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I have a very smart friend who is also a talented decoupler, who could easily be a very quality contributer here if dealing with Culture War issues didn't make him bleed from the eyes. He is literally the only person I know whose Facebook posts about politics did not make me lose respect for him. Over the years, we have had a number of conversations about contentious CW topics that flirted with the border of Adversarial Collaboration, long detailed discussions handled with fairness, civility, and mutual respect.
Until the topic of student loan forgiveness came up. That discussion was unusually heated. He seemed almost frantic, heated about PPP loan forgiveness hypocrites and just not giving the expected degree of decoupled consideration for arguments about how the loan forgiveness was an overall terrible policy. He seemed personally invested, felt personally attacked, in a way he hadn't in conversations about abortion or gun control.
The thing is, my friend is a teacher. Education is a big factor in his identity. He has taught maybe a thousand students who might benefit from the forgiveness plan. Attacks on that plan are an attack on his class identity. Politics is the mind-killer, and it is a sad fact that a rationalist's Art is most likely to abandon him when he needs it most (or, rather, he will fail the Art). And so my arguments sparked an uncontrolled emotional response that was missing from other, less identity-laden topics.
The second thing is, I've been on the other side of that coin, back when we had our multi-day deep dive into the gun control literature. Gun control hits me emotionally as an attack on my class identity. When I hear a gun control proposal, before I hear a single specific detail or spend a second considering merits, some lizard part of my brain interprets it as "Fuck you, your father, your father's father, and your father's father's father". (Does the word "father" still mean anything to you?) I've begged off having spontaneous discussions about it in person, even with close family, because I don't want to spike myself into rage and other unpleasant feelings. During that deep dive, my excellent friend was so calm, fair and rational that he overrode that concern, and I ended up learning a lot and having a great time.
And I'm thinking about this now, because I notice a similar reaction to the trans discussion downthread. The idea that my children might be brainwashed into taking evolutionarily self-destructive choices, and I can't even attempt to oppose it without facing the full wrath of the modern State, kindles a pre-rational, animal panic/fury response. I find myself getting heated to an unusual degree just thinking about it. I don't think I'm particularly "anti-trans". I was willing to be accepting two decades ago, when I first learned it was even a thing. But something about the thought that the phenomenon might hit my kids triggers an atavistic survival instinct. That reaction doesn't trigger when I consider my son dressing like David Bowie, or my daughter playing sports. It doesn't happen when a peer goes trans. It triggers at the thought of one of the two corporeal incarnations of my DNA and memes getting sucked into a fraught psychological memeplex, and particularly at the thought of them being medically sterilized.
Imagine an alternate world where any time a kid expressed suicidal ideation, government employees would firmly nudge them towards euthanasia, and would jail you as a parent for protesting. That's roughly the level of emotional hit - some part of me considers this an existential threat.
But what are the odds? 0.3%? That's not that much worse than the odds of childhood cancer, or other kind of unexpected death that a healthy mind doesn't overmuch worry about, and deals with gracefully if it comes. But now it's apparently something more like nearly 2%? That hits me in the Papa-Bear-Who-Wants-Grandkids-In-Space-Forever. And it seems very likely that a lot of that is social contagion or could otherwise be wildly reduced with a minimal degree of skepticism towards youth fads.
So, two points. One, I think it might behoove activist types (assuming we're not in pure conflict theory) to try to notice when one of their pushes is hitting this sort of reaction and figure out a path to undermine or alleviate it.
Secondly, a question for the community: What gets you fiercely activated, beyond what you can rationally justify? What CW issues feels like molten hot war to the hilt, where your instincts fight to throw aside all reason and charity? Any thoughts about why?
Why not just get vaccinated? I also thought it was kind if bullshit but did it to avoid running my social life.
Are you concerned about health risks or is it a principle?
