My take on masks.

[curio_city]

My take on masks is that I don’t like them. The rhetoric around why masks should be worn is well-known to most, and in a brilliant political move, even the conservative, federalist US president has endorsed mask-wearing and is attempting to brand it as patriotic. It is brilliant because he has taken away a divisive bludgeon of predominantly his opponents’ wielding. In our age, weapons can be so abstract; so psychological. But what if the abstract is more real than we are, or at least more real than how we perceive things to be? If this were the case, then mask-wearing could be a very effective weapon with consequences that span, clandestinely, through all time and space; it would be a weapon of mind, body, and psyche, in the form of the abstract, consensus tendencies that are adopted then collectively progressed.

Now, let’s examine mask-wearing under the lens of mask-wearing as weaponry. I have wondered what the long-term psychosocial impact could be for us -- and maybe especially for children -- of not seeing the bottom half of strangers’ faces for such a prolonged period. How will our youngest grow to feel about strangers? And with this very healthy[1] push for alternative, digital media for communication, are we genuinely okay raising adults who echo the sentiment, “Video chat is as good as, if not better than, in-person”? I’m not so sure I am.

I want to see peoples’ faces when we speak. I want to see when someone is smiling at me, just as I want people to see when I smile at them. I think the small things count. I think when people are contentious to the extent they have been, this divided and emotionally charged, things like being polite and maybe even a little nice could go a long way. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing for people to breathe the same air, instead of our own. We’ve had a tricky relationship with things like bacteria. Our understanding of many things related to health developed over a long period of time.

I, for one, don’t mind breathing others’ air. Up until fairly recently, I think many people would have agreed with me. I still don’t mind it though, and I’m not convinced that avoiding it is the best thing for any of us. I am aware that our elderly may be particularly susceptible, and I feel compassion for anyone who has a heightened fear of dying; that fear can get in the way of living the fullest life, and the adage comes to mind, “A life lived in fear is a life half-lived.” Why not want the fullest lives everyone is capable of living? What does seem like a good idea, though, is exercising caution when it comes to what “New medical evidence suggests.” Maybe we should consider that medical evidence sometimes may lag behind experience, and that we are known for partaking in cures that are worse than the disease, though it may not always be the case.

Sometimes we have cures that seem to be the best idea. Benjamin Franklin makes a good point in his autobiography regarding his four-year-old son’s death from smallpox when he ponders that if there’s a chance of death either way, perhaps it’s better to choose the easier path -- especially for those we love. I think that makes sense, and I think people should have the choice. Also in his autobiography, Dr. Franklin noted a way of life that has stood out to me. When landing in a new port, it was customary, at least for him, to find someone of good countenance to ask for directions. How uncommon it seems nowadays that a person has to approach another person in order to learn something about the lay of the land, and to select a person based on nothing more than the feeling in one’s gut and some good sense in one’s head. I don’t feel that’s the general case anymore.

Children nowadays develop agoraphobia, with some being too scared even to go outside and play unless a watchful guardian is just a few feet away. Children are at a unique phase of psychosocial development, and it’s not surprising that some may develop lasting complexes due to the status of strangers as the faceless unknown. The world seems much scarier and darker when there’s little evidence that people other than those in one’s close tribe are good-natured and well-meaning.

Maybe we should start seriously weighing the wellbeing of the mind and body, as well as paying attention to emotional states, when making decisions around mask-wearing and other important topics. Maybe we should wonder if breathing the air of those around us activates aspects of our DNA that might be useful in easing global tensions. Maybe we should consider how far we are willing to run for fear of death and how many liberties we are willing to give up for any amount of supposed benefit. Maybe the most effective weapons are abstract, since maybe all of what we deem reality is nothing more than a consensus illusion created by thoughtful belief. Maybe sometimes it’s just nice to see a stranger smile.



[1] “Healthy” defined as “alive and well”