Seaweed Sucks!

 I was sitting by the pool yesterday when a woman from the community that I'm friends with responded to my greeting by saying that she was pretty upset.  I inquired as to the cause - she said that one of the women in the tight circle she's part of refuses to get vaccinated and this is alienating her from all the other women in this clique who are all in their 70s and 80s and worried that she's potentially exposing them to the virus.   She added she was healthy and wasn't going to do it.  The consequences for her is that she is slowly being iced out of the group, the icing being accelerated by her refusal to wear a mask when the group activities are inside (contravening both a county mask mandate and one that our community has put in place - it is a 55+ community after all).  My friend knows I have a science background so she asked: "What can I say to her?  What advice do you have?"

I could just look at her for a couple of beats and say: "Not really.  I don't think you can say anything to her.  I could explain the science but she wouldn't listen to a word of it.  Her mind is made up."

It's very frustrating.  I try not to think of people who behave in ways that I don't agree as idiots but it's getting harder and harder.  And then - because our Fellowship stresses rigorous self-examination - it brought to mind what people who tried to get me to stop drinking and using during my run must have thought when I offered my flimsy and irrational excuses.

There was an incident at college one year where a large group was in the Quad of the complex where I lived, milling about on a Saturday night, cheerfully drunk and high, after live music ended.  Someone grabbed a mike, hooked it up to a stereo, and blasted the famous Network line: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"  The crowd got worked-up in a very good natured way and decided to go to one of the other dorm complexes called Hill House.  We poured out of the Quad and made our way down the streets shouting: "Hill House sucks!  Hill House sucks!"  Again, it was all very light-hearted as we stormed into the lobby of Hill House and continued to chant.  Security was there and didn't let us past reception but it never occured to me that this could get out of hand, if only by accident.  This is one of the few times (maybe the only time) in my life where I got swept up into that kind of group mentality.  I wondered what I would have done if the group had tried to force their way past security and into the building?  It never crossed my mind that a fight could have started or an edgy security guard could have felt threatened and started whaling on kids with a nightstick.  

This is sort of how I see people who get caught up in the whirlwind of group thinking.  A lot of these people are smart enough to see the bullshit but they're too busy shouting: "Something sucks!  Something sucks!"  What is it anyway?  Willful ignorance?  Intellectual incuriosity?  Feeling alienated and being accepted into a clique?  What was I doing in the college crowd, behaving in a way that was foreign to me?

Seaweed sucks!  Seaweed sucks!