Face Masks

Notes on the 29/4/03 meeting of HKPC's Kowloon Branch

Introduced by Steve Palmquist

Guest Moderator: Alan Taylor

Reported by Steve Palmquist

The previously announced topic for this (April 2003) meeting was: “Is assisted suicide a human right?” Unfortunately, the introducer had to leave Hong Kong one day before the meeting, so I stepped in at the last minute as a substitute introducer. Being the introducer makes it rather difficult to provide an objective report or commentary on the meeting. So instead, I shall provide here a rather detailed summary of my introduction, followed by some relatively brief comments on how the ensuing discussion proceeded. Note that one of the participants also wrote up a summary and commentary that can be found on the web at: http://www.cbc.ca/news/sars/diary030501.html.

Having had very little time to prepare, I chose a timely topic and introduced it by referring to ideas put forward by my two favorite scholars: Immanuel Kant and Carl Jung. First I defined “face” as the “public seat of personhood” and “mask” as a “covering” used most commonly either to present an “image” to others or to “protect” oneself from potential harm. Then I suggested that, in spite of the timeliness of this topic to Hong Kong’s current situation due to the recent SARS outbreak, I hoped we would focus mainly on various symbolic or philosophical meanings of face masks, rather than merely exchanging socially interesting stories of an empirical nature. In the introduction, though, I did a little bit of both.

On the philosophical side, I summarized Kant’s distinction between the “transcendental ego” (the absolute “I” that must be presupposed in order to explain the unity of an individual’s consciousness, but which cannot itself become an object of experience to that individual) and the “empirical ego” (the various images of oneself, both inner and outer, that appear to us in space and time and are therefore only relative to each particular situation and do not constitute the essential core of who we are). I supplemented this with some reflections on Jung’s way of symbolically expanding Kant’s philosophy into the realm of psychology. Whereas Kant’s concern was with consciousness, Jung’s was with the unconscious. He therefore distinguished between the “persona” (the set of conscious masks we all use to fit in to different types of social situations) and the “shadow” (the set of unconscious masks we use to hide our own inner nature from ourselves). Jung thought everyone needs to have a well-functioning persona and that this type of “face mask” does no harm to a person provided we are aware that it is only a mask and resist the temptation to regard it as representing our true nature. But he argued that our “shadow” masks can only do us harm, for they are the root of human evil: our shadows are composed of characteristics we have been taught to label as “bad” and have therefore pretended do not apply to ourselves; but as long as we refuse to see these characteristics in ourselves, we tend to project them onto other people. This is how evil arises between human beings. Each of us should therefore seek to identify and remove these “inner face masks” as much as possible, so we can relate to other people as they are, rather than as the evil people we imagine them to be.

I concluded the introduction with some reflections on the use of surgical face masks in Hong Kong as a means of guarding against the SARS virus. I pointed out that these face masks are manufactured for a specific purpose, for use in hospitals under sanitary conditions. Like Jung’s good “persona”, they have specific rules that need to be followed if they are to function properly. But many people in Hong Kong do not follow these rules of proper use. Moreover, the whole idea of using face masks all the time contradicts the very idea of what a face mask (in its proper, hospital setting) is supposed to be. I therefore concluded by asking: Is it rational to encourage universal and virtually constant use of face masks in a situation for which they were never intended? And in any case, why are so many people in Hong Kong wearing them so constantly, even though official media guidelines usually recommend a more limited usage?

The ensuing discussion proved to be extremely lively and, because I had been the introducer and was therefore the focus of most of this discussion, I was unable to take very accurate notes on all the various exchanges that took place. From what I did manage to record (or remember), here are some interesting insights that were raised during this initial question time:

- The wearing of face masks in certain contexts seems to be correlated to a person’s level of trust in the persons he or she is in contact with. In that respect, it was very noteworthy that nobody at the meeting was wearing a face mask, though quite a few in attendance said they had worn one on their way to the meeting.

- The more developed a society becomes, the more adverse it seems to be to taking risks. If so, then the success of the face mask fad in Hong Kong would indicate not only that we live in a highly developed society, but also that most people here are not natural risk takers.

