Anti-vaxxers are part of a tribe.
Opposition to vaccinations isn't about health risks. It is a tribal marker.
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| Flenniken |
A comment posted by Portland resident John Flenniken yesterday put into place something so obvious that I hadn't noticed it.
That is the nature of category errors. In category errors one misunderstands the entire nature of something, like mistaking a family gathering for a wedding instead of a funeral. Like the CDC and most Democratic governors, I thought the data of health outcomes was overwhelming and therefore would be persuasive to the vaccine resistant. Get vaccinated and live. We have charts that show it. Public service ads show doctors and nurses talking about crowded hospitals. Vaccinations make sense. Simple.
Not simple. Vaccinations aren't about health. They are about tribe. Much of what the pro-vaccination health care establishment does is worse than irrelevant. It backfires. Pleading hardens opposition. Mandates create martyrs.
John Flenniken is a retired safety engineer for an electric utility, Pacific Power, a job he took because he could not support his family as a high school chemistry teacher. He observed:
Denying the Covid vaccine has become a rite, akin to bra and draft card burning. It is a way to identify yourself to the group you most admire and relate.
You spout the tribal gospel and repeat the mantra to yourself and others. You proselytize your belief. To prove your faith in this new belief, you abandon caution and meet in groups for hours, maskless and unvaccinated. You validate your faith in being unvaccinated by hearing about the masses of infected and dying but you're fine and healthy they were masked and maybe vaccinated. You scoff and ridicule the masked populous. Like handling a poisonous viper and not getting bite you demonstrate your faith and cement your place in the tribe. That someone from outside your tribe may smile or chuckle at a death in your group does not resonate. You are a true believer.
As the whole world around you tells you to get vaccinated and wear a mask the more militant you become. It's now about freedom akin to religious liberty. You are now ready to fight.
I should have noticed a tribal marker. I was young in the late 1960s. I've been there. I was part of the tribe of long-haired youthful student radicals.
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| 1970 at college |
Trump leads a tribe. He understood Republicans better than does Romney, Ryan, McConnell, or the Bush family. He made an early decision to downplay COVID. He could have gone the other way, called it a War on COVID, and unified Americans under that banner. It was a fatal miscalculation for him politically and for his team now, as they die disproportionately from COVID. He defines and enforces the boundaries of the team's membership and thought. Resistance to the CDC, Anthony Fauci, vaccinations, and masks became markers for the team long before Biden was elected.
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| GOP gathering. No masks, hospital full. |
8 comments:
Changing the thinking of a tribe is usually impossible. Causing tribal members to cross over is much easier to accomplish. In college and five years afterwards, my tribal marker was a Navy uniform. I ridiculed the campus protesters and supported the war in Viet Nam until I got there and saw what a tragic waste it was. I couldn’t shed my tribal marker until I resigned my commission but I had definitely changed tribes. I wasn’t alone.
Peter,
There’s an important distinction between then and now. The counter-culture tribe you describe was at least in part a reaction to our involvement in a war that was killing millions and had no discernable purpose. In contrast, this anti-vax tribe has no discernable purpose, and its followers are dying of stupidity in droves. You’d think they’d get tired of it.
It's convenient to categorize groups with the tribal label and to a certain extent it is true. But I don't think that completely explains Regressive values. Terms like "fan" and "cult" come closer because tribe infers a familial bond, something much more descriptive of Progressives, and I think one would agree is not the first thing that jumps to mind when regarding Republicans. One example is open carry, a practice that is paranoid and virulently anti-social.
Another is the auto mechanic who espouses his "Christian values" replete with the compulsory family photo, but nevertheless gouges customers without the slightest remorse.
Even a cursory examination of history will teach us lessons that Regressives completely ignore, or denigrate. I think the fundamental reason is a skewed view of reality and a primordial fear of change, the reasons for which confound those of us who envision a future, granted an idealistic one, where mankind abandons the mediaeval social order (Kings and peasants), and the violence and suffering it engenders.
I would ask what is the point of all the technological miracles we have created if it only serves to enrich a tiny fraction of humanity and exacerbates pain and suffering in the World?
No god I envision would rule such a Universe.
Yes, correct, as usual!
Yes, tho I refused to call myself a hippie, as I was out in front of the 60's movements and not just a follower. I did wear my hear long and parted, but on the side. I did not wear the frumpy drab-colored dresses the young women wore. I called them not hippies but "little bread-bakers".
But now the people on the alternative left as well as the right are spouting anti-vax stuff. They also defy the science by relying only on alternative medicine and by refusing medical treatment (until they get the Covid, that is), or get angry at chemtrails or 5G. The lack of clear thinking is found on both extreme sides. They get reinforced for their views by their fellow tribal members.
Tribes are a manifestation of deep cultural/religious forces, some of which are impossible to articulate, many of which are extremely difficult to change.
I was a member of the hippie tribe (note: spelling it with a Y is proof that you were not a member). There was no way any prominent member of our tribe could have convinced us to cut our hair short. To quote the song, we were going to “let our freak flag fly.“
Our “leaders” had to position themselves in front of a parade that was already moving in its own direction. Sometimes they were in front of the parade purely by accident.
Trump got the vaccine; it has not influenced his tribe.
The documentary filmmaker and anthropologist, Sebastian Junger in his book Tribe (you can also see his YouTube) describes what he learned about tribalism living with and studying active combat troops. He said they both “loved and hated each other but would all die for each other”.
One of the key principles he observed that I think is relevant, is that group bonding happens more intensely when people are under collective threat or stress. It seems so simple and obvious when you think about it. If you feel like your sense of identity, values – and in the case of Covid – the threat of self determination are under threat, it seems like we are wired to respond with like-minded people. Trump has used this with great effect with his claims of attacks on Right-wing values and identity.
Most everyone wants to belong to a tribe, especially for sports.
In some cases the tribe is a collection of people with common interests.
Tribalism is not always good for society. Look at the evil that's been done in the name of religion.
Back in the day, we racers used to laugh at the bikers during motorcycle speed week at Daytona Beach; 100,000 rugged individualists, all dressed in black leather, wearing the same engineer boots, bearded and riding chopped black Harleys with ape-hangers and sissy bars. A Petri dish of American tribal conformity.
Silly humans.
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