The interplay between the people and the state
In light of recent times there has been a major controversy around the interplay between the state and the people. More specifically what they (the state) are and aren’t allowed to do. This topic has always been an issue, but even more so now due to the latest responses by the state on yet another contentious issue. That being the latest dangerous virus: COVID-19.
COVID-19 is a coronavirus which simply is a type of virus; an infectious agent. Now it had spread globally and kickstarted a pandemic. Therefore the state had to act and it did. Countries ranging from Australia all the way to the United States all responded similar in certain areas and different in others.
Now what was really important was the response by the state and the effect on the people and vice versa. This is important for numerous reasons. A couple of them being along the lines of: did the state respond appropriately? Did the people respond appropriately?
There are many more questions that I did not state, however, you get the point. Now what’s more important than the questions are the answers. And as far as I’m concerned the answer seems to be no for both questions above.
This became evident to me more recently, just about a year and a half after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11th 2020.
Additionally, I’d like to add the fact that I’am not focusing on the states response to COVID-19 (and the pandemic) because it’s COVID-19 and a contentious issue.
This is a piece dialing into the interplay between the state and the people during the pandemic caused by COVID-19 for the fact that this exact interplay occurring right now between the state and the people is salient to understand.
And it is not just the phenomena that I keep discussing, but also a rather psychological disconnect between the government and their policies.
Now pandemic doesn’t need to occur to witness this phenomena or disconnect that I will be describing. The pandemic is one of many instances that just so happens to trigger this type of interplay between the state and the people.
Therefore throughout the piece I will be demonstrating the interplay between the state and the people during the COVID-19 pandemic, the disconnect between the government and it’s people, and why the response was wrong on behalf of the state and the people.
To add, as a quick disclaimer, The event I am about to speak about it’s not one cherry picking a specific instance to push a narrative but rather to use inductive reasoning to explain a specific phenomenon that actually does a sufficient enough job in explaining it as they are many more events such as the one I will speak about and therefore would create a rather dreadfully long piece and potentially miss the point.
Now this phenomenon i’ve been referencing is about the obedience of the people to the state. I felt inclined to write about the interplay of obedience between the people to the state after watching a video on twitter that was utterly vile. To view it click here.
The video was a clip of two woman who had entered the Forum Des Halles shopping mall in France. However, the two woman entered the shopping mall without their vaccine passports as it was required for entry into public domains. So what happened?
France’s police officer’s or the gendarmerie had ran after the two women, who were unarmed, until they caught them. The officers then assaulted the two women with batons until the women had, for the most part, surrendered. It ended with both women being aggressively tackled to the ground and finally arrested.
And for those of you wondering, no the women were not armed with weapons nor did the women assault any officer. This all transpired due to the women entering the shopping mall without their vaccine passports. Apparently it was all done in the name of “justice”.
Now regardless of whether or not you agree or disagree with vaccine passports as that is a contentious issue in enough of itself, one may ask: does entering a public domain without a vaccine passport for a virus that isn’t threatening our species existence warrant this behavior? Does it warrant the assault and arrest of these two women?
It’s rather reasonable to think we can come to a mutual understanding that what transpired with the two women not showing vaccine passports did not warrant that behavior the French police officers displayed in the shopping mall. The French officers actions were deplorable and I considered the entire situation to be nothing shy of being egregious.
To add, assuming everyone agreed that vaccine passports should be legal and advocated for them, even then it wouldn’t warrant this type of behavior where the officers treated a human being so poorly for entering a shopping mall without one (a vaccine passport).
Now this entire situation then brings me to the explanation of this phenomena of obedience on behalf of the people to the state and why this is happening.
We saw this phenomenon that I’m regarding occur when Mao Zedong controlled China and when Hitler controlled Germany. We saw it all throughout history in both the marxist and fascist regimes. That’s why I’am writing about this because it is imperative that we understand it.
Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky really stresses the idea of understanding situations like this and the “evil doer” when he says
“Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him” (ccjc.ca)
Now with that being said, it seems evident to me that there is someone who can help one understand “him” (the evildoer) and how situations like these emerge. That man being the social psychologist and Harvard graduate: Stanley Milgram.
