Steelman of people who don't wear masks:
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When the pandemic first started, wearing a mask was very awkward since you were in the minority. You were "avoided" or looked at weirdly. People experience this weirdness at different intensities. I personally didn't feel very comfortable standing out as the Mask Guy.
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As more people started wearing masks and mask wearing became a majority phenomenon this awkwardness decreased to near 0. People are affected by this "majority validation" to different degrees.
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If you have a high propensity for groupthink, either due to cultural conditioning or just personal experience, this validation can even become an obligation. You'll feel intense shame/guilt if you don't follow the majority.
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You can argue that anti-maskers are outliers on the groupthink susceptibility spectrum. They don't care what the majority think. This can manifest as independent thinking as well as stubbornness or willful ignorance.
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(People in bubbles also have a different sense of majority since they're insulated from the "actual" majority.)
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People who *do* wear masks often bemoan the politicization of refusing to wear masks, as if they're childishly proving a point. Yet they'll also ignore the entire country of Sweden doing the same thing. They politicizing it as well to draw a line between good/bad smart/stupid.
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The more centralized a culture is (e.g. Japan, China, are more centralized relative to the U.S.) the less friction there is for mass coordination since there's less questioning of things. In extreme cases like nationalism, this lack of questioning is a responsibility.
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In an organization like a military, which is glued together by nationalist-like energy, questioning things is actively stamped out.
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If you've ever had a stupid person constantly question you when you're the authority in some domain you've felt how annoying this is. You feel that questioning you should be a privilege not a right. And in many cases you'd be right. e.g. nuclear technology, surgery, etc...
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Stupidity and genius can often be conflated. The one genius thing out of 99 stupid things. Even if it's just random luck, the question is: Is that "genius" worth all the stupid?
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Another question to ponder is "How much groupthink is good?" This is something that the 'success' of china is really bringing up. Centralized coordination has its benefits. The Chinese see themselves as Protoss, not Zerg.
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The answer is most definitely not zero, just purely based on the fact that *all* thinking is derivative in some way. Even using a language or numbers is borrowed technology from previous humans. A better question might be "How much stubbornness is useful?"
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Stubbornness has an element of Faith in Self. An educated rational person can still be stubborn. Ideas will be changed when presented with evidence but there will be more paranoia about the 'evidence'. How it was gathered, interpreted, etc...
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"Divine Stubbornness" also has a humility due to knowledge of unknowable truths and unprovable falsehoods. https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1503148405i/23632939._SX540_.png …
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They know that human judgement is a sharp weapon with potential for massive amounts of blood violence but they also know of its necessity and criticality as the only instrument that can intermediate with the Unknown.
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Anyway, to sum up. Don't insult people as Zerg when they think of themselves as Protoss. Don't forcibly try to "fix" someone when they see it as a kind of soul castration. Divinity isn't some intrinsic thing with specific traits but simply "That which recognizes Self in Other".
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End of conversation
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