Naturally, then, when it comes to something that’s both a matter of life and death and a hot-button political issue, there will be a solid amount of disagreement on the ground.
With masks, some people seem to enjoy wearing them. I’ve seen toddler girls who think they’re another fun accessory—and why not? I’ve seen adults who feel safer wearing them, who feel protected. Heck, you no longer have to worry about whether or not there’s spinach on your teeth!
But I’ve also seen people who feel gagged, smothered, bound by masks. People who have trouble breathing in them.
Impressions are very personal. Is your impression of wearing a mask one of claustrophobia? Or is it like wearing armor? Whichever it is, that impression is likely to form shape the data that you accept in support of your final position on mask-wearing.
You can give me experts all day long explaining how masks are bad for the wearer, or experts all day long debunking them; you can show me charts and graphs about how mask-wearing makes society healthier, and experts debunking them—and—guess what? At the end of the day, I probably will still think what I thought before, because (a) I had an impression already about what wearing a mask is like; (b) I came across some experts whose sciencey explanations validated my opinion and disgraced opposing views; and (c) I’m not quite good enough at the science, or quite motivated enough by the truth, to seek any further.
Thus civil discourse degrades into expert clubbing. You disagree? Watch me club you over the head with my ExperClub! You didn’t feel it? You say that’s not an expert? You what? You just hit me with YOUR ExperClub? I didn’t feel a thing!
ExperClubbing, America’s new socially-distanced sport. Everyone wins, nobody loses, and the ball is never advanced.
No comments:
Post a Comment