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Lenard Zanardi
Chris Hitchens once astutely noted:
“Very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.”
The ongoing discrimination, exclusion, harassment, bullying, and dehumanisation of unvaccinated staff up and down the country has exposed the true nature and hypocrisy of many public companies in New Zealand as they simultaneously attempt to paint themselves as inclusive, diverse, and a safe place for all.
Have we officially reached a point where optics are now more important than kindness and decency? A point where vaccination status, mask-wearing, sexuality, dietary habits, hashtags, flags, and pronouns in your bio hold more weight than actual actions?
Certain companies who were not even required to mandate the vaccine in the first place are still clinging obsessively to completely unnecessary policies in March 2022, under the guise of Health and Safety.
Team leaders who should be supporting their staff are instead enthusiastically complicit in pushing hurtful regulations on their fellow workers, for no other reason than because they can and with no focus on the collateral damage.
People can be convinced to get behind almost anything if they are told it’s for a good cause. Many will not even question it. And then, once they feel like they have the authority to uphold an instruction or law in the name of something virtuous like “safety”, the feeling that bad behaviour has been given a hall pass begins to permeate. And what a delicious feeling that is. A kind of mental intoxication where facts and logic are no longer a concern, and the camaraderie of like-minded soldiers fighting against the big bad variants of SARS-CoV-2 offers up a safe place within which the parroting of corporate narratives and the shaming and abuse of dissenters is celebrated and encouraged.
A state of perpetual dependence and perpetual fear has narrowed the focus to the point that it’s no longer possible to even recognise the harm and dehumanisation occurring on the other side of the fence.
Historically, when this perceived “greater good vs the individual” has been left unchecked, we have seen extreme cases become ugly, fast. A famous example is the humiliation and abuse inflicted by US soldiers on Iraqi detainees inside Abu Ghraib prison. Convinced by the CIA that it was for the greater good, a lack of care and concern for the enemy was allowed to flourish. Human rights abuses were normalised in the name of “doing the right thing”.
Personally, I’ve never felt more excluded in my life. I’ve been called an idiot, a dick, and “one of those others” for simply questioning a medical procedure.
Research in social psychology and neuroscience demonstrates that human beings’ neurobiological response to exclusion mirrors their response to physical pain. It suggests that social exclusion is one of the most painful events a person can experience.
My place of work has done and continues to do its level best to remove me.
Turning a blind eye to the exclusion, discrimination, suffering, science, facts, and the very real situation of my wife, who became critically vaccine-injured after one dose of the Pfizer vaccine, they press on and on with their precious zero-tolerance vaccination policy as others all around them are dropping their own mandates like hot potatoes.
At a time when we know with 100% certainty that the vaccine fails to prevent people from contracting the virus, doesn’t reduce viral load, and doesn’t prevent people from passing it on, I asked them: “on what basis are you not welcoming me?” Apparently, it’s a tricky question. It cannot be answered without looking inward and admitting the actual essence of the harassment. So instead I am met with: “Just get vaccinated and this will all go away.”
But if it’s not about Health and Safety, then what is this really about? To quote Aldous Huxley:
“The surest way to work up a crusade in favour of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behaviour ‘righteous indignation’ – this is the height of psychological luxury”.
The very things that they’ve tried so hard to convince us that they will not, under any circumstances, tolerate – discrimination, exclusion, and bullying – are now fair play.
They claim to have the moral high ground yet go along aggressively with policies that are openly damaging people’s lives, purely because they believe the optics are currently favouring their response. The mindset is: “I’ll do it if I can get away with it, but if it starts making me look bad I’ll stop.”
The moral freefall in which society has found itself will be written about for decades. The corruption of science and media, the complicity of our so-called leaders. The sheer cowardice of a large portion of society. All in the name of “safety”.
I believe we deserve an apology, but as in many other forms of discrimination, it may take years if it comes at all.
