Every decision we make, every day, involves a risk assessment. No matter how insignificant, decisions are the result of a balancing exercise, and they are always consequential. To work or not to work, to drive a car or take a bus, to stop at the red light or speed through it. We make multiple decisions many times a day. We have a choice in all of them. By force of routine we have accepted the multiple dilemmas that come with an ordinary day and have learned to identify, mechanically, the lesser risk. That's right: with every decision we make, we choose a risk.
In our own bubble of quotidian life we feel absolutely free. From outside, others see us doing run-of-the-mill things, as all ordinary humans do. We exercise our freedom in everything we do, and we don't even realize the many little, but important, limitations that are already imposed on it. We accept them and mechanically function within them.
We love our individual rights and freedoms. Our rights are protected by the charter of rights. Our freedoms are above any law. They are absolute in our mistaken minds. We feel generous when we choose to make the line in the grocery store or respect the traffic rules or yield our seat on the bus to a pregnant woman. The existence of others is also part of our day-to-day life, and as long as it doesn't touch our bubble, we accept it and mechanically function along with it. We feel free and kind. We feel free and caring. We feel free and empathetic. We feel free and mindful of others. We never question our sense of humanity when we feel absolutely free. In ordinary circumstances, our individualistic outlook of life may go inadvertent. It is almost invisible. And others may actually believe that we are kind and caring and empathetic.
Individual rights are precious. The fight for recognition of equal rights for all has been at the core of many important revolutions. It has taken a lot of human suffering for the world to take tiny steps towards the universal recognition of those rights that are inherent to our kind and dignify us as human beings. They operate as a limit to governmental action and empower us to decide the course of our own lives. They are without a doubt an affirmation of our worth as human beings, and something we should always advocate for and defend. One of the most rewarding experiences of my life is tied to the study of human rights and the teaching to university students of the little I have learned. I consider myself a human rights advocate, and understand the significance of protecting them. They are not, however, absolute. As a matter of fact, very few individual rights are. Our right not to be tortured or our right not to be enslaved are good examples. There is no fair or reasonable limitation that anybody could impose on those rights. Except for rights of that nature, all others are non-absolute rights and are recognized for everybody equally.
Conflict of rights may often arise between individuals, and as with anything non-absolute, resolution will only be accomplished through limitations. Sometimes our rights conflict with the wellbeing of the society as a whole, and the balancing maneuver is significantly more challenging, but still imperative to perform, because there is something greater than ourselves. Recognition of individual rights never intended to replace the notion of common good. It does not take us out of our social and political context. It does not strip us from our responsibility to acknowledge the rights of others as individuals and the rights of the society as a whole. Limitations on our freedoms will always be a conflict resolution mechanism. They will come either from the right of others to exercise theirs, or from governments that have a mandate to protect us all equally and ensure the wellbeing of the society as a whole and of each of us individually.
As COVID-19 seems determined to change for good our definition of normalcy, many are angered at the exercise by others of their right to impose a mask requirement to enter their private property. Many are astonished at the idea that vaccination should be mandatory, at least in certain circumstances where public health would be at greater risk. Many are claiming that all these measures taken or proposed by both, private citizens and governments, mostly with the common good in mind, are a blatant violation of their individual rights.
While I manage to understand, even if without sharing, the rationale for some of the claims in certain circumstances, generally I find the arguments behind those positions unfounded and extraordinarily selfish. There is no balancing act at all. No assessment of risks against benefits, one's rights against others' rights, one's rights against society's well being.
COVID-19 is not responsible for the aberrant display of selfishness we are seeing, though. Selfishness as the extreme expression of our individualism has always been there, and COVID-19 simply has made it visible. Because to see the invisible, we often need an extraordinary event. Something that challenges our sense of security. Something that effectively disturbs the routine we build around us. Routine is more comfortable than change.
It is in these extenuating circumstances that the balancing exercise requires a higher degree of intention, because they force us to consciously consider the otherness into the equation. The dilemma is no longer between ordinary risks. Our decision will, more evidently than usual, impact others. The choice is still ours, but on the balance, if one is ever contemplated, our own freedom seems to always outweigh the rights of others and, more outrageously, the common good.
We have lost the central idea that the exercise of our rights and freedoms has a purpose and an interest that goes beyond ourselves. An idea that won't be easy to find again or rebuild, because dismissing it has become endemic to our nature. The natural thing is to think just about our own personal interest. How kind, and caring and empathetic are we, really?
Our individualism has become so extreme that we have convinced ourselves that the notion of common good negates our freedom. As if we weren't part of the society we live in, our choices mechanically wave aside the common good. And in an ironic twist of fate, our selfishness operates against us by making us choose the greater risk: effectively, if we don't put that common good on the balance, we all will be left with no place to exercise any individual rights at all.
