Why living in a society with anti-maskers is a good thing

And a sign of a well functioning democracy

Fear and paranoia are controlling many people's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Two distinct fears have fractured humanity into two camps. One group fears the virus itself, and has planted itself in the pro-government, pro-healthcare, pro-vaccine, pro-Science camp. I will call these the institutionalists. The second group is relatively unafraid of the virus, and fears the imposition on personal freedoms resulting from lockdowns, border closures, and threat of mandated vaccination. I will call these the obstructionists.

Institutionalists represent the bedrock of a functional democracy. Individual trust in governmental structures is not only essential, but also a symptom of well-functioning governance. In western developed countries, the vast majority of the populous follows most of the laws most of the time. Even when laws are broken, fair justice is given and redemption is available for all but the most egregious offenders. In this context, following the laws is a sign of trust, compliance, and respect. Most people who are alive today in the western world lack appreciation for the conditions under which this trust breaks down.

The idea of rebelling against the laws of a nation is rarely met with sympathy from the institutionalists. The expectation that everyone understands and follows the laws is, by and large, the mechanism that perpetuates intra-national peace in most western nations in the 21st century. Thus, criminal behaviour threatens the fabric of peace in a nation, so why have tolerance for it? Institutionalists tend not to tolerate disobedience for this reason.

What institutionalists often forget, is that for this process to work, the government of a nation must create laws that protect peace without unnecessarily sacrificing the freedom of its general public. Threading the balance of lawfully regulated peace with individual freedoms is fraught to say the least. These imperatives are seldom aligned. Take a simple example of jaywalking. An anarchist (one who devalues any lawfully regulated peace) might perceive the personal freedom to cross the road wherever one wishes to be a fundamental human right. Indeed there are many countries where jaywalking laws do not exist, and roads oft descend into bedlam with cars and pedestrians forced to chaotically dodge one another. It is true that these systems tend to self-organize and, in some cases, function just as well as the lawfully regulated systems. Then the question becomes, how much self-organizing chaos is manageable in a society without sacrificing peace or unnecessary suffering?

Take one extreme example. Imagine personal property rights did not exist. In Canada, most people do not depend on personal firearms and violent defence systems to protect their private property; instead these responsibilities are entrusted to the government. Most people’s houses are protected by little more than a deadbolt and the knowledge that a quick 911 call is all it takes to defend against an intruder. Herein lies the other side of the equation - we forfeit some personal freedoms (in this case to defend our private property by any means necessary) in exchange for a peaceful institutional solution (the government and its police force help protect our personal property). And what obstructionists tend to forget is the myriad ways in which our society is peaceful and functional because of these institutional solutions. (there’s an argument here that this peace and function can be achieved through anarchical means, but that’s a topic for another day)

What institutionalists tend to forget is the myriad ways in which personal freedoms can be infringed upon by increasingly power hungry governance regimes. When the institutional solutions impose unnecessary obstructions on personal freedoms, the only recourse against them is disobedience. Ay, there’s the rub. The history of human society is riddled with examples of government overreach, authoritarianism, and infringements on personal freedoms. A cursory study of history is all it takes for one to recognize how reliably this pattern emerges. And indeed, the staunchest institutionalists even forty years ago knew this, but in modern times the western world is far removed, both spatially and temporally, from this sort of overreach. The hazard becomes forgetting, or worse denying, that such a pattern could emerge once more.

Where does the responsibility fall to ensure such a pattern does not emerge? The obstructionists. A healthy democracy relies on obstructionists to defy governmental overreach in times of order, and it depends on institutionalists to pursue peace in times of chaos. In reality, the two sides need one another. And functional democracies rely on both sides, much like the mind requires faith and skepticism in constant balance. Skepticism towards the democracy project, I believe, emerges from a skepticism that such a balance can be struck. One threat to this balance is naïveté.

The current moment in the western world has known a sustained period of calm since the end of the Cold War. And the idea of a threat coming from within in the form of a tyrannical government is even more foreign than that of an evil enemy empire. The fear of one’s own government stripping personal rights and freedoms, to most westerners today, seems silly. Further yet, the fear that this overreach emerges from a quest for tyrannical power can be even harder to appreciate. And yet, that’s exactly what’s happened with COVID.

I’m not here to argue the justification for all the ways in which national governments temporarily halted the full gamut of personal freedoms; in fact I tend to think most strategies were overly lackadaisical. The truth is that once someone tells you you can’t do something, the natural reaction is to question it. As a 29-year-old, if my mother were to tell me I can’t go out after 6pm I would politely recommend she get her head checked. If my government tells me there’s a curfew, should I respond any differently? Well, not really. Like a child exploring the skills of rebellion, you should oblige only after careful consideration of the validity of the rule. For healthy democracies to persist, obedience should not be offered by the citizens carte blanche. Obedience is a privilege offered to the institutions in exchange for reasonability. And sometimes, a tug-of-war between obedience and disobedience is necessary to maintain reason.

Unreasonable overreach is a feature, not a bug, of government. Most of the times we don’t even see it because it has always been a part of life. We accept it because it does not come with a noticeable cost. Jaywalking borders on overreach. It is why it is so infrequently enforced. What is the ratio of times you have committed the crime of jaywalking to the number of times you’ve been punished for it? We agree to follow the rule and in exchange the government and its police force agrees not to enforce it with draconian extent. Imagine you woke up tomorrow and suddenly your city’s police were arresting people left, right, and centre for jaywalking. You would be enraged, and rightfully so. That would be unreasonable and the rational response would be disobedience. Okay, I think I’ve made the case for my model.

The COVID Connection

What would you do if you woke up tomorrow and the police were arresting people left, right, and centre for not wearing masks? All but the most hawkish of COVID hawks would be enraged. In reality, I could go into a supermarket tomorrow without a mask, and the consequences would be relatively minor. Therein lies the twist. Anti-maskers oppose these rules because they can.

Imagine the conditions it would take for these rules to be followed 100% of the time by 100% of the people. Imagine how we might create a world without anti-maskers. I’d argue there are only two ways.

Firstly, it can be done with a population of people who are sufficiently concerned about COVID-19, convinced of the benefits of wearing masks, wholly concerned about their fellow citizens, and entirely incapable of forgetting their mask at home and hoping to get away with quickly running into the store to buy a gallon of milk. As Joe Biden would say, c’mon man. That just ain’t gonna happen. Let’s explore the second scenario.

The consequence to not wearing a mask would have to be so extreme that no one would risk it, not even once. And the obstructionists, whose unreasonable overreach radars are pinging madly at these draconian measures, would be swiftly and permanently taken care of and removed from the population should they be brave enough to disobey. Eventually, only those willing to comply are left, and the rest are forced into compliance by fear of repercussion.

In some sense, this is the world that North Korea created. A draconian state so harsh that no one dare disobey. It is not that their people all happened to be born institutionalists, nor is it that the institutions are so pure and beautiful that everyone gets converted into institutionalists. It is that the obstructionists are swiftly removed or castrated into submission. Instead, we sacrifice some obedience for disobedience. We sacrifice some institutional overreach for personal freedoms.

And let’s be honest, who would want to live any other way? So the next time you see an anti-masker, just remember, it’s better than the alternative.