There is a major convoy problem in Ottawa and in many of the large cities across Canada and now starting to spread around the world. People who drive big semi-trucks and other rigs have discovered that if they park their rigs in the middle of the downtowns in major cities without moving them, honking their horns incessantly that it would do a good job of attracting attention that serves their purpose of protesting an issue. In this case they are protesting the mandate for vaccinations that Canada has put into place for cross-border truckers, to travel into the U.S. But there is more to it than the protest against the vaccine mandate. Emotions are running very high as people are very frustrated. Here in Ottawa the protesters have been “parked” illegally downtown, blocking traffic and intersections, without moving for 11 days now, and many protesters are reported to be “countering” police actions. There have been instances of violence or near-violence. For example, protesters set fire to an apartment building and locked the front door, but someone put it out before it could spread. We have had good-minded citizens travelling the downtown to prevent such atrocities. This shouldn’t be, but is, necessary. Police can’t do it all. This reflects that emotions have been frayed and people get desperate, as emotions ramp up to a level of lethality. Let’s hope it doesn’t get worse. It could, and fear is a necessary reaction.
I am attempting not to take sides in this issue. For the record, I am triple vaxxed and think vaccinations are necessary to counter the lethal Coronavirus covid-19. The protesters say that they are not anti-vax but are anti-mandate. I have been saying for months that people who are anti-vaccination need to be treated with more respect. The term “mandate” is a strong term, defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “the authority given to an elected group of people, such as a government, to perform an action or govern a country (Cambridge Dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/ mandate). It was always going to be the case that there would be less than 100% of people vaccinated in Canada and in all countries. Herd immunity should be able to be reached with good functionality with over 90% vaccination. https://www.muhealth.org/our-stories/covid-19-vaccine-key-reaching-herd-immunity. We can disagree with the protesters and their opinion while still showing some respect to them as individuals. You can’t mandate health. Otherwise this is a situation ripe for releasing pent-up emotions of people who have been frustrated for months now. The term “mandate” suggests that our citizens are being treated like children, and this seems to have been the culprit in riling them up. There is emotion bedded in a word. Whatever happened to saying that an action is “required” as has been done for decades? As a result, we have experienced much release of pent-up suppressed emotion.
Our emotions have risen to great heights, and emotions are flowing very easily amongst and between people. We know that emotions don’t think. People may realize this but they may not realize that this high level of emotionality approaches toxicity and is potentially very damaging, as people are prone to show their hostility and suspicion in hostile, violent actions. It is the emotion that sets people off and causes turmoil. You can’t have turmoil without emotion. Discussing emotions doesn’t take the focus off the issues related to the protests because emotional contagion is flowing throughout people and spreading toxic emotions at this time. They are a major part of the problem.
Knowing the social and political problems stemming from the convoy, we have to realize that there is more to this than the politics and social divisions. Certainly they are present and they are important, but underneath the politics and social trends are the emotions. It is the emotional level that is the main problem. Of course, it is natural to get emotional during these times and this is not an argument to stop feeling emotional because that it not possible. But we can learn to regulate our emotions so they can be managed. This convoy problem causes so much frustration and anguish that it naturally produces heightened emotion; pure, unadulterated, dysregulated emotions. It is emotions that drive the turmoil. Impulsive, reckless, dangerous actions are occurring, as Ottawa faces its worst public emergency ever. By failing to see that, and just seeing it as a political or social movement, as analysts are wont to do, we are not seeing the whole thing, and then we may lose. Hurt feelings run deep, and in fact may have already produced this turmoil because of the contagious suspicion that drives it. Contagious suspicion, pessimism and cynicism lead to conspiracy theories and strong anger toward authority figures.
We have to do our best to resist letting the emotion drive us to divisiveness. Resist deep arguments with people about something political. The anger and rage is not worth it, and is not likely to change an opinion, as people automatically become defensive toward being confronted with anger. That will keep the emotions at a manageable level where we can manage them. If we don’t deal with the emotion that drives it, we will not stop it. We may eventually stop the convoy but the damage will be done if the country (and the world) becomes more severely divisive and fragmented.
Suspecting that the high amount of money attracted to the issue comes from international sources, we have to think that there is some nefarious purpose to it other than meeting the unvaccinated truckers’ wishes for freedom. Let me not focus on that freedom issue now because it is a red herring that draws us into a blind alley of emotional turmoil that is prone to divide us. That is what the organizers seem to want to happen: for us to get divisive, like the Americans have become. And they raise the idea of freedom in the protesters’ minds because it is dear to our hearts and prone to attract controversy and division. And that seems to be happening. When people get emotional, they get vulnerable, and it seems that organizers behind the scenes may be raising our emotions on purpose to make us vulnerable. I hope I’m wrong, maybe I am, but let’s not give them that. We do not know the nefarious purpose but we can have our suspicions. That may or may not come clear in the future. At any rate, let’s work on handling it effectively from a psychological and emotional viewpoint to prevent the division from forming too deeply or too strongly. Not just a political division but also a familial or regional division must be prevented. We know about the divide and conquer principle and we do not want to be conquered. We have to be wise.
The plain idea here is not to be drawn into a heightened state of emotion and end up with a fragmented, weak, state as families, as regions, as peoples, as provinces, as a country, a country that could be weakened to the point that it is vulnerable. We have felt that before and it is not pretty. Some division is healthy and inevitable in a democracy, as we have seen over the decades in Canada. So the idea here is not to be drawn into a game of emotional ping-pong, with back-and-forth impulsive volleys of aggression and accusation, without thinking, which can deteriorate into insults and even violence. When we are purely emotional we may be overly aggressive, impulsively angry, blaming and condemning others in a loose way, or seriously depressed, with nerves frayed even more than they have been during the elongated pandemic which, hopefully seems to be coming to an end. If we realize that is what is really going on, that allows us to maintain our sense so as not to be drawn into a heightened, lengthy state of toxic or near-toxic emotion that will end and destroy relationships and weaken us as people and make us prone to and susceptible to nefarious forces, not to mention disease as it lowers our immune system.
It is tempting to be drawn into the arguments over vaccine effectiveness, mandates, freedom, economic issues, laws, police, mental health, etc. and that is what people want. We can discuss these issues and argue about them, as we should in a democracy, but let us not bring those discussion into arguments of heightened emotion so deep that they bring us to our knees and destroy our loyalties. We have to be able to agree to disagree and keep our friendships and relationships. Otherwise, we would have a fragmented country with divided regions and destroyed families as a result. And that would be what the nefarious organizers of the convoy seem to be trying to do, in a major way, as they have done in the USA and other countries. They seem to want to pull us apart by raising our emotions to a very high level, by bringing in a frustrating truck convoy, and then playing our emotions against each other in a classic divide and conquer approach. Let us be smarter than that. Let’s look them in the eye and say we know your game and we are not going there.