie? And once they got to the new planet, wouldn’t the blight that rendered earth uninhabitable have wound up there anyway, from deep within Mann’s and Cooper’s lungs—their spiritus? Cooper and his fellow astronauts, when discussing the risks they face, assure themselves they will face great odds, but not evil. Cooper replies: “Only what we take with us.” 

Perhaps the filmmakers were trying to say something about our fallen nature and original sin. I won’t spoil the ending, but it does involve a clear declaration of the ordo amoris and the nature of God.  

In the end, both Interstellar and our recent history with the CDC force us to confront the same temptation: to abstract “humanity” into a cause so lofty that individual human beings are forgotten. It is only by loving rightly—loving and cherishing our spouse, protecting our children, honoring our parents, and making true sacrificial offerings—that we can promote the common good. 

May our soon-to-be reconstituted CDC, if it must persist at all, understand these things.