Something has changed in the last few months. Before, only the most rabid anti-vaxxers were expressing unhelpful opinions like “If you get vaccinated you are a sheep.” Now “nice” people who previously supported vaccine choice have begun to say things like “The unvaccinated should not be given medical attention.” “If you aren’t vaccinated, you don’t deserve to work, or eat.”
What happened? Why have otherwise rational people begun to see “the other” as the enemy?
According to a recent Tablet article written by a Canadian, Dr. Norman Doidge who has served as Head of the Psychotherapy Centre, the Assessment Clinic at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, and taught in the departments of Philosophy, Political Science, Law and Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, in democracies, once a majority opinion is formed, the majority uses its social power to try to force the minority to comply, and the minority become the enemy. According to Dr. Doidge, this response comes from our BIS (Behavioural Immune System,) which evolved over time to protect us from the danger of infection. From his four-part piece called Needlepoints:
“One of the reasons our discussions of vaccination are so emotionally radioactive, inconsistent, and harsh, is that the BIS is turned on in people on both sides of the debate. Those who favor vaccination are focused on the danger of the virus, and that triggers their system. Those who don’t are focused on the fact that the vaccines inject into them a virus or a virus surrogate or even a chemical they think may be poisonous, and that turns on their system. Thus both sides are firing alarms (including many false-positive alarms) that put them in a state of panic, fear, loathing, and disgust of the other.”
According to him then, it’s our primitive BIS system that is trying to protect us from danger that makes us “hate” the other so that we are more likely to survive.
The pro-mandate folks hold majority power, so they especially need to remember the phrase Dr. Bonnie Henry coined at the beginning of this pandemic. When asked to explain it, her response was: “We are in this together. We need to understand where people are coming from. We are in the same storm, but not in the same boat.”
We will beat this virus. Until we do, let’s make sure that at the end we have a civil society left and that our knuckles are not dragging on the ground. Let’s especially remember the first two parts of Dr. Henry’s tagline: “Be kind, be calm” so that we can be safe from our own worst impulses.
