Hobson’s Choice, Narendra Modi, and COVID19
This article takes inspiration from the following from Epsilon Theory: https://www.epsilontheory.com/clever-hans/. Please give it a look if you get a chance.
From this report:
Police in India’s northern city of Meerut are making citizens who break its lockdown hold up signs reading, “I am a friend of coronavirus,” or “I am the enemy of society,” before posting their pictures on Twitter.
A Hobson's choice is a choice that you can't refuse. By giving you, in explicit terms, a choice to your outcome, you're given the illusion of freedom and thus have no strong grounds to complain. However, the psychological toll of not picking the heavily nudged outcomes imposes enough pressure onto you to pick the outcome the designer of the game wanted. Some examples of Hobson's choices that you face in your day to day include being forced to opt out of organ donation when you get your driver's license, or nudged to vote either Democrat or Republican in the elections every four years. At the end of the day, you do have a choice in deciding what you'd like to do, but the machine would prefer to do the thinking for you.
So how does this relate to cops publicly shaming individuals who break Modi's lockdown as a response to coronavirus? The key word I'd like to focus on is shaming. Specifically, many Hobson's choices that we're presented with involve shame. Come election season, if you decide not to vote for one of the two ridiculous candidates that we will be presented with, it's inevitable that somebody with a loud mouth and a trendy Facebook filter that flaunts who they're voting for will shame you for not voting. "It's your civic duty!". "Don't let (insert offender's enemy party) win!".
Language is the offender's primary weapon against you. Language is how they distort your psychology against you so that you play their game. Continuing with the voting example, your question of “to vote or not to vote” is re-framed as to be a good citizen or to not be a good citizen. The shame is in the frame. And if you decide to justify your choice, you've unwittingly decided to play their psychological game, and there's no way you'll win that.
I'm not saying that it's a good idea to go into public during the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. And I do actually think that you're a bit of an enemy to society if you do go about your daily life as this virus spreads. India in particular is ripe to be hit with a high death toll from the coronavirus as it boasts poor sanitation and hygiene practices along with a population density that aids the spread of this virus. If this were a rural town, I think it would be okay to go for walks outside of your house and attempt to keep some semblance of normalcy as long as you're staying vigilant about the spread of the disease, but the case here is different.
But the question I do want to bring up here is how far are we willing to let authority attack our collective psyches with shaming tactics? Is it truly necessary for the police to present the Hobson's choice of staying inside and being a good citizen or "becoming an enemy of society" because you're breaking curfew? Unfortunately, I don't have an answer to this question. If you look at America, it's clear that authorities simply recommending people stay in doors and social distancing failed in many parts of the country in preventing the spread of the pandemic. Americans are shameless people after all, so it's understandable that few people felt a desire to really change their daily lives while the pandemic hadn't hit hard yet. And even as the pandemic has ramped up within this country, it seems that there are still some folks who want to go about their daily lives. A Chinese style lockdown is not on the table due to America being a Western democracy, and a South Korean style response is also not on the table since our government is inept. So what's the solution? Do we shame these people? On paper they still have their freedoms, and we're not doing anything to remove their freedoms. Already we have some level of social media shaming happening to some folks who are breaking the social distancing measures. Do we let the authorities carry out this shaming policy? At what point are we actually infringing on the freedoms of these individuals? What does freedom even mean in this context, especially in the age of social media where public shaming is possible?
One thing I would like to note is that Narendra Modi is a Hindu nationalist - no questions raised. I'm not interested in debating this point. But I would like to make a point that politicians who lean authoritarian tend to play on the collective neuroses of their population. We've seen this in the past, especially in World War II. And Trump, who no doubt leans nationalist in his rhetoric, plays on the collective rage of his constituency against the establishment. I'm worried that in allowing government and authority to create Hobson's choices of this sort, we will willingly drive ourselves into a more authoritarian and less free society, giving up our freedoms along the way willingly as our neuroses are preyed upon. Especially in the face of this virus, now that the American public has had its anxieties stirred up, I believe government powers will expand in a similar means as they were after 9/11 and shaming tactics will be used to make us all willing culprits in our collective enshacklement.
If you’re being asked to make a choice, it’s worth asking why the choices you’re presented with are the ones the designer of the game wanted you to pick between.
