Chris Arnade walks around a lot, and writes about the places he walks. He recently wrote on his Substack “Among the Half-Masked: COVID theater is a sign of a healthy society.” I want to thank him for providing this lovely example of doublethink so soon after I finished rereading 1984, allowing me to write up this example of one of the key traits of a society described as a boot stomping on a face, forever.
Doublethink is a Newspeak word, which means it has very many shades of meanings, many of which are contradictory. Newspeak itself is Orwell’s imagined language to replace English (Oldspeak) in a very specific way, crushing out old concepts and meanings such that wrongthink becomes impossible1.
Doublethink means simultaneously cognitive dissonance and removing cognitive dissonance, believing two things that are mutually contradictory while recognizing no contradictions or problems with that. It is both the verb of doing that and the noun of the types of thought processes that make it happen. Orwell describes this as requiring both great intellectual effort to smooth away the apparent conflicts and conscious stupidity to quiet down your brain screaming at you in terror. Bend your mind in hideous contortions while not noticing you are twisting yourself into a pretzel. Everything is fine, I always rest my left ear on my right hip. Who doesn’t?
The reason doublethink is necessary is similarly clear: if the Party is all powerful and all good, why is life so miserable? Why is the chocolate ration lower this week? Why can’t we win the war against Eastasia? The answer is of course life is better than ever, we raised the chocolate ration this week, life is miserable because of the war, and we have always been allied with Eastasia and at war with Eurasia. This is normal, everything is fine and getting better every day.
Which brings us back to Chris Arnade. No, so far as I know he is not claiming that the Party raised the chocolate ration from 30 grams to 20 grams. What he is claiming is that more collective societies have a better response to COVID because they mask all the time, hold their doctors and medical administrators in very high regard, rarely if ever wear their masks in a way that would actually help, often ignore the rules, and generally engage in many behaviors that do not help prevent the spread of COVID much if at all.
Some of your brains just started screaming “Well, sure! The best response to COVID is to not worry so much about masks and just live your life while just taking enough steps to keep people off your back.” I know, I know, but that isn’t what Chris Arnade is writing. Stop projecting your crimethink onto his words, and actually read him. Go ahead, I can wait.
In case you can’t bring yourself to click the link, here’s some quotes:
In the US, especially on Twitter and in media, we have gotten to a point where we have been debating masking for so long we have forgotten that the common sense response to an air-born illness is to mask. It makes sense, especially if you work and live in crowded spaces with lower hygiene. If there is a flu-like disease being spread through the air, you wash your hands and mask. Duh. Not masking is the “well actually midwit big-brain” take.
Other countries, especially poorer ones, have a lot more experience with health scares and consequently have more faith in their public health infrastructure. Doctors hold a level of respect, admiration, and status, greater than in more developed nations.
So, wearing a mask is obviously good, and people who wear them all the time are good. Obviously the right thing to do, and they are doing it because they respect their doctors. Check.
Beyond that, what I am more interested in is how people wear their masks. Which is badly. Which makes it more of a symbolic gesture providing mental comfort. That need to do something, to ease your anxiety, to help out, isn’t confined to masks.
In Turkey men sat inside clubs all day (if vaccinated), smoking, playing backgammon, sipping tea, then before leaving, doused themselves in sanitizer, put on a mask and walked outside in the 95 degree heat. That makes no scientific sense, but it did to them.
In a very crowded Lima market, entry required having your hands sprayed. Vendors often gave back change after spraying it.
That isn’t just a developing country thing though. These largely symbolic gestures aren’t confined to poorer people in poorer countries. They are about as close to a universal as you will get, and arguably are at the heart of most COVID policies across the globe.
Think about masking while you walk from the door to your seat, then taking off the mask in restaurants. Think about the vast plexiglass constructs that have popped up all over. Think about the elaborate protocols of masks, testing, and rules on where you can and cannot go, who you can and cannot see, in elite colleges.
Their use in limiting hospitalization and fatalities, is questionable. Many of the COVID policies, beyond having a fully vaccinated at-risk population, is questionable when it comes to that. Which ultimately should be the primary goal of COVID policy.
Bad mask wearing and dousing yourself in sanitizer before going outside might be silly theater that doesn’t necessarily stop the spread of COVID or death, but they do tell us something deeper about a society. Like how much they care about each other, how much they are invested in taking one for the team, and how much they are trying to put the greater good over their own self expression. Even if it doesn’t fully work out.
So… the behaviors people are taking make no scientific sense, and are mostly mandated by government policies that are questionable beyond being merely symbolic. Even though all of the inconveniences and bizarre rituals might not do anything, and everyone does them in a very half assed way, this is a sign of people who care deeply about each other and are taking one for the team. Check.
They care enough to pretend they care, but don’t care enough to actually do the things they are supposed to do to show they care properly. They care enough to give lip service to bad policies sometimes and ignore them entirely at other times. Those enacting the policies care enough about their people to enact bad policies that maybe don’t do anything other than force people to show how much they care for people who might be worried about being sick more than they care about their fellow citizens who don’t want to do all this stuff.
It is a reminder that a healthy nation isn’t just about how much stuff you have, but if you work together as a whole, not as a collection of self-absorbed individuals who fight over everything. Including the symbolic stuff.
A healthy nation is one that does meaningless things because they are told they have to do them, but do them in an erratic way, because doing what you are told to the minimally compliant level shows how much you care, and caring a lot about your fellows is the sign of a healthy nation.
You have to be both actively smart and actively stupid to think this much doublethink. Lots of motivated reasoning, and lots of shying away from “hold on… does that make sense…?”
To be fair to Chris, I don’t necessarily disagree that our nation has serious problems. Part of the problem seems to be that we enable the most neurotic and paranoid in our country by engaging in purely symbolic behavior to placate their fears, fears that are not actually placated. Chris seems to think that is a good thing, however. It is good to go through the motions that you and just about everyone else know to be meaningless, otherwise you might upset someone. Just cheat and do the bare minimum, it is all theater anyway. Otherwise you don’t care enough about others. If you are sane it is your duty to do nothing that would make the insane upset. Besides, sanity is statistical, and if everyone else is doing it and you don’t want to, you must be the crazy one. Never mind why they are doing it, or how. Why can’t you be healthy like them?
I have plusgood news to share, comrade! You can now received Minitruth approved messages straight to your telescreen!
Never fear that wrongthinking saboteurs might hide Big Brother’s wisdom again!
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I don’t even need to define wrongthink, you know what it means. That’s the beauty.
Chris walks into a bar.
I'll have a scotch.
Bartender.
That's 6 dollars.
You've poured it all over the bar.
Yes. I complied with your wish for a scotch.
That's *malicious compliance*
I thought you believed malicious compliance is a sign of a healthy society.