Unraveling the Vaccine Debate
I thought all of you might be interested in reading this article I wrote in February about coping with the polarized nature of the vaccine debate, especially for those of us who care about alternative medical approaches to health.
Please feel free to share this article with others.
Unraveling the Vaccine Debate: Finding the Fulcrum Beneath Polarity
Many of us are growing to realize the dangers inherent in the increasing polarities in our world. Polarity is all about two camps fighting one another on two sides of an issue, each side “othering” and dehumanizing the other as an
enemy to be vanquished at all costs. Of course, polarities have likely plagued humanity for thousands of years. But the information age and the rise of social media have worsened the problem and also made it much more obvious.
Lately, I’ve been listening to Charles Eisenstein‘s 10-part lecture series on political hope. Charles encourages his listeners to not only understand where each side of a polarity is coming from — in essence, putting oneself in the
other’s shoes — but also to search for what truly lies beneath a polarity. When I think about the nature of polarity, what springs to mind is the image of a see-saw. One side goes up at the expense of the other, which must go down.
But under a see-saw lies its fulcrum. The word “fulcrum” derives from the Latin word “fulcire,” which means “to prop”. Besides being a prop for a lever, a fulcrum has also been defined as something that plays a central role in or is
in the center of a situation or activity. Given any polarity that you may be embroiled in, what is supporting it? What lies at its true center?
As it turns out, on the exact same day that I listened to Charles’ talk about polarity, I had a Zoom chat with two lifelong friends from elementary school — two women with quite different mindsets than me but who are also much like
sisters. One lives in Jerusalem and the other in Washington, D.C. Before COVID times, we talked to each other on our birthdays and got together every 10 years or so, but since March 2020, we have been Zooming once a month. This
particular Zoom took place the day after the inauguration, so our conversation naturally drifted to the next topic that is dominating the news — the COVID vaccine.
Unfortunately, this conversation pushed on my own hot-button polarity issue: vaccination. I will discuss my own views in more detail later, but let me just say that one of my friends had already gotten the shot and the other was
having it the next day. In contrast, my husband and I want to avoid it if we can. The truth is, my friends have always viewed my involvement with alternative medicine as nonsense and we avoid talking about the subject. But it was hard
to avoid it when it came to this Zoom discussion. In fact, I experienced my first dose of “vaccine shaming” from one them, who accused me of avoiding the vaccine at her expense, intimating that she was doing her duty to achieve a herd
immunity that I could ride upon. In actuality, this couldn’t be further from my true thoughts. And after the Zoom ended, her comment triggered a response in me much like Charles had warned against: a desire to completely disengage
from my friends and to view them as “sheep-le” who unthinkingly follow media directives. This article is my effort to follow Charles’s advice and disengage as best I can from this polarity, to put myself in my friends’ shoes, and to
find the fulcrum that underlies this increasingly divisive issue. (Please forgive the fact that this article is written from the perspective of a person living in the USA.)
CONTINUE READING
