Do you think there is any real substantive reason as to why people opposed masks so greatly? Was it a cultural issue? Was it a public health education issue? I was just thinking back to the heights of COVID and I don’t understand exactly the weirdly difficult issue with masks and public life. It was really odd that such a simple health tool was so opposed. I am not talking about the disease or vaccine but the act of wearing a mask. What was that such a point of contention?
I don’t think I ever heard a real reason why people were bugging out about them, was real just as simple as the minor inconvenience? The disruption of our already too busy lives were we all have so little power or control and this just another thing on top of that?
What do y’all think? Do you still mask up?
Yankees are born into a culture that prioritizes thinking as an individual above all else. Broader perspectives, recognizing oneself as a part of a larger entity, usually just doesn't happen. It's been impacting everything. This is why conservatives (and scratched liberals) freak out about 'cancel culture' -- they aren't practiced at conceptualizing how their freeze peach will be interpreted from a general perspective. That requires thinking of social consequences, which doesn't gel with a perspective that begins and ends with my personal, singular 'freedom'.
Masking is kind of the ultimate pressure point to this perspective. The reality of virology necessitates think of things on a broad social level. Even worse, the incentives agree; I mask for other's benefit, they mask for my benefit, sickness is avoided and everyone lives better. If you're not used to thinking like this, it seems like an sinister, alien perspective... and when this message is being backed by the state, that just riles them up to a whole nother level.
As I understand it, this 'culture of the individual' is also occurring in other western capitalist countries. The United States, by its conditions and history, is just where this process is at its most developed and pronounced.
I wonder if Americans fail the Prisoner's Dilemma more than other cultures?
Jhoseph henrich- https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/WeirdPeople.pdf 2010 is a good article about diferent psicholkgical tests in different societies. While there is no prisioners dilema thera are other cooperation games. Maybe in searching for wimilar articles you may find something.
Joe thinks he is a lot smarter than he actually is. And latley has developed lots of really stupid belefs, so try to read the peer comentaries, many of those cover points he cant understamd.
huh, dunno. I wonder how one might go about setting up such a study?