Freedom and Responsibility: Vaccine Politics
I want to speak to some of the dynamics I’ve observed playing out with regards to the vaccine. I’m not interested in evaluating the vaccine, or making any claims whatsoever about the vaccine itself.
Even if we accept the mainstream position, there is no logical reason to encourage division and segregation. Scapegoating of the “unvaccinated” is toxic no matter what the science says.
This is Serious
Covid is serious. Cases are climbing, delta is viscous, children and infants are now at greater risk, long covid is a real concern, hospitals and healthcare workers in many places are completely overwhelmed and overworked.
We absolutely have a responsibility--to ourselves, to each other, to our loved ones, to our communities--to minimize the risk of spreading the virus. To tend to our health, and consider how our actions affect others, especially those who are most vulnerable.
I don’t question the reality of covid or the severity of the situation. I don’t question that we must do our part. But I do question some of the narratives and dynamics surrounding covid, and in particular, the vaccine: how we talk about it, engage with it, and engage with each other around it.
The issue of vaccination is creating deep division and strife. It threatens to tear apart communities and families and relationships. It is creating fear and stress and isolation and heartache.
Is this division necessary? Is it helping? Are there ways we might resolve it? How do we engage with people who see things differently from us?
There is no way that all humans are going to agree on this issue. There is no way that everyone in our families, communities, countries will see it the same way. So either we can try to convince, coerce, manipulate, or force others to comply. Or we can seek creative solutions, and find ways to live with one another with respect and compassion.
There is the risk of covid. And there are all the things we risk through our ways of dealing with it. Risks we seem to have forgotten in our fixation on a single issue and single proposed solution. What about the risks of stress and fear and polarization? Of anger and hatred and ostracism? Don’t these pose serious risks as well?
I Love Science
I want to speak to some of the dynamics I’ve observed playing out with regards to the vaccine. I’m not interested in evaluating the vaccine, or making any claims whatsoever about the vaccine itself. I’m not an expert on mRNA vaccines. (And neither are you.) Most of us know what the claims are in favour of vaccination, and you don’t need me to repeat them here.
While I acknowledge I’m no expert on vaccines, I do have experience with science. I have a science degree, and I’ve studied both science (cognitive neuroscience) and philosophy of science (science studies) at a graduate level. I’ve also worked in a total of 5 different labs over the course of a decade.
What I learned from this decade of full time experience in the sciences is that science is extremely complex and always changing. The way science is presented in the media is necessarily VERY simplified, and always leaves things out. Scientists themselves never have the whole picture.
There are always variables that haven’t been taken into account, unintended consequences, things that aren’t yet understood, questions that haven’t yet been asked, let alone answered. Always. That is how and why science evolves and changes, and never stops evolving and changing. This universe is infinite. It is literally impossible to have a complete understanding.
I have deep respect and appreciation for science and for the curiosity and openness that can inspire the desire to make sense of this world. I don’t think its complexity or evolving nature is a fault in any regard, but a part of its beauty. There is a humility built into the scientific process itself.
A humility that often gets lost in the translation of science to the public, especially in matters of health.
The argument usually goes that to inspire confidence in the medical system, science and health policy has to be presented in a simple way, and with certainty. It has to be presented in such a way so as to motivate cooperation. The purpose isn’t to present all of the data, because the public isn’t equipped to understand data, to think about probability and statistics and to make conclusions for themselves. The purpose is to get people to act in a certain way so that health can be controlled on a population level.
The messaging we receive is often presented as certain. But the situation is not. There is new data coming out every day. New numbers, new observations, new studies, new stories. And they are important to attend to. But how can we possibly make sense of all of it now, while in the midst of it? How can a doctor, let alone you or I? I think it will take years to really make sense of what is happening.
Expertise matters. Knowledge is produced in communities: we rely on experts to inform our understanding of the world, whatever our worldview is. (This includes the spiritual communities: we seek teachers and texts and guides to inform our path.) Yes, I believe it’s important to listen to scientists and doctors with regards to vaccines, and I am deeply grateful for their service. But even the experts are still learning.
