I went to the supermarket with my daughter yesterday, for the first time since the mask ordinance was placed in Berlin. I was the only person without a mask in this huge supermarket, which could have easily filled the first floor of a medium-size mall. I was approached by three people who told me I was breaking the law, and I got stares for at least 50 times.
I have come to realize, slowly but surely, that I am alone in this battle. Only the wackos will stay with me, the ones who accuse Bill Gates of conspiring to install microchips under the guise of vaccine drives.
But perhaps this is not true. Perhaps there are more people just like me who have no desire to be told to stand in the corner because they are crazy and should be silenced.
I have several friends like these. But most of my friends, whom I have the utmost respect for, have pretended for the past several days that they don't see the mask requirement as an infringement of their personal freedom.
That's fine, but I see things differently. That's why, as long as I have the ability to do so, I will continue not to give away my individual liberties, not through coercion, and not by choice.
In 1999 I worked at a bar that was the hottest thing in town, earning 25 marks an hour plus tips. After ten hours of labor, I would have my monthly rent in my pocket for my two-bedroom apartment at the time.
At the time I was also doing my final matriculation exams and I was happy that I could cover my living expenses.
But then I was given a shift on Halloween and was told to go to a side room so that a makeup artist will turn me into a pumpkin, and I fumed. My boss told me, in no uncertain terms, that if I do not begin serving the customers as a pumpkin within 10 minutes, this will be my last shift. I shrugged. I have been banned from that place ever since.
You can laugh at me for this policy. That's totally fine. 500 marks a night is something people often spend six months to earn, so why not just serve people as a pumpkin for 10 hours to keep such a well-paying job, right? The problem is that I didn't want to look like a pumpkin, I don't want to. That's it. This is what individual liberties are all about.
There is no doubt that my radical approach boils down to my socialization, my networking processes that have gone through since my childhood. I grew up in the German Democratic Republic (known as East Germany), under a system that became obsolete and thrown into the dustbin of history as a lie when I turned 9.
My father fled the GDR in 1988, a year before the wall fell down. Risking his life, he chose to violate the law by crossing that border. It is likely that 90% of the people in the GDR would have considered his actions unlawful, but 90% of residents of West Germany would have considered his decision as an act of heroism, bravery and dissent of the political system.
So what is the truth? Is he a traitor or a hero? There is no truth, it's plain and simple.
The ability to reconcile such a stark contradiction is called tolerance of ambiguity. Ambiguity tolerance–intolerance, as a construct, was coined by psychologist Else Frenkel-Brunswik in 1949 (unsurprisingly, right after the Holocaust). She defined such tolerance as something that can be measured. People with tolerance to ambiguity can live with inconsistency and contradictions without judging people in an outright negative light or in a full-fledged positive light.
Trust me, now is the time for each of us to deal with their tolerance to ambiguity.
