Herd Heroism in an Age of Rebels: The Cultural Roots of the Anti-Vaxxer Movement

[cbayer]

http://religiondispatches.org/herd-heroism-in-an-age-of-rebels-the-cultural-roots-of-the-anti-vaxxer-movement/

BY MICHAEL SCHULSON APRIL 7, 2015



Collect all the evidence that vaccines cause autism and endanger children, and you will have a very, very thin file.

Collect all the evidence that there’s an appeal to believing that vaccines cause autism and endanger children, though, and you will have more than a file. You will have the work of an entire culture.

Just look around. Whole fields of marketing and spiritual counseling argue that there’s something inherently corrupt about modern society. There’s a cultural industry dedicated to encouraging us to break the rules, to “think different“; conforming to a big system is evil, rebellion is virtuous. Meanwhile, a whole library of religious traditions tell us that a better life can be found among the chosen, the saved, or the elect who obey a different set of rules from society at large.

When it comes to anti-vaxxers, critics don’t usually talk about culture or politics. Instead, they focus on the science, or on science outreach. (Collect all the writing detailing or examining the appeal of the anti-vaxxer stance, and you’d have another very thin file). But what could be more modern, and more conformist, than the government-recommended schedule of vaccines? The medical system is huge. It’s hierarchical. It’s powerful. It creates rules that apply to the entire population, and it works best when everyone participates.

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[DetlefK]

1. Put short: First-World-Problems.

"I'm special. My child is special. We shouldn't have to conform to your faceless rules."
"And the diseases are not as serious as they are claimed to be. Seriously, when was the last time there was an epidemic in this country?"

[cbayer]

2. That's definitely part of what is going on here.

Place a libertarian stubbornness.