I’m not suggesting anything radical: just an acknowledgement that there is much that we don’t know, there is much that science doesn’t know. I have nothing to say that is against the vaccine. But to tell people they have no reason to hesitate or ask questions is gaslighting, plain and simple. We have every reason to pause. Don’t let anyone bully you out of making a considered and informed decision that is right for you.
Vaccine Hesitancy
There are many reasons people hesitate to receive a vaccine. Misinformation is one, but so is legitimate distrust of corporations. So is trauma. There are many people who have been harmed or experienced trauma at the hands of the medical system, personally, or ancestrally. So, even if we think everyone ought to get vaccinated, respect and compassion are called for. I think this narrative demonizing “the unvaccinated” is super problematic in its scapegoating. It’s also counter productive.
No one wants to feel coerced or forced. No wants to be called stupid. That will only further polarize and radicalize, pushing more and more people towards extremes, from hesitant to anti-vaxxer.
Equally, on the other side of the situation, there is a narrative that anyone who does get a vaccine is stupid or has yet to awaken. But this seems just like the flip side of the above. It’s the same sort of logic of demonizing the others and trying to force through your own perspective.
Truth
But beyond that, no one has a monopoly on truth. I’m not saying that anything goes, or we can believe whatever we want. Knowledge is created by communities (such as the scientific community, or spiritual communities, or scholarly communities, or by craftspeople, etc, with their own histories, epistemic values, and methodologies). There are many forms of knowledge, and many knowledge systems, and many worldviews. That doesn’t mean there is no truth; it means there are many truths contextualized in different systems of knowledge and ways of life and histories.
I know that when you’re in it, the western scientistic worldview seems obvious. It seems just like logic and facts. But those logic and facts are structured by assumptions, history, values, biases. That doesn’t make it not “true” or valid. But it does make it a worldview. And the thing about worldviews is that there are many. There are many different ways to see the world, and they don’t necessarily contradict one another, but they do have different perspectives, priorities, and outcomes.
Besides, it takes only a glance at the history of science to see that scientific knowledge changes over time, as new information is received, new perspectives are offered, and different questions are asked. It also takes only a brief glimpse at the history of science to see that there have been many times when science was mistaken or led to unintended consequences or harm. (And indeed, there have been many times in which the harm was deliberate or acknowledged.) As I said above, I don’t think that means science is invalid. It just means that it's not Infallible Truth.
This gets to the heart of the challenge of living with people who are different from us, to living in society. To insist everyone see things as we do, or else be forced to comply--to insist everyone get vaccinated, or to insist the vaccines are evil--is to impose our worldview onto others, to force through our particular agenda, to insist we have a monopoly on truth, to lose sight of the fact that we might be wrong.
I know that in this situation, for those on board with vaccines, it may seem like we have no option. It may seem like, well people are dying, this is an emergency, we don’t have the luxury of respecting people’s beliefs. I’m not convinced that’s a luxury, and I’m not convinced there’s only a single possible solution.
I suspect this will be a controversial statement, and I can certainly anticipate some valid objections, nevertheless I think it’s important: this sounds a lot like epistemic colonization. It’s a colonial mindset that insists there is one way to see things, that tries to force its way, that calls anyone who sees it differently stupid or uneducated, that insists there is a single monolithic solution to a problem that is infinitely complex.
Humility requires that we leave space for the potential that we might be wrong, that there may be things we haven’t considered (there always are), that the situation is more complex than we realized, that there are unforeseen consequences, that our assumptions may be faulty, that we don’t yet have all the information, that there might be an entirely different framework or worldview or way of organizing the data that is equally or perhaps more valid.
Fear and Tunnel Vision
Fear has been triggered in a big way by covid, and while it hasn’t been as intense as it was perhaps at the very beginning, many people have been living in low-level (or more) fear for the past year and half. Understandably.
But fear can make us lose our peripheral vision and our compassion. Fear can throw us into survival mode. It can make us act selfishly out of concern for our safety. It can lead us to be controlling and forceful. Or to be small and compliant. It can lead us to narrow our focus and fixate on a single option. It can lead to frustration and digging our heels in when things don’t go our way. It can make it harder to see the big picture, to think creatively, to open our minds to new perspectives or ideas.
