Darryl Betts
darryllrbetts.wordpress.com
Darryl is a businessman and a post-graduate student in Philosophy at the University of Auckland, with particular interests in the philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, epistemology, logic, and AI. He holds a BSc in Computer Science and a BA in Philosophy, Logic and Computation.
I don’t really participate in social media so I don’t know how widely this image has been distributed but I am sure that if it hasn’t been there are many others like it. It’s saddening because it illustrates how divided our society has become, and how easily a group of people can be motivated to persecute their fellow human beings – their friends, neighbours, and maybe even family members.
It is all the more saddening and frustrating because it is driven by very bad arguments – yet people on Facebook obediently signal their virtue and assent to this flawed argument with their little smiley face and love heart emojis.
One major problem with the argument represented by this image is that it ignores a crucial distinction – the difference between what a business freely chooses to do and what businesses are forced or coerced into doing by the state.
While there is a legitimate debate to be had about what businesses should be free to do, many would support the rights of businesses to make their own decisions and believe that a free market will ultimately sort the situation out. Assuming your decision as a business owner isn’t a violation of human rights (which in this case is definitely a question that needs to be asked), if you decide that you will not allow unvaccinated people in your business then not only are you reducing your potential customer base but you are creating the opportunity for a new business to fill that need and perhaps also take some of your vaccinated customers away from you. (I should point out here that I do think there is a case for businesses in a monopoly situation to be held to a different standard – but that’s another story.)
However when the government steps in to force businesses to discriminate then things become extremely dangerous and that is a situation we should all be opposed to.
It is ironic that in this era of “equity” hysteria, so many people seem ok with the idea that the government can mandate discrimination against a particular group of people. It is even more ironic that it seems like many of the same people who claimed systemic discrimination against a particular group of people to be one of societies greatest threats, now seem to be cheering for (or at least tolerating) actual systemic discrimination against a particular group of people.
But even in a situation where the government is not forcing businesses to discriminate there is an even more insidious and dangerous factor, which is the way people have been manipulated and misled into discriminating.
We are not dealing with a situation here where the facts have been laid out and as a result, there is a difference of opinion within the population – which can then be freely and openly debated. No – we are dealing with a situation where virtually the entire media and big tech establishment has become a mouth-piece/enforcer for government narrative and policy, and as a result, a significant proportion of the population – possibly the majority – have embraced the viewpoint they have been fed without question.
Many of the policies of the New Zealand government (and other western governments) rest on premises that have never been seriously challenged at the institutional level. Those who have dissented have been quickly marginalized as conspiracy theorists – victims and/or purveyors of “misinformation”. Obvious examples of these unchallenged assumptions are that masks do more good than harm, that lockdowns do more good than harm, that the benefit of these new vaccines outweighs their risks, that the risks from the vaccines are less than the risk from Covid itself, and so on. By way of a recent example of this failure to challenge assumptions, the ACT party of New Zealand – arguably at the opposite end of the political spectrum from our ruling far-left Labour party, is currently referring to people who choose not be vaccinated as “lazy” and “laggards”.
This is the very party that claims to be for individual rights and responsibility. No wonder the majority of people in New Zealand are compliant – they have been immersed in a narrative that is built on these assumptions and never hear them questioned. There is no better time for people to be reminded of the words of the famous philosopher John Stuart Mill – “he who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that”.
There is a topic of study in philosophy called “reasonable disagreement” which looks closely at whether two “knowledge peers” given the same information should reach the same conclusion and if not why not. The question is whether one might expect two equally capable people with access to similar information to reach similar conclusions. But how can two reasonable people possibly agree when a significant amount of information is concealed from one of those people?
And let’s be clear about this – we talk about polarization in society as if this is a dispute between two sides, but this is by no means a symmetrical situation. Only one “side” is being actively denied access to important information by a government-media-technology behemoth.
The internet is only too willing to show me videos of Jacinda – but it is very reluctant to show me and my fellow New Zealanders videos of those who disagree with Jacinda. Unfortunately, those who don’t question the mainstream narrative and what governments are currently doing also don’t want anyone else to question it.
I’ll finish with this link to a moving video from Kate Wand which points out that history has shown that it is the questioning and courageous dissenting minority – not the virtue and popularity seeking majority – who have been on the right side of great moral conflicts such as the fight against slavery.
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