At first I just saw it as very unnecessary, since I had already had covid in the summer of 2020 and it had been harmless. By the winter of that year the vaccines were out but I was still feeling safe without one. Then everyone went crazy as described above, plus the creepy politics and media campaigns, and from there on you might call it principle or just spite.
The whole thing caught me off guard; I never saw the social pressure and the social ruin coming until was already too late. I had mistakenly assumed that people around me were running on mistake theory and that my reasons might matter to them. Silly me, it was conflict theory all along and I had strayed into the enemy camp.
But had I seen it coming, I would have done the same anyways. Only with more firing back right away.
Vaccine safety didn't factor into it for me.
I mistakenly assumed that everyone around me regularly got flu shots and would be totally ok getting experiencing less than a second of pain to avoid harming my family. And I suppose now that the old folks are already dead from covid I shouldn't have anything to worry about-it's not like they're going to die again. But just like you, I feel like it's the principal of the thing. Choose Team Mankind or Team Virus (or, hell, Team China if you believe in lab leak theory.)
I think people should have the absolute authority to choose what goes in their arm, but if I see someone with 'death to /u/evinceo's ancestors' tattooed on their forehead, I'm going to treat them with some amount of contempt.
The decision to take a vaccine can only be understood in context of (what I see as) the authoritarian push that surrounded it. I got vaccinated but would have unvaccinated myself in 2021 if I could.
From my perspective you were party to a crime in lending emotional support to a push for mandatory medical procedures. Nevertheless, I do not see you as wearing a 'dystopian social credit system and human domestication for @popocatepetl and all future humans' on your forehead. I understand that you do not believe what I believe and have a different moral ecology between your ears, and so I don't jump to assuming malice or cruel indifference on your part. I do consider it a moral failing that you do not extend the same charity to us.
During the height of the War on Terror, I remember people demonizing the tiny number of Americans who did not extend the "simple courtesy" of standing for the pledge. It's "the least" they could do. As if they were resisting the overpowering wave of social pressure out of simple desire to rest their legs.
I guess we just straight up differ here. I see it mostly in the context of what it costs (practically nothing) and what it achieves (some nonzero decrease in the chance that people get sick.) If you only care about the signaling you can always get vaccinated and not tell anyone.
I've been careful to repeatedly state my opposition to mandates, which I don't agree with. I have a personal issue with people not doing it.
If you're willing to stretch to see me as morally culpable for mandates, would you permit me to see the antivax movement as morally culpable for the FDA's extremely slow, fatally cautious rollout of the vaccines, leading to excess deaths including people I really would have preferred to remain alive?
Is there a way to vaccinate without being statistically logged as having done so? I would consider it if another 2020 Covid situation comes around.
As for getting a booster in late 2022, I see the new updated vaccines as having an unclear cost/benefit ratio (EDIT: for me and for transmission), which I did not believe in 2021. Probably not worth the $110 they apparently cost the government. I guess I'll donate another buck to the Red Cross this year, or incur the equivalent moral debt by not doing so.
You may see that as a ridiculous moral framing, which leads me to:
Yes, clearly. You can see our decision as woefully morally incorrect. On the other hand, you're not morally entitled to suspend imaginative empathy and micharacterize the intent of our decision.
Imagine were I to say "@evincio wants to create a police state because he'd rather not get a cold". That is a twin of "@Southkraut doesn't want to experience less than a second of pain to avoid killing my relatives". The statements assume that the subject accepts a premise of the speaker's — that Covid measures are a slippery slope to a police state, that not vaccinating will lead to @Southkraut killing people — and frame the subject's decision in the most uncharitable way possible.
@Southkraut may not be able to articulate the principle behind his actions. Those principles may be dead wrong. And yet it is clear from his resistance that it was not out being miserly with his time (thirty seconds walking to the pharmacy counter the last time he swung through CVS) or unwilling to endure the pinch in the arm. This is obvious enough that I feel failing to see it is willful, which is what I'm responding against.
I guess I also don't buy that avoiding a non-mandatory vaccination is in any way resisting the imposition of a police state.
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