Stanley Milgram was known for a few of his experiments such as the small-world and the familiar stranger experiment. Both are interesting experiments I suggest you read, but there was one other experiment Milgram was most famously known for which truly demonstrates this phenomena of obedience from the people to the sate. This was known as the Milgram experiment.
Milgram experiment
The Milgram experiment started out with a recruitment of subjects which were of no specific race, ethnicity, or religion. The subjects were offered cash as an incentive to join the experiment.
From there Milgram said the experiment would be to study the “effects of punishment and learning ability” (nature.berkley.edu).
The respondents were then told they were there as teachers and students. However, Milgram manipulated the choosing process and in reality all of the respondents were going to be the teacher and all of the “students” were merely just a cohort of paid actors
The room where the experiment would take place was set up in a way where there was a wall between the “student” and the teacher so they could not see another.
From there the “students” would be asked questions and every time a student answered a questions wrong or went silent and didn’t answer the question the teacher was supposed to hit a red button.
Now the red button was a button that would administer a jolt of electricity to the “student”. Additionally, there were several red buttons that increasingly rose in voltage. Each button was labeled in order from lower to higher voltage. Labels from lowest to highest were ““slight shock," "moderate shock,” "strong shock," "very strong shock," "intense shock," and "extreme intensity shock." The next two anchors were "Danger: Severe Shock, and after that XXX”“ (nature.berkely.edu).
To add, the “student (actor) would begin to grunt at 75 volts; complain at 120 volts; ask to be released at 150 volts; plead with increasing vigor, next; and let out agonized screams at 285 volts. Eventually, in desperation, the learner was to yell loudly and complain of heart pain.”(nature.berkley.edu).
However, in reality each button ranging from ‘slight shock” to “XXX” was actually only administering a 45 volt shock and nothing more. Additionally, the teachers were not aware of this.
Now during the experiment if any teachers were reluctant in pressing the button the experimenter or person in charge of the experiment would nudge or pressure the teacher to proceed with clicking the button.
In addition to applying pressure, the experimenter would also make claims such as “The experiment requires that you continue”(nature.berkley.edu) when speaking to the teachers.
Now that was all the pediment really entailed, however, what was more important were the results.
After was all said and done and the experiment had finished Milgram had discovered remarkable results.
As one may assume obviously some teachers rejected to proceed with the experiment even meanwhile being under pressure and stopped early on. This is important because Milgram had preconceived notions of his own. Those being that the type of response where the teacher would not longer continue shocking students and stop early on would be the archetypal response.
This is important because Milgram was wrong. The results concluded that “Sixty-five percent (65%) of the teachers were willing to progress to the maximum voltage level.”(nature.berkley.edu). Therefore those that questioned authority were the minority of teachers. And for those of you not aware, the maximum voltage level was 450 volts which is said to be extremely dangerous and even lethal if done long enough (a few seconds).
Another interesting conclusion was that teachers were more obedient when they felt they could pass the responsibility onto others and when they felt the experiment was being run by a respectable organization.
More importantly this experiment simply shows just how obedient people can be to the state regardless of what they are doing. The majority of teachers were able to justify administering a 450 volt shock to a student which can be lethal and cause major damage to the individual.
Some teachers went as far as saying things such as “he was so stupid and stubborn that he deserved to be shocked” (nature.berkley.edu). This type of response is merely dreadful. It’s lacks empathy, compassion, and it is merely inhumane — or is it?
After all was said and done people were left with the results of this experiment and weren’t necessarily sure what to think about it. Some said it was unethical and others didn't like it because it showed grotesque human behavior. As far as I’m concerned, it is imperative to know and understand the Milgram experiment.
That’s because it explains so eloquently why those French police officers in the story above had assaulted and arrested those two women since they didn’t have their vaccine passports.
The Gendarmerie Nationale (one of the two main French police forces) are a respectable institution. Additionally the French officers who assaulted the two women and arrested them for not having vaccine passports were also just doing their job. However, the dilemma now lies here and it’s a difficult one. That being: where do you draw the “line” for obedience? It’s important for the French officers to draw a line somewhere and it can’t be nowhere because that won’t work.
