Americans love to talk and sing about their freedom. Two days ago, we indulged in our annual orgy of wearing red-white-blue outfits, shooting off fireworks, and smugly proclaiming “’Merica!” Amid all of the hype, what gets lost is that we as a nation have achieved freedom for some by stripping it from others. The elephant in the room is the fact that we have built an empire on stolen land and used stolen humans to help with the construction.
What also gets lost in the hype is the balance between freedom and responsibility. I have recently made a long-distance move and have become an apartment dweller for the first time in many decades, so I’m learning a lot about freedom and responsibility. I have the freedom and the right to play my TV set any time of the day or night at whatever volume I choose, but I have the responsibility to be courteous to my neighbors and give them the freedom to listen to their own TV programs, not mine. Since I now live in a state where recreational marijuana use is legal, our community standards respect the right of residents to smoke pot but ask that they take the responsibility to be considerate of neighbors who may be sensitive to the smoke. (I don’t smoke.) I collect the leaves that I sweep off my deck in a dustpan and dispose of them in my trash rather than sweeping them off the edge, because they would litter the patio of the neighbor whose apartment is below mine.
The U.S. response to the coronavirus has been inept to say the least and a national disgrace to be more accurate. The current dearth of intelligent, responsible leadership is the leading cause of our failure to flatten the curve, but close behind is the mass of freedom-loving Americans who never got the memo that freedom is balanced by responsibility. Then throw in the twisted thinking of the loudly vocal evangelical faction who love to sprinkle their conversations with cherry-picked Bible phrases, and you have a pretty good picture of how we got where we are.
I’ve reached the point where if I hear one more person say wearing a mask or social distancing constitutes “living in fear,” I’m sure my response will not be very Christian. It’s true that the expressions “fear not” and “do not fear” appear often in the Christian Bible as God assures humans God has their backs and they can rely on God’s love. II Timothy 1:7 is often cherry-picked and referenced: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” Okay, let’s think about that.
First, the word “fear” has a broad range of meanings; all fears are not the same. Fearing God doesn’t mean being terrified of God; it means holding God in awe and reverence. Phobias are irrational fears. I’m claustrophobic, and I could not rationally explain to you why being in a closed space–or even thinking about being in a closed space–sends my blood pressure soaring, starts my stomach churning, and makes my skin crawl and almost break a sweat; but that’s what happens. There’s a whole list of things people fear with no rational explanation.
Fear of death is one which nearly all humans share. Even those who don’t fear a dark afterlife have some qualms about how their deaths will occur, whether they’ll suffer at the end, and other understandable concerns. Fear of public speaking has sometimes been ranked even higher in prevalence than the fear of death, because we all share the dread of looking foolish and sounding stupid.
Then there are what I would call healthy or survival fears, those which contribute to our longevity. I fear walking or driving too close to the edge of a precipice; I’ll never be one of those who die by falling off a cliff while trying to capture the perfect selfie to post on social media. I live very close to several freeways; I’m careful what times of day I venture onto them in my car, and on no day will you find me walking across them. Why? Because I fear being flattened by a fast-moving vehicle. Whenever possible, I try to stay away from sick people, and it didn’t take a pandemic to make me wash my hands frequently. I do these things because I fear being sick. These survival fears cause me to use caution and take responsibility for my own well-being.
“A spirit of fear” is, I think, different from any of the types of fears I’ve mentioned; and I agree it’s unhealthy. A spirit of fear is what psychologists might call paranoia: “a tendency on the part of an individual or group toward excessive or irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness of others” (Merriam-Webster online dictionary). Although we toss this word around casually and humorously to designate some things to which we are hyper-alert, paranoia is a serious mental disorder. It can be an aspect of drug abuse or of a mental illness such as CPD (chronic personality disorder) or schizophrenia.
I believe we can all agree that living in a “spirit of fear” is unhealthy, regardless of one’s religious persuasions. However, using reasonable caution and taking responsibility do not in any way equate to “living in fear.”
Dr. Robert R. Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is referenced in an article by CNN’s Holly Yan: “But the CDC director said everyone can help stop this deadly pandemic. It just takes personal responsibility.”
And that brings us back to where I started: remembering that our freedom demands responsibility. Henry David Thoreau begins his famous 1849 essay “Civil Disobedience” with these statements: “I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe- ‘That government is best which governs not at all’; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.”
This is one of the clearest arguments for personal responsibility I’ve ever read. He agrees with the adage that what we would call small government is preferable to the alternative of big government, then takes it a step further by saying his first choice would be no government at all. He’s not advocating anarchy, however; he’s saying a responsible citizenry doesn’t need laws to make them behave ethically. The caveat for having no government is learning to govern ourselves, to take responsibility for our own actions and their consequences.
