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.
