How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question

by Michael Schur

The widespread lack of guilt among mask resisters feels like a gut punch, to me. Because again, it’s such a minuscule ask—wearing a mask falls roughly at the “don’t jaywalk” level of individual sacrifice. Imagine we were in that Hot Day Jaywalking scenario from earlier—it’s 103 degrees and the crosswalk is a block away, so we intend to just hustle across the street. Now imagine that someone said: “Hey, I know it’s annoying, but if we all agree to head on down and use the crosswalk instead of jaywalking, we can save a hundred thousand people from dying in auto accidents.” Imagine how easily we’d make that call! Okay, it’s a little hot and a bit inconvenient… but 100,000 people? It’d be one of the simplest calculations we’d ever made. And yet here I sit, writing this book, watching the case count for the nation skyrocket because too many people think their own Ayn Randian right to unfettered selfishness outweighs the sum total of literally everyone else’s happiness and safety.