I think this is in part why the narrative has to a large extent fixated on vaccination as the only and the complete solution. We’ve been led to believe that it will be the single thing that solves covid and that it will completely solve covid. And given what we’ve been through, that is a very enticing idea. And so we’ve latched onto it. Because it represents safety and the end of this trying time, it seems all important, it seems our duty to insist on it and try and force it through.
Although I think this is just beginning to change as we see that the vaccine alone is not enough to contain the virus, the predominant narrative has been that if everyone got a vaccine, our problems would be solved. That the only thing impeding us from moving through this situation is misinformed or stupid or selfish people who won’t get vaccinated.
But this is a very narrow and binary way of seeing things. Is it really so simple? I feel like we’ve been shunted into a very narrow set of possibilities and lines of thought when reality is infinitely complex and replete with possibility. Energetically, it feels like we’ve been drawn into a sort of ideological vortex where it appears we must take a side, and where it appears our role is to explain, convince, or force others to see it as we do.
When we are fearful, we are more likely to narrow our vision, to see things as black and white, as either/or, as for or against. We are more likely to push, insist, force. We are more likely to choose an enemy and go on the attack. And in this case, the enemy is often people we are closest to.
“Social Responsibility”
Many people have pointed out that not getting vaccinated cannot be solely about personal freedom, because our decisions affect others. We don’t get to be “free” if our freedom puts others at risk. And this is true. We do have a responsibility to the people in our lives, to our communities, to the other beings on this planet. It IS selfish to insist on personal freedom when that freedom puts others at risk.
But making that social responsible hinge ONLY on vaccination doesn’t make sense. First, getting vaccinated doesn’t mean we’ve done our part and it ends there: vaccinated people can still spread the virus, so distancing, hygiene, masks are still important (depending on context). We don’t get a free pass just because we’re vaccinated. (Many people have been making this point recently).
I know vaccinated people who are having parties and going on vacations. I know unvaccinated people who are impeccable in their care and concern to keep others safe. So we can’t map responsibility onto the vaccinated, and irresponsibility onto the unvaccinated. It’s not so simple.
I do think this is starting to shift in the dominant narrative as we hear more and more stories of vaccinated people getting covid. I think it’s becoming clear that vaccines, while effective, are not the panacea they were imagined to be. Vaccines alone won’t see us through this. A variety of tactics are required.
We also can’t map responsibility onto vaccination because there are SO MANY other ways to express social responsibility, to tend to health, to decrease transmission, to keep each other safe, and to care for one another.
Social Responsibility, Really
The narrative has centered on: virus causes illness. Of course the virus is a causal factor in illness, but it’s not the only one. The virus is a necessary but not sufficient cause--which is just to say that some people may be exposed to the virus and get sick, and some people may be exposed and not get sick. So what is the difference? What other causal factors are involved?
We all know that we are more likely to get sick, to catch a virus, when we are run down, stressed, tired, haven’t been eating well, etc. There’s nothing radical in pointing out that there are many factors that contribute to health. It is not just that a virus causes illness; it is rather that a virus plus a number of other conditions together cause illness.
In our monocular focus, the predominant narrative has become entirely about preventing transmission of the virus, with almost no mention of the other factors that contribute. But if we were serious about health, we would also be talking about nutrition and rest and exercise and mindfulness and the impact that fear has on our immune systems. We would be critiquing the capitalist imperative for overwork, and demanding healthy, affordable food for everyone.
If we really cared about health, we would be talking about wealth inequality and corporate responsibility. We would be looking at the way corporations offset costs onto populations through producing toxins and waste that damage our health and environment that we are then on the hook for. We would be talking about housing insecurity, housing crises, how these contribute to illness, while meanwhile billionaires get richer. It’s a literally criminal state of affairs, and it has a HUGE impact on health, and it doesn’t enter the conversation at all.
If we really cared about health, we would be talking about failing healthcare systems and the need to reimagine and reinvest in healthcare. We would be talking about the social responsibility of free healthcare. Now that we know without a doubt that our health depends on everyone else’s health, how can we deny that necessity?
