Do we want freedom, or do we want security?
Last year, the government instructed us to retreat to our homes to reduce the death toll from Covid-19. For the last 15 months, significant constraints have been placed on what we can, and with whom. Has Covid fundamentally shifted the limits of what the state can require us to do, and has it fundamentally changed the nature and extent of the trade-off between security and liberty?
I wanted to explore this question in my new Duck-Rabbit podcast, which looks at our increasingly polarised culture through the lens of topics as diverse as relationships and free speech. I spoke to members of the public, academics, commentators, politicians, and activists to try to understand why we can’t be more accepting of differences of opinion.
It’s clear to me that the UK government suffered from “situational blindness”, whereby transmission rates and deaths from Covid trumped all other concerns, even including placing those deaths in the context of deaths from other causes. The narrative to preserve life was bolstered by how China responded to the coronavirus. We didn’t have a great deal of choice when other countries followed, and the public and the media wanted us to follow too. This might well have been the right thing to do if the NHS was facing being overwhelmed and facing an existential crisis — the world was too uncertain for anyone to be certain about how to respond.
The continued fear — amongst policymakers too (who are at an age when existential dread is at its highest) — has played into this situational blindness we have witnessed. I am certain, however, that the uncertainty, especially about the effects of some monumental decisions, like shutting down most of the economy and closing all schools and universities, should have meant hearing lots of different arguments and viewpoints — and yet the only narrative was about the transmission of the virus.
The importance of increasing ‘the perceived level of personal threat’ in order to get the public to comply with the restrictions on social contact was stated explicitly in a document prepared by the behavioural scientists on SPI-B advising government in the UK. It was identified that such techniques ‘could be negative’, however, no further details on how to mitigate the harms were given. As a behavioural scientist, I would say that Increasing the salience of the consequences of our own behaviour for other people’s risks is legitimate, but instilling fear without context is not.
Security and liberty are not always traded off against one another — you can’t have freedom without some safety — but where are the checks and balances to this argument? I used to think that liberty only matters when it plays into better consequences, and maybe I still do, but I am increasingly accepting that some freedoms might act as a constraint on maximising wellbeing.
For the last 12 months, liberty has felt a bit like a luxury. I have generally trusted the state but maybe I am more of a libertarian than I thought I was. Most people have already picked their side in the debate and we rarely want to hear from those who disagree with us. But now more than ever, we need to override our discomfort, and to listen to different opinions and views. A well-functioning society will have people along the spectrum of the trade-off between security and liberty (insofar as one exists). Right now, I reckon we could do with a few more libertarians. You have the right to disagree, of course.
Paul Dolan is Professor of Behavioural Science at LSE and the best-selling author of Happiness by Design and Happy Ever After. His podcast, Duck-Rabbit, is available here or wherever you find your podcasts.
