Altruism’s ”Rebels”

As more employers are requiring employees to get vaccinated for COVID-19 or submit to regular testing, employees are fighting back with lawsuits. Among the most frequent reasons given is: “It’s my right to not get vaccinated.” On the surface, these individuals may seem to be altruism’s “rebels.”

It is true that individuals have a right to not get vaccinated. Each individual has a moral right to determine what he puts into his body. However, businesses also have a right to establish the terms and conditions for those entering their establishment, including customers and employees. Despite what many are claiming, there is no conflict between these rights. An employer has the right to act as he thinks best and require vaccination. Employees and customers have the right act as they think best and take their employment or patronage elsewhere.

Many of those opposed to getting vaccinated call those who are getting vaccinated “sheeple”—mindless individuals who do as they are told by public authorities. The underlying attitude is one of anti-authority and pseudo-independence.

Independence means thinking for oneself. It means judging the facts objectively and acting accordingly. One can be independent and follow the advice of public authorities if one judges their advice to be rational and in one’s best interest.

Independence does not mean dismissing the advice of experts or authorities out of hand. It does not mean doing whatever one desires. It does not mean being different for the sake of being different.

The anti-vaxxer’s flawed view of the virtue of independence is a direct result of our culture’s dominant morality—altruism. Altruism holds that we have a moral duty to self-sacrificially serve others, that we must place the welfare and interests of others before our own. Though most Americans accept altruism, they also find they can’t be altruistic and pursue their own happiness at the same time.

When the demands of sacrificing oneself to others becomes too much, many resort to the false alternative of sacrificing others to oneself. Those who do not want to be vaccinated demand the freedom to act on their judgment, but they seek to deny that same freedom for others. Altruism’s “rebels” want to use the coercive power of government to force others—such as their employers—to sacrifice for the “rebel’s” desires.

To these “rebels,” somebody must sacrifice, and the only question is: Who? This is not a rebellion against altruism; it’s an open-armed embrace of sacrifice.