Surprise! How’s that for a sensational headline? Did it bait you to click?
There’s an obituary for a 79-year-old man who died of COVID-19 going viral. Here’s a link to the most balanced coverage I’ve seen of it, from BuzzFeed of all places.
The man’s wife channels all her grief over losing her loved one into writing an obituary shaming others. Blaming others.
How is that helpful?
Like, seriously, has shame ever motivated anyone? Has blame ever fixed anything?
An emotional appeal, maybe. But shame? Cursing you with karma?
Assigning responsibility, maybe. But blaming people and calling them names (“ignorant”, “self-centered”) has literally never in the history of the world, from the playground to the boardroom, made a person change.
Creating an “us” versus “them” doesn’t solve any problems, nor does it foster a compassionate society, which if you look past this woman’s vitriol is ultimately her point: that if people had shown compassion which she defines as wearing masks, her husband might have lived.
We want to live in a compassionate society!
So let’s analyze shame: you shame because of your own shame—you couldn’t save your beloved!, and therefore are not in control and you are powerless. But instead of dealing with your grief, pain, sense of loss, helplessness, etc, it’s easier to find an outlet: the other, in this case, the non-mask-wearer.
But in creating an “other” to shame, you in turn show no compassion to them, and instead dehumanize them: they are unrecognizable to you as a part of you (which they are, because all humans are). And if you don’t see yourself in another, you are capable of committing atrocities against them: emotional—shaming, the least of it—physical, sociological, societal.
And that, I guess, is how we get to polarization.
And hopefully not any further.
Related: Europeans Are Waking Up to Government Covid Tyranny Why Are We Still Asleep. I hadn’t read about the German protests, here’s a … relatively balanced article about it. I spent more than a reasonable amount of minutes scrolling the NYTimes for the tweet in question, here it is: “This was the scene in Berlin, where an estimated 17,000 people defied social-distancing and mask requirements to join a protest supported by neo-Nazi groups, conspiracy theorists and others who said they were fed up with the restrictions.” … a sensationalist tweet, as far as I can tell, as the group organizing the protest is non-partisan in defense of fundamental rights as reported by the German press (I can’t read German, so even with google translate had a very hard time tracking down the org or its website to verify this for myself).
I believe we have already given up too many liberties to the government, and should be pushing back at increased regulation and restriction. This is related to shame because I want to be careful not to buy into the shame associated with choices: to go to restaurants, to wear a mask, or not. These are choices individuals should have, not actions that should be mandated by government. That’s not about health, it’s about liberty.
PS: I’m only human and WANT TO BE SNARKY so I cut this from the body of the article but feel compelled to post it as a post script: nevermind that the husband who died was 79 and contracted the virus after a fall that required hospitalization from which he was still recovering and therefore would have been susceptible to ANY illness… it’s definitely specifically my fault because I’ve sat on the patio at a restaurant in the past 3 days.
Other convos: Week 20: Infection. Week 19: Polarization. Week 18: the wrong convo. Week 17: the convo. Week 16: the rant. <–so we’re clear, there aren’t any before 16. I just ranted to my family and friends, not the internet.