If we really cared about health, we would be talking about the health consequences of all the fear that’s been stirred up. Fear that is short-lived, that alerts us to a present danger is healthy. But chronic fear is enormously destructive. It is widely known in the medical community that chronic fear has a negative impact on the immune system. There is nothing controversial in that.
If we have a social responsibility to tend to our health, then we have a responsibility (to ourselves and others) to do what we can to avoid or overcome states of fear, and to help others do the same. But just as importantly, the media has a responsibility too, to present accurate information without fear mongering. And yet the media, and our parroting of it, and the ways in which we so often share information, and repeat what we’ve been told, for the most part, play on and amplify fear. This is true of both conspiracy theorists and the mainstream.
I think we have a social responsibility to be kind and respectful. To take actions that keep ourselves as well as others healthy. To respect each other's decisions and to be as compassionate as we can be. I think we have a responsibility to refrain from toxic behaviours like bullying or belittling. I think we have a responsibility to stretch our minds beyond the binary narrative imposed by the media, to think critically and creatively, and seek real solutions.
I think we have a responsibility to consider who we have contact with, and how. If you are vaccinated and don’t want to take the risk of contact with those who are unvaccinated, then choose not to be in close contact with them. Wear your mask and keep distancing in public spaces or if you don’t know people’s vaccination status. If you are close with people who aren’t vaccinated, choose to meet them outdoors, with a mask on.
Look, I know this isn’t what people want to hear. People want this to be over. But it’s not over. So, what’s worse? Finding ways to meet safely with your loved ones, or trying to convince them to do something they don’t want, which will probably just drive them away?
On the other hand, if you haven’t been vaccinated, it’s important to respect that other people may not want close contact with you. Be transparent with your choice so that you aren’t violating anyone’s boundaries, and accept that there will be limits that come with your decision. I know this may be painful and difficult for some people to accept. But if you want the freedom not to vaccinate, it’s important to respect others’ freedoms as well, and that may include the freedom to not associate with you, or to do so with certain constraints.
Finally, how can we ignore the importance of our thoughts and inner state of being? The idea that how we think has an impact on our health isn’t radical. It is readily acknowledged by all doctors and scientists and health professionals as the placebo effect.
(Placebo effect: In double blind studies, half the participants are given a medication, and half are given a sugar pill (or something else that matches the mode of delivery of the medication being tested, like a vaccine with saline solution, that should have no effect on their health). There is usually a positive impact to the health of everyone in the study, regardless of whether they got the true medication or the placebo. A medication is gauged as effective to the extent that it improves conditions beyond what was found in those who received the placebo. A placebo is understood to work through the power of the mind, through the idea and expectation that they are being treated.)
But the placebo effect has rarely been studied in itself, in a mainstream scientific context. Who exactly would fund research on the placebo effect??? (Ahem, another reason for publicly funded, not just healthcare, but research as well). But what if we could study the placebo effect and better understand how it operates? What if we could harness it to make it even more effective?
Doesn’t the existence of the placebo effect suggest that we have a responsibility to consider our thoughts and inner life? To consider how we are holding this situation we are in? To manage our fear and anger and to cultivate calm and joy and compassion to the extent possible? To seek balance and grounding? To question our assumptions and biases? To hold a vision of health and peace for ourselves and the world?
To those who are already on board with this perspective and who think that high vibration will protect from illness: I agree that our thoughts and states of being are key. But our consciousness is embedded in a collective consciousness. We cannot completely cut ourselves off from others. We co-create this reality together. So I think we absolutely have a huge impact by what we think, but I don’t think that makes us immune. (Humility is called for here as well). There is still a responsibility to take precautions, to respect other people, as well as yourself.
Risk
No matter what, there will be a weighing of risks. For some people, vaccinating and travelling to see family may seem like a measured and responsible amount of risk. For other people, not vaccinating and staying at home might seem reasonable. Other people might vaccinate and be comfortable with opening up their circles to other vaccinated people. In none of these scenarios is there no risk.
