Mad About Lockdowns? We Can’t Complain.
We gave up our right to be upset when we refused to take responsibility.
With a second wave of COVID cases came a second lockdown and a second round of outcry about civil liberties being trampled upon.
“The Government is over-stepping! Who are they to tell us what risks we can and can’t take?”
Personally, I’m frustrated as hell. There is little nuance in the way my city (Toronto) has handled the pandemic. I simultaneously think our officials acted too slowly and passively, and shuttered too many doors. Some of my favourite local shops have closed for good, and cases are out of control.
So to answer the question, “who are they:” the government is the worst (and last) choice to dictate responsible actions. It’s true for climate change, and it’s true for pandemics. But they’re the only ones who accepted the job.
In any situation where responsibility is called for, three parties have an opportunity to step up: government, business, and consumers.
Us consumers have the first chance to do the right thing, and we are capable of coming up with the best, most-efficient solutions. We could have assessed the risks of each situation we faced and made good decisions. Empty restaurant? Maybe we can sit inside. Slammed patio? Maybe we keep walking. We could have voted with our dollars to let businesses know what practices we’d tolerate. No distancing policies or PPE for staff members? Maybe no one shops there until you figure it out.
If we take responsibility ourselves, we can create intricate responses to issues — but we don’t like responsibility. When we had our chance to take control of the COVID response, we turned it down.
As we always do.
I don’t blame us, really. Governments may be the least qualified to do a good job, but us consumers face the toughest challenge in getting the job done.
Because:
We are faced with the diffusion of responsibility: the single biggest roadblock to good, moral, and sustainable behaviour in the world.
There are too many of us, we’re all over the place, and we don’t talk. Each of us ends up a tiny drop in a massive ocean of collective action where we’re all incapable of making a difference. If we give in and become part of the problem, it’s fine: we won’t be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. If we take a stand and do the right thing, nothing changes: our sacrifice is moot next to ten-million indulgent troublemakers.
Individually, we feel powerless, therefore collectively, we relinquish our power. We punt our responsibility to the other two parties and wipe our hands of the situation.
“The mayor said I could go to the bar, and the bar owner said they adhered to all safety protocols — so it’s not my fault for participating in an outbreak!”
Businesses suffer the same problem — but with more money on the line. One moral owner could step up and make a bunch of sustainable decisions, but their products would then be priced higher than competitors. Fair-trade smartphone makers tried that route and…I don’t know anyone with a fair-trade smartphone.
Instead, businesses often operate right up to the edge of the rules set forth, and let consumers dictate how much they can get away with. As long as there’s a willingness to buy, there’s a willingness to sell.
“And if I don’t sell it to them, someone else will and run me out of business!”
So it goes: consumers point at businesses and government to set standards; businesses point at government and consumers to set boundaries.
I picture a politician somewhere throwing up her hands — like a parent whose kids refuse to work things out on their own.
I said I don’t really blame us for neglecting our own responsibility; I also don’t fault government officials for creating crude guidelines. They paint their solutions with a far wider brush than both businesses and consumers could be using. They also take far longer to see issues, plan a course of action, then implement that new course. They’re turning the titanic while we could zip around in dinghies.
They can try their best, but the government inevitably going to apply far less nuance to their solutions and react far slower than we could — had we stepped up.
That is exactly what happened this year. They acted too late to stop both the first and second waves, and when they did act, they shut things down seemingly arbitrarily. (Strip clubs, spin classes, and personal training on one bill? Really? And McDonalds lobbies are still swarming?)
But how can I complain when we forced their hand?
So: is there a solution?
It seems like diffusion of responsibility is inevitable, but there are some ways around it.
First,
The obvious one: take responsibility for yourself. It’s easy to say we’ll try, but tough when facing specific decisions. Here’s my tip: act like you’re an influencer. Make decisions about where to go and what to buy assuming others are following your lead — because they are. Even if you don’t have 50k followers on social media, you absolutely have followers. Your family and friends and coworkers and the lady next to you in the produce isle are influenced by what you do. Don’t take that lightly. Your example will affect their behaviour, which will affect the behaviour of those close to them. You may just be one drop, but your ripples can reverberate pretty damn far.
Second,
Get together and get organized. Petitions, protests, and boycotts work. In the past decade, petitions signed by hundreds of thousands of people made animal cruelty a felony in the U.S., lifted the Boy Scout’s ban on gay youth, got a shelved cancer drug back in production, ended segregation on public transit, and to the arrest of George Floyd’s killers. When we rally around an idea we set to paper, we solidify this notion of collective action. No longer single drops lost in an ocean, we get some power and momentum.
Third,
Call people out. Public shaming may come with a lot of asterisks—more often than not, it reinforces the behaviour we hope to change. But, de-incentivizing immoral or unsustainable behaviour does work — especially at a local level where we’re acutely aware of our social standing. Among peer groups, we can set the norm for acceptable behaviour, and a simple, “awe c’mon man,” has enormous power to prevent further unwanted actions. In a group that enforces accountability, our indulgences aren’t simply lost among the sea of other irresponsible decisions.
Is that all it will take to save us from oppression? From COVID? Probably not; we might have missed our window to have much sovereignty here.
But this issue of collective responsibility isn’t going anywhere. So much has to change about how the world works, and we cannot punt hard decisions for much longer.
With temperatures rising and populations exploding and resources drying up, dramatic behavioural reform is on the horizon. There are two ways that’ll take shape: either we stop acting like children who don’t want any personal responsibility; or we accept a stifling parent-government who keeps us on a tight leash.
Those are the options, and we’re the ones with the choice. We can decide what our future looks like, or we can pass the reigns to an overbearing government and relinquish our right to complain about our rights being stripped away.
And we have to choose now.
❤