on tops of mountains

Alysa Liu ⛸️

So, I saw the news articles about this study, and I kind of think that it's maybe psychologically necessary for conspiracy theorists to, on some level, believe that the majority of the world agrees with them.

I listen to the God Awful Movies podcast which mostly makes fun of religious movies, but occasionally does woo or conspiracy movies, and they did a movie called Terrain, which is essentially about how germs don't exist, and a pair of segments they described intrigued me enough to watch them on Tubi just to make sure they were being described correctly.

In the first segment, we meet a restaurant owner who operated during covid. He flies a Gadsden flag outside of his restaurant, and bans masks. There's a staged segment where he tells a customer that he can't wear a facemask inside the restaurant. We see patrons saying that the food is good but that they come here for the freedom.

Next, a "holistic psychologist" tells us that people often stay at a kind of childish stage of mind, unable to understand that an authority might be acting against their own interests, and eager to tattle on people who are acting differently.

This then transitions into footage of police telling a guy that he is being kicked out of a grocery store for his refusal to wear a mask in line with the policy of the store.

Now, during the first segment, it's treated as obvious that a business owner can decide whether the people in his business are allowed to wear masks; after all, isn't he a free man who gets to make decisions about his business?

In the second segment, it's treated as obvious that the business owner has no right to decide whether the people in the store must wear masks, after all, aren't the customers free men who get to make their own decisions?

You see this kind of dual thinking all the time if you start digging into conspiracy theories.

My personal take is that, the reason you adopt the belief that Covid (and in this case viruses in general) doesn't exist and masks are an imposition by The Authorities is because the pandemic and the pandemic response make you feel powerless, like a little piece of driftwood being swept along by vast ocean currents.

And so you refuse to wear a mask, because this reminds you that you can refuse, it makes you feel like you are making decisions and that you can assert yourself and your actions aren't controlled by these vast, faceless forces.

And you conceptualize that in terms of freedom.

But there's a problem with this: if you extend this conception of freedom to everybody, people might start making decisions that make you feel like you're losing control again.

If there is a general principle of "Each business owner has the right to determine what his customers wear" then you might get a situation where, as it turns out, a bunch of business owners want to require masks in their business.

And if that were the case, you'd lose the psychological benefits of the conspiracy, you'd once again feel that you were helplessly floating along, pushed and pulled by vast, uncontrollable forces.

At the same time, though, "I just want to do whatever I want and I don't care what it does to the people around me or what they want" is a tremendously selfish principle, if that was how you were making decisions you might feel guilt, or at the very least you might be frightened that other people would just get sick of your selfishness.

And I think that one way to solve this contradiction is to simply believe that everybody secretly agrees with you.

"What if a small group of religious extremists, persecuted in their own country, moved to an inhospitable uninhabited island and had to rebuild society there?" - But the Americas and Australia weren't inhospitable and were full of Native nations, why are you perpetuating the idea of Terra Nullius and manifest destiny? - Yes, that's because this isn't a metaphor for the British invading other countries, it's a metaphor for finding out how much of a person's religious practise is rooted in worldly concerns, vs how much they will really stymie themselves for the sake of God.

"What if 1/100 children born was a werewolf?" - But queer people are no danger to straight people, and disabled people don't have predictable patterns to their illnesses, and most people who have uncontrollable rages really CAN control them and are just lying, and no minority group has superpowers... - Yes, but that's all immaterial, because I wanted to talk about a load of other metaphors about the passage of time and responsibility and the relationship between humans and wildlife.