If you take a look at what happened in Nazi Germany in 1940 or what happened in the Soviet Union in 1933. There was no line drawn as to what they would do. When viewing the history of the Auschwitz labor camps and the Ukrainian famine you’ll notice the operations were enforced by dogmatic regimes through officers and officials who were instructed to perform and commit these heinous acts.
The officers and officials were obedient and passed responsibility onto the government. It’s different but more or less the same here. The actions are different but the philosophy is the exact same. Therefore the officers working for the Gendarmerie Nationale and others who are committing similar acts should reconsider their actions because stark obedience, absolute faith in the government, and a lack of self-responsibility is going to evoke absolute chaos and nothing less.
The psychological disconnect
Now in addition to governments peddling these ideas that we may assume are done in good faith and not to encroach on citizens rights intentionally so big Pharma can increase their profits, there is evidently a major disconnect psychologically between what the governments are promulgating policy wise and actual human behavior or the way humans are wired.
When instances like the two French women I described previously who didn’t abide by the vaccine mandate declared by France occur, the government obviously did not intend on it happening, but in reality it seems like a plausible response for a human to do what the women had done— which according to the reactance theory in psychology it actually is.
According to the article published in the American Psychologically Association the definition of the reactance theory is
a model stating that in response to a perceived threat to—or loss of—a behavioral freedom, a person will experience psychological reactance (or, more simply, reactance), a motivational state characterized by distress, anxiety, resistance, and the desire to restore that freedom. According to this model, when people feel coerced into a certain behavior, they will react against the coercion, often by demonstrating an increased preference for the behavior that is restrained, and may perform the behavior opposite to that desired.
Therefore given such theory, it seems like as people around the world are being coerced by governments to be vaccinated, show proof of vaccination, and wear a mask virtually everywhere they go then more people react against these rules and coercion and ultimately do the opposite essentially out of spite.
And as I may be inductively reasoning my point for the reactance theory here in what appears to be an isolated incident between these two women in France, as a matter of fact this is not just an isolated incident that had happened in France, but virtually all over Europe.
According to BBC.com they stated:
“Tens of thousands of people have been marching in the Belgian capital, Brussels, to protest against anti-Covid measures.”
"In the Netherlands, a second night of riots broke out on Saturday in several towns and cities.”
“In Croatia, thousands marched in the capital, Zagreb, to show their anger at mandatory vaccinations for public sector workers”.
Tens of thousands of people protested in Austria's capital, Vienna, after the government announced a new national lockdown and plans to make jabs compulsory in February 2022… Brandishing national flags and banners reading "Freedom", protesters shouted "Resistance!" and booed the police.”
There are many more countries where protests have broken out over such covid-19 mandates and once again I sit here puzzled and wonder how any country could be so psychologically disconnected from it’s people where they had not truly thought out the implications of their policy’s and what would occur as a result of them.
As some of the greatest policy pundits had put it “intentions do not equate results” and similarly these governmental policies that had enforced compulsory vaccination and other mandates fall victim to such quote as we see how the governments intentions for the initial policies were “X, Y, and Z” but in reality produced the opposite reaction they desired and therefore became perversely counterintuitive to a degree.
The people
Now as I have demonstrated above how the state can and has overreached (in France) the state is not the only ones in the wrong.
The people also play a vital role in the outcomes of these scenarios for when the state overreaches. And in this instance it seems evident to me the people were also wrong.
As a citizen and as someone being a part of The People, I too bear responsibility for the actions of the state to some degree, as do you.
It is exactly why in the United States the founding fathers had created the constitution alongside checks and balances regarding government branches so the people could have freedoms and enforce and maintain them.
More importantly, I don’t condone violence or rioting as a way of means to attain what you desire, but peaceful protests and drawing a line like so many have been doing all over Europe already is key to maintaining your rights and liberties.
Therefore I implore you to recall the instance of the two women being assaulted and arrested by the French police officers. To recall the historical precedents of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were people were so obedient to authorities that they’d do anything. And while recollecting on any of those instances, one may ask: if and when these scenarios rise again and history begins to repeat itself as it just as well may be, is it a hill you’d die on?