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In the pandemic's second year, rituals of courtesy and dignity are part of public health

Las Cruces Sun-News - 9/5/2021

It is fast becoming a subconscious habit: As I entered a restaurant, I paused for the requisite ablution at the hand sanitizing dispenser, now a familiar and expected station at a business.

Having timed my visit to avoid a crowd, I found the place nearly empty. The staff wore masks. I removed mine when my food arrived and did not linger after eating or chat with the server.

For 18 months the pandemic has displaced familiar customs and new conventions have developed around physical contact, face coverings, cleaning surfaces and more. Familiar customs like handshakes are a way to exert calm and normalcy. When those patterns change, as when I decline your handshake and offer a fist bump instead, there is a moment of dissonance.

The awkwardness arises because we are lost for a moment, unsure how to signal normalcy. Diffusing the tension with laughter is common — it helps repair the connection and signal, "I'm OK, you're OK, we're OK."

Social rituals serve a variety of functions, including hazard management, promotion of hygiene and signals of mutual recognition and bonding.

In the contentious atmosphere around containing COVID-19, new behaviors function as social signals as much as they contribute to public safety. Vaccine status is almost an ideological declaration. Masks sometimes even display political messages or corporate brands. I have one that evokes Seneca, stating: "All cruelty springs from weakness."

The mask, perhaps unfortunately, represents a stance. It might be expressed, more or less, as: "Scientific research says masks help reduce spread and keep more people safe, and here I am doing my part to take care of us both."

"Baloney!" retort the bare faces of those around us who refuse to wear them.

The argument has little to do with epidemiology, which is why it is usually a waste of time to publish links to research during a social media fight. The social dynamic presents scientism, an appeal to "science" (or pseudoscience) as an authority in a conflict that is cultural rather than factual.

The dispute is between competing claims of righteousness. One side might frame it as the educated science-followers versus the stupid, while another side might see it as a conflict between their independence versus authority figures and followers. In short, good people versus bad people.

What the camps have in common is a certitude and mutual contempt that is neither scientific nor democratic.

One side scolds and shames, the other mocks in reply, they trade places and then return to like-minded groups with screenshots to display who they are. It is hardly surprising the positions correlate so consistently with partisan identity. The atmosphere is personally immature and inhospitable to good-faith argument.

Our societal disdain for conversation on the basis of valid evidence, personal experience and reason is a long-running disease afflicting a nation that claims to value democracy. Too many lack the self-discipline and curiosity to practice it even if they would.

It also is a barrier to health, which for much of my life in this land of individualism has been conceived as individual "fitness" characterized by performative hardness. COVID "wokeness" threatens to develop into a similar trait, a sort of healthism that hardens into contempt serving little social benefit.

It might be more fruitful simply to withdraw from certain relationships, perhaps temporarily, and avoid futile engagements with nonsense — unless that's fun for you. It is challenging enough to cultivate healthy habits and manifest courtesy and dignity in our relationships in the midst of continuing upheaval.

Forget the links and performative scientism, dismiss trolls and look beyond the surface to the social function of our behaviors.

It is the shared laugh, not the first bump, that substitutes for the handshake.

Algernon D'Ammassa can be reached via adammassa@lcsun-news.com or @AlgernonWrites on Twitter.

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