Even with lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccination, there would still be risk. Let’s not forget the multitude of unintended consequences that emerged from lockdowns: mental illness, addiction, suicide and overdose rates soared, many small businesses had to close, many people died or suffered due to delayed surgeries or reduced care, and we are now more susceptible to viruses other than covid due to having isolated. The list goes on.
Of course, there will also be people who take no precautions, who don’t get vaccinated, don’t wear masks, don’t distance, etc. What do we do about those people? The truth is, I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure that bullying and belittling doesn’t help.
I suppose this is why some people argue for vaccine mandates? That might minimize some risks, but it would create others. While the simplistic narrative of personal freedom without concern for others is illogical and uncompassionate, I do think we need to consider what we would risk by giving up such personal freedoms entirely. Just because we believe in social responsibility doesn’t mean it ought to override freedom.
If you are on board with vaccines, it might take some compassion and imagination to understand that this actually would be a matter of giving up freedom for some people. Mandating vaccines would set a precedent for giving enormous power to the corporate state. Is that really a risk we are prepared to take? I’m pretty confident the answer is no. I think this is a quite extreme and unrealistic position.
The Fantasy of Normal
If we really care about the health of our communities, there is a hell of a lot we can do. But given the way the conversation is usually framed, sometimes I wonder if it’s really health we care about. Or is it being right? Is it having our way?Is it control? Is it the fantasy of a quick fix solution for vast and complex problems?
Isn’t this the crux of it: our societies and systems are failing us, and it is terrifying. And in our fear we’ve been promised a solution that will make all our problems go away so we can go back to normal. But our problem isn’t (just) covid. It’s that our society has been built on fear and greed and abuses of power, and now that we are waking up to that, those structures can’t be sustained anymore and they are collapsing. And we want to prevent the collapse because instability and transition is difficult and painful and traumatic and comes at great cost, and there will be people hurt in the process.
And that is devastating.
But don’t we NEED to transition to better systems? Haven’t so many of us been calling for this for years/decades? Won’t the transition be easier and less painful and less harmful the sooner we realize it’s necessary and already happening anyway?
I’m not saying we just need to accept collapse and trauma and illness. There is much we can do to care for one another and minimize harm. But falling prey to the dangerous fantasy that an injection will bring back normal is not one. The longer it takes us to wake up from this fantasy, the more destabilizing this transition will be.
Spiritual Responsibility
So, yes, I think we all have a responsibility to seek information, to listen to experts, to weigh risk, to consider how our actions affect others. But finally, despite the enormous social pressure one way or another: it is YOUR decision. It really is. I think it’s really important to decide whether or not to vaccinate from an inner alignment, one way or the other. It may well be a difficult decision. There may be lots to weigh, and decisions have consequences. But let it, at least, be YOUR difficult decision.
From so many angles, we are taught and encouraged to relegate decisions to authorities outside ourselves. This is what it means to give our power away. We are told not to trust ourselves. We are told our personal desires and intuitions are not just meaningless, but immoral. We are told it’s irresponsible to follow our own inner guidance.
I can’t stand by that. That is a deeply dangerous mentality. It is a framework that seeks to erase selfhood.
It’s easy to make fun of the idea of “personal truth”. I’m not talking about a subjective hunch, or the childish claim of “well it’s my truth”. I’m not talking about ignoring other people, or failing to see the value in expertise. It’s important to really listen to others, and do our research, and consider the consequences of our actions, but then at the end of the day, what choice do we have but to look within and sift through all that information and come to what is true for us, given all that work, given our history and knowledge, given our situation and context?
The only other option is to let other people decide for us. To give up our own will. To deny our own selfhood. To trample over our own soul.
Don’t deny your own soul. For anyone. Ever.
In order to care for one another, don’t we need to respect each other’s differences, and boundaries? Don’t we need to help one another, truly, to care for our health, one and all. That cannot be by demanding that someone take a medicine they aren’t comfortable taking. Social responsibility is important. So is bodily autonomy. There are so many ways that we can honour both.
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Thanks so much for your message, Sky :). I'm so glad to hear. <3 More blogs are in the works. :)
Hi Andrea - we met at Banyen Books. Thanks for your courage and for giving voice to my own thoughts. I am finding solace in these posts! Bless.