Spiritual Perspectives, Gallup Independent 1.19.22

I just lost a friend, she didn’t die, but I feel she is lost, and I’m not able to save her—she’s joined the anti-vaxxer movement. When we met 45 years ago we were young, new in the city, both very gullible, very lost, very much needing a strong person to follow. We met during that intoxicating wave of New Age spiritualism, in a group led by a woman spiritual teacher promising answers; we were the perfect suckers. I eventually grew out of it and moved away; she moved into an urban ashram and worshipped another guru for decades, which helped her to maintain a foundation in her psyche. Still, we stayed in touch — I thought she was bright and creative and we shared a background that we were both Jewish. 

Then, out of the blue last week, B. emailed and asked me why more Jewish people weren’t speaking out against the vaccine mandates — she’d been listening to some ‘rich podcasts’ that ‘exposed’ people like Fauci. I was shocked. I sent her an article by a Jewish journalist explaining why comparing public health recommendations to Nazism was so very disturbing to Jews. As one non-Jewish friend of mine said when I told her about this, “How is being told to wear a mask and get a vaccine so you don’t make everybody sick worse than being hunted down and killed in a concentration camp?”

B. also told me she was concerned that the vaccines would do something to her. I sent her a solid scientific explanation of how the vaccines work, they signal the cells in the body to fight the Covid virus. B. said she would share this information with her friends and they’d discuss it. I was happy, I was satisfied she’d listened to reason. 

But then, a few days later, she emailed me with the excited note— ‘things are moving,’ about an anti-vaxxer march in Washington D.C. that was coming up. I realized then, she was lost. 

This all made me so very angry, and made me feel quite hopeless, and really shocked me that someone I actually knew and respected, was succumbing to this sort of group madness.

As it turned out, the demonstration was very sparsely attended, but one obscene statement by one speaker, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (yes, son of assassinated Bobby Kennedy), has lingered in the press: he said that being asked to wear masks and get vaccinated is worse than what Anne Frank was subjected to in the Holocaust. As I write this, today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Two out of every three Jews in Europe were murdered during World War Two by the Nazis. I am reminded of the importance of teaching about the history of genocides, and how they begin with the rise of autocratic populist leaders.

But what to do, even when my friend B. is falling for this? I found one article, “Why people believe in conspiracy theories, and how to change their minds,” by Mark Lorch, a professor of science in Great Britain. He said, don’t mention the misconceptions, that’s what people will remember. Then he explained what I had just experienced with B—the boomerang effect: “To make matters worse, presenting corrective information to a group with firmly held beliefs can actually strengthen their view, [and] tend to invoke self-justification and even stronger dislike of opposing theories, which can make us more entrenched in our views. This has become known as the ‘boomerang effect.’” The article recommended not challenging opponents’ worldviews, and to use stories to make your point. Ad agencies understand this. So, where are the public service campaigns to promote masks and vaccines?

Then, I read about “The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness,” by Greg Boyle, S.J. in “America, the Jesuit Review.” The book reviewer, Mary Gibbons, quotes Boyle: “We’ve mistaken moral outrage for moral compass,” Boyle writes. “Moral compass helps you see with clarity how complex and damaged people are… I suppose if I thought that moral outrage worked, I’d be out raging. But rage just means we don’t understand yet.”  He recounts an incident when 10 people were killed in a Texas high school shooting a number of years ago. Senator Ted Cruz said, “Once again, Texas has seen the face of evil.” But Boyle remembers the words of another commentator: “[A] teenage girl and fellow student of the shooter said, ‘The one who did this must have been carrying a world of pain inside.’ Understanding love is who our God is. Love this way announces the Tender One.” 
I think again about B., who’d had an abusive upbringing that left her fragile, and how today in joining a new, seemingly ‘fringe’ community, she’s found that intoxicating draw again; ‘We’re in on a secret that no one else is. We’re special.’
I feel frustration that someone so close to me would fall prey to this madness and that I wasn’t able to stop them, that they didn’t listen to me. I know she needs something, to hang on to. I am sad though, that this is what she chose. It worries me. 

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Diane Joy Schmidt is a journalist, novelist and screenwriter in Albuquerque who was raised in the traditions of Reform Judaism, and is an admirer of all things spiritually resonant. Visit her at www.dianejoyschmidt.com.

1st Place, General/Columns New Mexico Press Women