"Sovereign"

As hilarious as it was when it started out, at least to bystanders (including me), it eventually turned into sympathy and something stuck between laughing and cringing. I think certain beliefs are to certain people very real to them, as the rest of us think them profoundly ridiculous.

This is regarding a local case of a lady refusing to put on a face mask although government regulations have made this mandatory at the moment, as we see COVID-19 cases rise each day in the hundreds. When confronted by members of the public and/or authorities (not only in this case), she remained adamant about her behaviours, claiming she's a "sovereign".

It's a word not commonly used these days, and neither are certain pronouns that the lady wants herself to be referred to (as follows):

There have been news sources such as this which have sought to explain possible influences and/or motivations this lady might have had when behaving the way she did. But while reading briefly these articles which have been shared by my contacts, it piqued my curiosity as to how and whom had initiated these divisive movements which had since evolved into a current state of malady that societies and countries have to battle against.

After all, doesn't "sovereign" sound extremely familiar within certain groups? And I'm talking about something beyond the "sovereign citizen movement" whose origin only traces back to modern history. Don't particular old books anyway tend to use certain (largely obsolete) pronouns extensively?

Besides, characteristics like these below do strike a chord when something else comes to mind, don't they?

Is this method not exactly the same one used by errant "leaders" of communities (addressed in the previous post) to mobilise hoards of [fill noun here] into disregarding their civic responsibilities? I'm not asserting that my observation is perfect, and will leave this work to the reader's common sense.

Not assuming anything at this point, some further reading was required. The curiosity was not satisfied. If anything, it had been roused rather rudely.

Hence, the first discovered source—Wikipedia (yes, I get it. When does one rely fully on such sources, isn't it?). But this is what I found: 

Perhaps the reader demands something from a more legit source. Here goes a slightly lengthier one, taken from University of Chicago's Divinity School (I'm sure the School's contributors are not out to debunk the whole idea that underpins the institution's existence): 

If we could look at the current state of matters through the lens of humanism (and common sense that nature has blessed most of us with), it does gradually become apparent that religions and their daughter communities are extremely prone to forming splinter groups across generations. 

It is perfectly fine if these groups move on to contribute towards a greater good and stop at that. Yet, what we see today are a contrary to anything near being a benefit (if not a benign constituent) to humanity.

These groups deviate from civility and more often than not, preach separate sets of "legal" systems entirely up to the discretion of lesser-known "leaders" evangelising diverse packs who are willing to listen, and subsequently believe. While not exhaustively so, subjectivity on what is acceptable/unacceptable is an intrisic property of many religions and form a fundamental framework for those who want to exploit it, in the process coercing others into this sordid affair.

Just Google, and the Internet will offer a good variety of "sovereign" notoriety (from actual happenings in this world!), from civil disobedience to outright violence against representatives of the civic community (read: public servants). 

Recently, when speaking to one of my contacts who is a devout Catholic, I expressed the problem with thanking "god" whenever something fortunate happens to us or someone dear to us. The following ensued (I'll try to re-enact it as accurately as possible): 

Me: How does "god" explain the rest of the world's population that's suffering without access to the resources that we're so used to? Even clean water is a luxury to some people.

Him: God does not explain the bad things in the world because He [I'm capitalising this only out of respect for said individual] didn't create them. He is only reponsible for the good ones.

Really? So now are believers supposed to believe in two separate divine beings each reponsible for opposing poles of the moral spectrum? Then, questions like: But what's moral differs from culture to culture, nation to nation etc. Perhaps then the number of divine entities is almost as big as Earth's human population to account for this diversity? Who knows, but the mystery only grows. 

Another relevant observation occurred as I was watching cute panda videos on Youtube (major activity that one does during COVID-19 lockdown). The highest-rated comment was something along the lines of: "God blessed the world with such beautiful creature". Of course, the Youtube comment section is like a dumping ground of the Internet. 

Yet, I couldn't help but wonder where these religious commenters invoking their various gods are, when there's a video about maybe a drowning child in a tsunami, or some other massive human suffering. Surely though, one cannot help being embarrassed, or avoid getting lambasted for something like: "[The victim(s)] must have incurred the wrath of god." Even if not framed this way, there is almost no other way to conceive of god as the cause in the comment section of such negative videos, without being reprimanded by others who are empathetic and rational. So, why involve god so selectively, if at all?

This is not to say that humanity should form a homogeneous whole and be united on all fronts. But...

Should people need to be divided in some way, is it then not more constructive to be divided along constructive rather than destructive lines? Constructive divisions result in medical specialisations, novel art movements, new innovations in technology filling the gaps of human limitations and mitigating suffering, startup social enterprises, for example. The possibilities are endless.

Is there then a place for destructive (or, at least, non-constructive) divisions in today's world when there's already an overwhelming lot for us to deal with—think COVID-19, maybe? 

We should in fact pose this question to said lady who thinks she's a "sovereign", yet unabashedly receives government and fellow citizens' support even in the form of the very wet market that makes food so accessible and affordable for her. Or perhaps, I can also ask this Catholic contact of mine who no doubt, is rather law-abiding in the civic sense.  

Side note: There is a point in news agencies not diving a hell lot deeper than what is currently written about the source of "sovereign", for fear of sparking animosity among certain groups, threatening readership and/or running the risk of total boycott. For one thing is certain: the often unwavering, unquestioning sense of community among such groups.