Observations From Just Outside the Pandemic #2

There are some of us for whom a five-minute conversation with a neighbour meets all our social requirements for a week. There are those of us who are quite content to spend a lot of time alone. I have said for years that a good week for me is when I do not have to go out or talk to anyone. Some of us have to schedule activities in the community to combat our tendency to monk-dom. We are not all born to be social creatures.

But many (perhaps even most) people are social creatures. This semi-voluntary social isolation must be a terrible strain upon those folks. To not be able to mingle and chat, to not be able to play or to hug friends, to not be able to just be where there are other people are must be almost unbearable.

There are numerous postings on Facebook about how wonderful this slowdown in the economy is for the environment. Just this morning I read that deer are wandering the streets of the cities of Japan, that dolphins are playing in the ocean just off the beaches of Italy and that the water in the canals of Venice is clear. Last week there was a lot of buzz about how China's carbon emissions were down by 25% because of the shutdown of factories. There is talk about that the COVID -19 virus is Mother Nature's way of making us slow down so the planet can heal. There is a general sense amongst some posters to social media that this is the new way of doing things - people will consume less, they will work out of their own homes, as well engaging less in the broader community and certainly travelling less.

However, social isolation is not the way to resolve the world's environmental problems. It may solve a short term problem in terms of pollution, but making/allowing people to separate from each other will only increase the sense of isolation that so many people fear. If we do not stay intimately connected with each other's lives we are doomed as a species. To not be able to share or to interact with our neighbours, our friends or our co-workers will destroy the one thing that has allowed us to survive.

Humans do not create anything alone. Everyone, whether it be artists such as Tom Thomson or Picasso, inventers such as Edison or Elon Musk or social innovators such as Marx or Tommy Douglas have all used the work of others and the social interactions of their own lives to create what they have created. If someone does invent/discover a cure to the COVID-19 virus - it will because that person was part of a team that used the work of other researchers. Socially isolating ourselves is necessary at this particular point in time because it is the easiest way to stop the virus from consuming all of our medical resources, but it is not the panacea for all of our environmental issues.

Children need to go to school- not just to learn academic stuff that may be useful but also to learn how to relate to others, how to explore and then understand what they have found. If it takes a community to raise a child - on-line learning and the internet, in general, is a very poor substitute. Yes, there are some jobs that can be done at home - but without the collegial interactions, without the peer support how can an individual maintain any sense of collective purpose.  People need to share, to be intimate with each other, to just be with other people.

As this pandemic and the consequences of it continue to unfold - we need to continue to be human - and that means being connected to each other.