help me to understand purpose of mask

[Eric the Green]

(05-28-2020, 08:52 PM)TheNomad Wrote: This is an existential question and not meant to create controversy, per se, except where it's brought.

What is the purpose of the mask?

When my state mandated them, I was unaware of it on the first day, and went into the grocery store without one - as I had been.  Someone confronted me from behind their own mask and in a hateful, orderly tone said to me in front of others waiting in like

"BRAVE no mask"

Now, you can interpret that any way you want to.  But what the person said is different from how they said it and what they meant to imply.  The words of the statement said I must be brave to not be wearing it.  However, the intent was to shame me.

Shaming someone in this manner, to me, conveys fear of the shamer than I might be transmitting the virus to them.

Calling me brave would mean exactly what it says - that I am brave and do not fear THEM infecting me.

Since there is right now a national rift over the mask thing, I need other people to give input on this.

Please do not say "it's both" because when I ask this question, I am immediately reminded of my own, and personal, encounter when someone actually did confront me.  Through these times of confusion, I am finding more and more there are no "truths" or "realities" when so much is unknown.  If you think everything is so clear, maybe you shouldn't respond here.  All that does is auto-negate those who might disagree with your views.

These are dangerous times, but under that sub-heading of DANGER there is MUCH than remains questionable.  We as human beings are here to discuss among ourselves what we experience in daily life.  That is sometimes all we can do.

edit sorry I forgot to include the  very thing that made me want to post this.  I am reading a lot about how wearing the mask is about "loving your neighbor" and helping keep them safe.  But time after time I see many more things with the exact statement from witnesses of others not wearing it "they dont care about us".

This is confusing.  I think people are a lot more selfish than they would want to admit.  It's about them.  The rights of others - the existential right - to risk themselves if they want to, that's on the hook for the risk of the fearful.  The fearful should never win over the rights of the masses.  We lose every time this happens.

"I am afraid of something you are doing/not doing, so let's pass a law to make you do it so I feel safe"

that never works and is not a sane thing to consider.  In reality it looks great, tho.  In "reality" of a pandemic it looks great.  But the next generation is going to shame us for giving away the rights that come with it.  We know this from the boomer backlash over GI generation and their "sacrifices".  It's what drove those 2 generations apart for a lifetime.  Why cant see see this coming?

The shame was correct. But the shame belongs most of all to our Republican government and its free-market ideology. And of course to all those who vote and support it.

A correct government and society would have seen to it that masks were distributed free, and fast. And the markets that you go to that require you to wear a mask, but don't supply it, what's up with that? Shame on them.

Yes, if you have access to a mask, and don't wear it, then yes you may be acting selfishly, because you don't care whether you may be infected, and don't care if you therefore infect others. But that does not excuse someone for shaming you; that is not polite, and the one shaming you is driven by fear. So I don't shame you, and I wouldn't if I saw you or others not wearing a mask. I couldn't wear one for a while myself because I didn't have one. So I just write and describe things as I see them. It's possible in some 4th turning societies like the French Reign of Terror (and some permanently 4th-turning societies like Cuba or North Korea) that citizens not only shame but report on their neighbors. Watch committees and such. I hope we don't go that far. We are too liberty-oriented for that.

We are in a fourth turning. I'm sure you know that means that the value of upholding the needs of the community is beginning to overtake the value of asserting our individual rights, such as an existential right to risk yourself if you want to. There is no such right, even in 2nd and 3rd turnings, if such behavior also risks the lives of others.