Situation
Bunnings Woman – let me provide some context here for the title. In Australia, Bunnings is store chain similar to Home Depot in USA. Bunnings introduced a mandatory wearing of mask to allow entry into the story. One of the female customer refused to do so and she caught her encounter with Bunnings staff and later with police and posted the same to assert her rights not to wear mask. This entire encounter followed by her interview on a local new channel prompted me to provide certain aspects of her rights purely from an educational perspective.
Normally I refrain from blogging anything about a situation created by a single person unless I perceive the person is in a position of power affecting lives of those who live in a community or as citizens of a nation.
What can be done?
I think we need education to educate people like her on the position taken by her or similar to her regarding wearing masks. Masks does not protect you, but it protects others from you. This glaring point was missed out on the interview on the local channel.
That aside, I believe, she needs to pose several questions to herself from various perspectives. Let her start from her own perspective. If she has an exemption to wear a mask and she has sufficient proof to present it when asked then others can take preventive measures around her. She has that responsibility to carry those papers to help ease difficult situations that staff will have to face without being trained for it. She cannot just go on to quote someone to say that I go by what others have said and do it when it suits her and not otherwise.
Secondly, she has to understand the situation from others perspectives. What if she has her parents who are vulnerable to the virus living with her and perhaps, she herself is vulnerable. What then? Will she go around demanding that everyone should wear mask to protect her and her family?
When it comes to health-related issues that affect a community, there is no room for selfish acts even if there are rights existing to protect such acts, but those rights should be exercised with common sense. I don’t think anyone would have called the police if she had been walking in a park without a mask, but when there is a community gathering of some sort – be it a shopping or service being provided, she needs to exercise that common sense, that she has been gifted to use like anyone else, to either ask people to distance from herself than confronting with her perceived rights protecting her from wearing mask.
Understanding an educational need
The question is how to educate such narrow-minded people who don’t care about others and who do not want to compromise for others and who do not want to exercise common sense but prefer to exercise their rights.
I think it depends on the culture of the nation. In a dictatorship country she would have been in prison. In a collectivist country, she would have been advised by her close friends and colleagues and family members on the needs to wear a mask and she would have heeded to the advice as it came from those who loved her. The problem arises more acutely and differently in individualist countries like Australia, USA, UK and many others. In collectivist countries, usually most of Asian countries, this problem is not so acute and there are and will be many opportunities for collective wisdom to spread across not one isolated community, but many closely-knit communities that could even cover the entire nation.
When I turn to individualistic countries, I see situations that don’t normally occur in collectivist countries. In an individualistic country, the citizen of the country has been given all facilities and rights to live as an individual. The infrastructure provides that freedom to choose as an individual. The communities in such countries are, however, then created to bring in like-minded people together or communities gets formed while seeking co-operation from individuals to achieve a common goal. When seeking such a co-operation from each individual, it will be provided only if it suits him or her. Hence, we end up with thousands of foundations supporting hundreds of causes and they all assume that the support is purely voluntary. This voluntary participation is expected and appreciated and those who provide such voluntary services or such a support claim themselves to be good-hearted individuals. I don’t doubt that.
But a pandemic situation that cuts across clusters of communities present totally a different problem. Pandemics don’t care who you are or what your rights are. They affect everyone the same. The common enemy for a coronavirus is humanity not a community or an individual. However, some individuals don’t understand that or see it from that perspective. No one feels if some one unrelated dies, but if it happens to them, they feel it and if they have powers, demand the same from others. Some may depend on the existing law and order, others depend on the rights bestowed as human beings and some may totally make their own to deal with the pandemic situation.
Bunnings woman comes under this last category. However, we have to have certain location prevalent and situation prevalent conditions to supersede all such cluster behaviors. In an emergency situation where the health of a community is at risk, no existing laws can supersede such behaviors and there will be no time left to legislate. Common sense prevails and Bunnings woman is a stark example of such an education lacking in the community.