On Mask-Wearing, and Why People Don't Want To

[gaudior]

I have started reading Mary Trump's biography of her uncle, and this led to me and nineweaving having a very excited conversation in the kitchen about politics in general, and the thinking of the maybe 30-40% of the population still enthusiastic about following that asshole in the White House off a pandemic cliff.

We put into words something I haven't before, which is about this idea of individualism: many Americans want to believe that they, and they alone, can protect and take care of themselves. Wearing a mask-- which doesn't protect you, but does protect people around you-- doesn't make any sense, from that perspective. If masks are really what keep people safe, then you have to rely on people around you for your safety. You are defenseless when around other people (you can wash your hands and not touch your face, but you can't stop someone else from coughing), and the only thing that can help you is everyone else caring about you enough to protect you by inconveniencing themselves.

If you already believe that we are connected by a web of interdependence, then wearing a mask to take care of other people makes sense. You're already fine with paying taxes to pay for other people's children's educations and firefighters to rescue them, with obeying traffic signals to protect other people's lives, with getting vaccinations to promote herd immunity, with being part of a union to help everyone involved get better treatment, with recycling and avoiding fossil fuels to fight climate change affecting people half a planet away. You already know that "you didn't build that," whatever "that" your daily life and comfort depend on, and that you live in debt to people around you and before you. You probably find that comforting, to know that you don't have to do absolutely everything yourself, that you can be a small part of a larger effort.

But if you believe that you, and you alone*, make your destiny? Then this makes no sense. A mask won't protect you from illness. So the illness itself had better not be real, had better not matter-- because if it is, then you are at the mercy of the people around you. And so many of the Republican policies show exactly how little mercy they have for the people around them, so it seems hard to imagine that they would trust that other people would have more.

So: we are paying for the cult of individuality, which makes people believe that they should be able to solve any problem for themselves, and if they can't-- well, then either a) they are miserable failures who should blame themselves, or b) someone must be lying about the problem. B is a lot easier to have angry protests about.

I... fucking hate this, have I mentioned? :(

--R


*It was never "you alone," though. It was a man who was at the head of a team of other people-- a wife, children, servants/slaves/employees from whose labor he could benefit. People need other people to accomplish anything big. But if you think of that wife, children, and workers as yours, as really more your property than as real people who matter in and of themselves... well, then you can do all kinds of things as "just one man."

Comments

[sixbeforelunch]

There is more and more evidence coming out that wearing a mask also protects the wearer. (Source.) So there is an individualistic, "I'm protecting myself against the world" aspect to it, although I suspect that the battle lines are already drawn and most people are dug in at this point, so it seems unlikely that this new information will change anything at this juncture.

[marahmarie]

Adding to this with: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-14/evidence-mounts-that-masks-help-lower-your-exposure-to-the-coronavirus

So yes, mask-wearing helps to protect you, too.

[cynthia1960]

F*ck toxic individualism, and yes, 45 thinks of his family and workers as property. Slavery mentality.

[jesse_the_k]

Nailed it.

[sovay]

I... fucking hate this, have I mentioned?

It's hateful.

[mrissa]

I feel like I'm watching the sociopolitical version of Elder Physicist Syndrome. It's horrifying.

With Elder Physicist Syndrome, it's: "I understand how this piece works, and since I am a person of great understanding, clearly I can go from there; I don't need to ask whether there are any other relevant pieces, and I don't need to ask whether the whole behaves differently than each piece because that is not the model I'm using." And then you see physicists in their 70s who are being complete idiots about climate change, because they understand atoms.

It's like that but with the entirety of society. "I have figured out this one piece! Now I will Do A Logic and obviously as the poet says each man is an island!" No stop aaaagh.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

D: Thank you, that's interesting and does seem to make a sad kind of sense.