A bit ago, as is judged in internet years. we were in the depths of the Covidiocy, when most of our citizenry had been bamboozled into masking up in all times and in all places. The then-governor of Texas (in a wholly confounding attack of good sense and belated discovery of a backbone on the part of an elected official) declared that masks were not actually required in public places such as retail establishments. So – even if most people still were putting on the wretched things just to go inside of a public place, there was no actual legal requirement for retail establishments which would stick. However, for a significant period in the spring and summer of that awful year, social pressure to mask inside at the grocery store was still palpable. Social pressure did what it always does… which is to enforce a superficial conformity to those established norms and conventions.

I am not a person who willfully goes out and blitzes socially-accepted norms and conventions just for the heck of it – but I was absolutely done with wearing the stupid, useless mask. Once that principle of no-mask-required was established in the state of Texas – my daughter and I didn’t. We defied social custom, and walked into the grocery store maskless, mentally-braced against whatever opprobrium might come our way, in the form of hard looks or hostile comment. This kind of defiance didn’t come easily or readily. It did take a certain amount of mental prep to walk into a public place, maskless, which made such excursions mildly nerve-wracking. But there was a small reward – that of meeting the gaze of other maskless rebels and exchanging a look, perhaps a few words: here was another rebel, a defiant non-conformist, someone who remained immune to public social pressure. It was a bit of fun to meet them, even talk with some of them.

There was one maskless social rebel, who happened to have parked close to us in the grocery store parking lot, after we had exchanged nods in the store aisle – another retired military NCO who talked with us for a bit as we all loaded up bags of groceries and put the carts in the corral. (Hey – we’re responsible citizens! We don’t abandon the carts willy-nilly!) He made one comment which stuck with me ever since – that on occasion one must boldly walk out in front and be that example, to demonstrate defiance of stupid, counterproductive or just plain wrong conventional wisdom, to hearten and encourage other potential rebels.

This brief acquaintance basically made a similar point as dissenter Vaclav Havel made with his example of the greengrocer and the sign in his window. Sometimes it becomes necessary to defy convention because continuing is flat-out unbearable. One just cannot continue and remain sane. Or as Martin Luther is said to have noted on another and similarly fraught occasion, “If … I am not convinced by proof from Holy Scripture … if my judgment is not in this way brought into subjection to God’s word, I neither can nor will retract anything; for it cannot be either safe or honest for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise.” (entire speech to the Diet of Worms here) Yes, it takes a degree of nerve and sometimes even raw courage to act on such a conviction, depending on circumstances. Everyone has a different breaking point. Everyone sits in peculiar circumstances and risks specific hazards when they say “no” to the mask, say “no” to displaying the “workers of the world unite” sign, or to repeat some kind of required mantra in which they do not believe as a requirement for participation.
The choice of conformity or defiance comes to everyone, though – soon or late. Open defiance of a stupid social convention, or an evil one breaks the rules and encourages those who need a good example. Perhaps speaking out or baldly demonstrating against such stupidity or outright evil earlier in the cycle might mitigate the worst that it can do. Comment as you see fit.