- The fact that Caucasians are less likely to wear face masks than Chinese may reflect the tendency of the former to be more concerned with issue of personal freedom, while the latter tend to be more concerned with social conformity. One (Chinese) person said thinks the reason more local Chinese tend to wear face masks is directly related to their distrust of the Hong Kong Government: the authorities say the virus is not airborne, but most locals do not believe the Government really knows.

- Masks of all kinds do tend to cause a person to act in a manner consistent with the type of mask they are wearing. One who puts on a traditional Bali face mask, for example, is likely to begin dancing instinctively, projecting the personality of the mask onto himself or herself. :Likewise, wearing surgical masks seems to have led to a more “clinical” way of dealing with people recently, at least while the masks are being worn. An interesting side-effect, though, is that eye contact has now become a much more important way of communicating. When we can no longer see a person’s mouth, their eyes become the main focus of our attention.

- One person drew an interesting (though rather speculative) parallel between the way the public is being treated in response to the SARS epidemic and they way we are treated in the so-called War Against Terrorism. In both cases, the authorities seem to be introducing measures that really only deal with the surface issues, without attacking the real root of the problem. The result is that the general public is allowing itself to be controlled, to increase in our conformity to certain norms.

- Someone else noted that both the war in Iraq and the SARS epidemic, which broke out at roughly the same time, are bringing the general public face-to-face with death in a much greater way than it normally would be. Although people are consciously worried about these situations, their unconscious effect on us is to arouse our excitement. In that sense, the wearing of surgical face masks for many people may be an outward sign of good will to those who are suffering, while at the same time serving a very different psychological purpose.

Some of the questioning (which I have not reported here) focused on my own personal reasons for not wearing a face mask. In a nutshell, my argument was that I would wear a mask if I was entering a “danger zone”, such as a hospital ward. I compared the situation to being struck by lightening; the likelihood of the latter is greatly increased if someone walks around carelessly in a thunderstorm. But on a fine day, it would be quite irrational to be overly worried about the danger of being struck by lightening. One person suggested that my reluctance to wear face masks may be a reflection of my personality, which tends to stand up against authority figures. I agreed that in my case, at least, this probably has something to do with it.

The small group discussion I joined ended up focusing most of our attention on “empirical” issues (i.e., exchanging interesting stories) that are not suitable for reporting here. A few interesting observations were made, however, including: responsibility is the key issue here; the outbreak is only a short-term situation; face masks are some people’s way of coping with the unknown; some people may actually be put at greater risk of catching SARS because of some of the measures being taken, such as hospitalizing people in SARS wards who would not normally be put into the hospital at all.

The concluding discussion time was somewhat fragmented, I thought. Nevertheless, there were still some interesting points raised. One person, for example, argued that the extreme reaction we are witnessing in Hong Kong is due to the society’s sense of fragmentation. Paradoxically, by coming face to face with death, people feel as if they are more alive; in this respect, the impending danger associated with wearing face masks is comparable to the reason some people enjoy extreme sports.

Among the various other reflections shared during this time was another comparison between SARS and the War on Terrorism: several people argued that both situations have been used to make excuses for the Government’s failure to reach its economic objectives, both in Hong Kong and in the USA. Others made various comments about how the current situation might reflect various aspects of Hong Kong’s “collective unconscious” and expressed concern that when all of this blows over, a “collective boredom” may set in. Looking back, one person predicted, people will ask: “how did this become so big?”

Near the end several people asked for more details on Kant’s distinction between the transcendental ego and the empirical ego, and on how these relate to Jung’s psychology. I explained the difference between a baby’s way of experiencing the world in an “unprocessed” form (what Kant called “immediate experience”) to an adults was of processing his or her experiences to gain consciously knowable experience. While we may be able to “experience” the transcendental ego in the former sense, we can never experience it as an object of scientific knowledge. As such, the transcendental ego would seem to be closely connected to what Jung’s notion of our unconscious side, and perhaps even what he called the “Self” (i.e., the sum total of who we are). Referring back to this distinction, I passed up the opportunity to give a concluding statement, and instead told people I would like to end by giving them all an “immediate experience” to enjoy: I took the unprecedented step of silently putting on a surgical face mask - to the great pleasure of all in attendance.

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In our few remaining moments, the only suggestion given for a future discussion topic was:

- The relativity of the notion of ethics

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This page was uploaded on 27 May 2003.