Thread by @RageSheen

Yesterday my son said to me “you know, wearing a mask is the right thing to do. But it doesn’t feel like the right thing to do.” He was talking about being the only kid at school masked, and the social pressure to conform. This is key to understanding ‘freedom’. /1

When politicians and others say people wanted freedom back, from public health measures, they really meant they wanted society to go back to social conformity, and away from regulatory guidance. Removing Covid rules gives no individual freedom, it just shifts the regulation…/2

…from a considered, legislative and regulatory mechanism to a social ‘peer pressure’ conformity mechanism. Humans do not, ever, exist as isolated ‘free’ individuals. Those who delude themselves that they do are freeloading off society, and don’t recognise the work of others. /3

I tweeted a few months ago that laws and rules are the only true enablers of freedom, which is the complete reverse of libertarian fantasy politics. They give people *permission* to escape social conformity. School uniforms a classic example. /4

The function of school uniforms is to free people from the intense social pressure of what to wear. Kids and families. It also then saves everybody money, by not having to engage in continuously escalating games of fashion imitation. The political libertarians have sold us…/5

…complete nonsense about the origins of society and how it works. Society is always groups of people, behaving, believing and thinking according to the laws of social life. Social conformity. It’s only the invention of law, regulation and religion that allowed humans to…/6

…be free of the rigid and oppressive conformity of social groups. Which is what my son was commenting on, he feels the pressure all day every day of not conforming. He knows surrendering to the groupthink of living with the virus would ‘free’ him from that pressure. /7

He also knows it might kill him, and others he would then infect too. We need to stop interpreting this pandemic as forces of freedom fighting forces of oppression. It’s a battle between forces of conformity, and freedom. Freedom is rational law and regulation, giving people…/8

…permission to do things that the group itself will never do. Why i always say society is now a high school, it literally is. It’s the law of the playground, overpowering public health law. /end