I’ve been wearing a mask in public for several months, even before masking up became state law in Washington. In spite of the state mandate, I still pass people in the grocery store who smugly stroll the aisles unmasked. I haven’t asked any of them to explain their reasons, because that’s not my place; but I’d wager at least a few of them are in the group who see a requirement to mask up as an infringement on their personal freedom. This is another group that makes me want to scream, but I digress.
When one claims one’s rights have been infringed on, that person ought to be able to clearly name the specific right that’s being violated. Perhaps someone can help me out here: exactly what freedom do I as a U.S. citizen have that is taken away by my being required to wear a mask? I’m stumped. But I’m reminded of a saying I heard often when I was growing up: “Your freedom to swing your arm ends where my nose begins.”
That’s a folksy way of saying none of us has unbounded freedom. In fact, we’d all do well to remember that our laws enumerate far more things which we do not have the freedom to do than rights which we are at liberty to exercise. It’s illegal to shout “Fire!” in a crowded place unless the shouter has actually seen flames or other evidence of a real fire. It’s illegal to park my car in a spot reserved for people with disabilities. It’s illegal to have sex with someone without first securing that person’s consent to be a willing partner. And the other prohibitions which govern our daily interactions fill volumes.
Then there’s the list of mandated actions meant to protect ourselves and others. I can’t legally drive my car or ride in someone else’s car without wearing a seatbelt. Parents can’t legally transport their young children without adhering to very detailed instructions on how those children must be secured in the vehicle. In some states, helmets are required by those who ride bicycles and motorcycles.
Every law on that last list has also been hotly contested and disobeyed, just as the mask law is now, because “freedom.” It took “Click it or ticket” to get many people to comply with the seatbelt law, and of course the persistent beepers on newer cars have also been quite persuasive in making people buckle up just to stop the noise. Hospitals have gotten involved in making sure parents own and know how to use car seats for their infants by refusing to discharge a mother and baby until the baby has been properly restrained in the right kind of seat. So obviously the mask law is not the first to draw the ire and defiance of liberty-loving Americans, but it is perhaps the one for which disobedience has the most widespread consequences.
Refusing to wear my seatbelt might place me at greater risk for injury or even death when involved in an accident, and refusing to wear a helmet might cause my own head to be severely injured were it to crash to the pavement. Those are serious consequences for defying laws requiring simple actions, but they affect a small circle of people: myself, my family, and whatever medical professionals are required to assist me. Refusing to wear a mask, however, has the potential to affect the dozens of people I pass in a store, plus their close family members and associates (some of whom may be in high-risk categories), and to place an additional strain on medical resources necessary for those people’s treatment. That one little pebble can cause a wide circle of ripples.
Our current national leadership is ignorant and divisive. They’ve chosen to politicize a public health crisis rather than create a coordinated system for effectively slowing down and eventually ending it. Our governors are overwhelmed by the enormity of the decisions and responsibility not normally delegated to them and besieged by those in rebellion against their attempts to carry out their duties. That leaves you and me. It’s on us. Those of us who wish to retain our cherished freedom have to grow up and take the responsibility to govern ourselves and to willingly follow reasonable guidelines for protecting ourselves and others. The downfall of democracy is that, as a friend recently put it, “ignorance and misinformation are given the same weight” as expert and informed data.
One of the individual responsibilities that fall to us right now is the decision of whom to believe. Such statements as “we have so many cases because we’re doing so much testing” are too plainly stupid to merit a rational response. By that line of thinking, I guess the way to reduce teen pregnancies is to ban pregnancy tests. As we hear so often these days, “You can’t fix stupid,” but you can learn to ignore it and not allow your own decisions to be guided by it. It’s true that there’s lots of conflicting information and a wide range of proposed solutions to this crisis; and yes, the experts sometimes change their positions and recommendations. But so what? COVID-19 was identified in 2019. Cancer has plagued humanity for decades at least, yet the information and recommended treatments continue to vary and conflict as new research becomes available.
The first step to “flattening the curve” and eventually doing away with this plague is to act not as Democrats and Republicans or liberals and conservatives but as human beings who live in a close network where individual survival depends on herd responsibility, not herd immunity. To achieve the 70% to 90% immunity rate required to reach the level of herd immunity, several hundreds of thousands more people would have to die. If we instead work toward herd responsibility, we can save lives and become a better, more evolved group of humans.
Keeping our distance from people during this time is not living in fear. Wearing a mask in public is not living in fear. Staying home when going out is not necessary is not living in fear. Washing our hands often is not living in fear. Doing those things is living in intelligence, reasonable caution, and personal responsibility; and those are the qualities that will save our lives and our nation.
Want to be patriotic? Stop whining and wear the damn mask!