I’m going to start this post by declaring the following – not that it should matter to my individual value, but because I know that if far Left-leaning folks stop reading one paragraph in, my comments will be filled with assumptions of the opposite-:
- I am a fully-boosted individual since November 2021, with Pfizer
- I will continue to get doses should they be recommended by health professionals just to preserve my freedoms
- I am a strong Centrist; I do not lean Left or Right, and I do not live in absolutes
- I don’t believe I have a right to comment on or impose my choices on somebody else’s body, no matter the circumstances
- I believe in Science, I do not read conspiracy theory websites, and qAnon should cease to exist
- Health workers are heroes and should never be “protested”
I am frustrated by the idea that anyone who holds a negative feeling or perception towards mandates, extensive expression of government control, or who support people’s right to protest against government influence, automatically makes them an anti-vaxxer, a Right-winged idiot, or anti-Science and anti-facts.
Why do the Left live in absolutes? Why is it, “My way or the highway,” or, “I demand respect based upon the fact that I fit into (xyz) group, and I don’t feel I have to earn it as an individual!”? Why are they incapable of understanding the frustrations of those they don’t agree with, who hold different values than them? And why do they immediately assume that anyone who does not aligh to everything they believe in and hold as Truth is their enemy and must be torn down and/or ignored?
Believe it or not, the only thing that is pushing and causing this divide between you and people who think differently from you, the ones encouraging it and influencing it, is the government, who is isolating half the population it is meant to represent. It is using a literal political maneuver to have you believe it is, us against them. It’s called the politics or culture of fear, and reflect on when that was last used. It is, historically, a Right-winged tactic, but is now being domineered by the Left in the name of justice and science.
Culture of fear (or climate of fear) is the concept that people may incite fear in the general public to achieve political or workplace goals through emotional bias; it was developed as a sociological framework by Frank Furedi[1] and has been more recently popularized by the American sociologist Barry Glassner.[2]
Nazi leader Hermann Göring explains how people can be made fearful and to support a war they otherwise would oppose:
“The people don’t want war, but they can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.[3]“
And at the beginning, I’ll be honest: I was there, too! I was making the, “Let them die, then #Darwin,” comments, and I thought I was superior to my fellow man, because I ate up what the government told me about how good I was for protecting the community by being vaccinated, and how much better I was than the unvaccinated population. That’s why we took “I got my vaccine!” selfies, no? (Note: I never did that.) It became a performance for us, a badge of pride (many literally wearing stickers). It fed our ego and we got onto the pedestal and looked down our noses at those who didn’t follow suit.
I was on a vaccinated ego trip. I truly, truly believed that because people made a different choice than I did for my health, that I didn’t care if they lived or died. I truly thought that I was the more compassionate and selfless one who was making this vaccination sacrafice for my community, and that those who didn’t deserved to get sick and suffer. Do you not see the irony and hypocrisy in it?
And eventually, I switched. I realized that compassion, and living in a peaceful coexistence, is so much more important to me than hate, so much more important than someone’s vaccination status, so much more important than the false accusations that leaders try to feed their population about the unvaccinated (Trudeau literally called the unvaccinated: “misogynists, anti-Science, and often racist” – this is a direct quote). I made a conscious choice to realize: I am not better than anyone for doing this, and I’m not going to hate anyone for not doing it.
I chose love over hate.
Our planet went into an isolation for nearly two years that separated us from other humans, from our own family, and should have made us come to the realization that we need one another, and we were made to connect with others, and grow with others, and live peacefully with othes.
Instead, people came out of this isolation eager to isolate even further, dividing communities, dividing populations. And that’s shocking to me. Instead of the time apart teaching us compassion and understanding, and giving us time to reflect on what is truly important in life, half the population exited their homes eager to hate, condemn, and shame, and creating horrendous websites that ridicule the death of the unvaccinated.
All in the name of compassion and care for your community though, right?
I named this post ‘Endemic Reflection’ because it is an endemic, not a pandemic. This won’t just magically disappear for forever with masks and vaccines and vaccinated-only locations. This is something we will have to live with forever and adapt to. But what we can make magically disappear is the eagerness to hate on and ostracize our fellow man, just because their vaccination card hasn’t been given the three gold-stars that yours received.
The greatest way to stick it to the government is to tell them: enough of this division, enough of this culture of fear you are pushing on the population, enough of playing on my emotions and telling me that the unvaccinated are trying to harm me and my family. I accept my brother/sister/neighbour as they are, even if they differ in beliefs than me, because that is what community is truly about it.
I am choosing to choose love and compassion over condemnation. I am choosing to silence the ego and step off the vaccinated pedestal. And you?
xo
C
lifeofcloud 
👏👏 beautiful
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