The Toilet Roll Archives (2) - Less toilet roll, more self-isolation and stuff.
Less Toilet Roll, More Self-Isolation and Stuff.
“Kezza, it’s literally Tuesday.”
Week 2 of social distancing is well underway and London Under Lockdown has officially begun. If that snapshot of an earlier conversation I shared with my friend (virtually, of course - hi social isolation, I'm Kerry!) doesn't sum up how it's going, I don't know what will.
I mentioned last week that, right now, it all feels a bit like we are living in the creative writing homework of a nine-year-old. Everything seemed a bit odd. Now, however, government has upped the anti and tightened up a whole lot of loose ends. Things are a lot more serious (about time, arguably?). I think we've progressed from English homework to Hollywood blockbuster in a matter of days. I'm telling you now, in about 5 years’ time, a film will be made about COVID-19; it will be called 'Viral,' it will star Keanu Reeves and it will be...eugh...alright.
Screenplay pushed aside, I want to talk about The Bigger Picture today. Yep, capitals for that one.
I often think about the global phenomena I've lived through in my short time on this planet. I also like reflecting on the events of the past that I didn't live through or can barely recall which, nonetheless, truly shaped the world I see today. Dunno why. Have done since I was a child. It's fascinating to think that I am a miniscule, essentially meaningless, piece of a far larger and more densely complex puzzle. I'm just a speck of dust in the grand scheme of things. Terrifying. Yet, somehow (and strangely) fascinating. I mean nothing, really. Love that self-confidence 4 me, shine on hun xoxo
Still here? I've got a point, I promise.
I finished work a little after 5 pm today, shifted myself from my desk to my floor (because that's where all the good ideas grow!) and began to think about COVID-19, 2020 and me. How does the time and space I - a tiny speck of dust, as we established - find myself work under the larger framework of a pandemic?
Boom: found my angle. Intersectionality. The crossover points. What happens at the intersection of economics, info and tech-aided interconnectivity? What does it mean to be human in an age of global hyper-connectedness? What does it mean to be a 'modern man' when 'modern' hardly matters because as boss as the 'modern man' might think he is, he’ll still collapse under the weight of one of the oldest and feared of global phenomena: worldwide sickness?
Hyper-connectedness doesn't sound so good when you realise you could put your vulnerable friends and neighbours at risk, does it? The “we’re all in this together” narrative certainly warms my heart but, as I talked about last week, it seems that “we’re all in this together” now equates to self-isolation. The kindest thing we can do is stay away from each other. And, as innately social beings, it seems to be a bit tricky for some – see #ByeChris on Twitter/BBC Radio Solent for reference 😊 .
We’ve built this massively globalised and interconnected society – which is unbelievable; I’m not going to knock it. The internet and social media and such (when used responsibly) is fucking great. We’ve made the impossible possible and actualised an instantaneous reality which serves us well.
So, let’s take this mass pandemic and global health crisis and put it in 2020, in the world of digital hyper-connectivity. How did we get into this mess? How did we let age-old fears and phenomena mix into our world today? Most importantly, how do we get out of this (*cough* stay at home *cough*)? What will the future, post-COVID-19, look like?
Coronavirus is showing a powerful transmission effect like no disease of its kind — with evidence that human carriers are most contagious before they realise that they pose a risk. Given the stats, it’s likely that the amount of cases we will face will overrun our hospital structures. I mean, the NHS is already an underfunded, bed-blocked mess of a system which is propped up on the shoulders of superhumans. Without them, it barely stands a chance.
We have this powerful virus spreading across a powerful social system. We’ve evolved to the point where our brain capacity is overloaded with stories (snapchat and otherwise) and ideas which have complicated humans further and makes us believe we are indestructible. Well, if Corona's taught us one thing, it's that we aren't. We aren't that special. We're all just specks of dust, really.
This is not to say that primal instincts don’t drive our behaviour still. You only need to wander down the aisle that – well, used to be – filled with toilet roll. Talk about fight or flight mode! I’m pretty confident in saying, despite the DMs, social stylings today haven’t fully conquered our ‘everyone for themselves’ inspired behaviours.
The point is, we live for stories. The economics of our digital, information-saturated existence is driven by them. We have innate desire to connect with each other, to communicate, to tell and listen to each other’s tales. At least, that’s what Yuval Harari’s Sapiens explains. Harari’s book is incredible by the way; if you are a reader or if you aren’t a reader but still are a human, give the book about humans a go. Can’t think of a more relevant circumstance to read the book under than lockdown, too!
Basically, Harari chats on about how humans ended up dominating the planet as a species because of their capabilities when it came to telling and believing stories. We are ‘a post-truth species,’ Harari states. I’m talking everything from the belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ to Trump’s ‘fake news.’ The underpinning of the telling and believing of these stories is the way they function to socially organise the masses. Stories, no doubt, are the very foundations on which our society is built on.
That being said, seeing things through this lens, especially in 2020, helps us grasp how we are innately social beings.
The key now, then, if we are to protect civilization, is to figure out how to feed that need in a way that doesn’t make us all stir-crazy. Until very recently, that was pretty much impossible because communication was a largely in-person activity. But modern technology, most importantly the rise of the internet, has bolstered us forward. This is not the 15th century, where the Black Death pandemic killed between 75 and 200 million people across Europe. It's not the Influenza outbreak of 1918, either, killing up to 50 million and infecting 500 million. What makes things different a century later is that we've figured out how to deny these grim little bacteria the human pathways on which they thrive (in a nutshell vaccinate your kids and skype your dad, k?)
We have no choice but to go against our evolved social instincts and avoid each other for a while. But the good news is that much of society has the tools to achieve this without entirely giving up on human connectivity. It won’t be easy. Like, dependence on social media for human connection can’t be all that healthy. Nonetheless, it’s more of a tool than we had when the Spanish Flu wiped out masses of people back in the day. The digital revolution means that we can still connect; it’s just that our stories can now be found on Instagram rather than told face-to-face.
Perhaps the key to the intersectionality that fascinates me so much is evolution; it fits both sides of the coin. COVID-19 has evolved into an extremely cunning adversary. It turns people into ignorant and contagious beings well before they’ve the developed the symptoms that would otherwise set off warning signs to others.
But we too benefit from a different force of evolution: that of changes in technology and in the means of socialising. They demonstrate that, despite the mammoth amount of idiocy currently on display (STAY AT HOME, CHRIS, ohmyGOD!) we do have the capacity to defeat the COVID-19. We can outlast it.
The future post-Corona? Fuck knows. However, the one thing we can be certain of it our eventual return to real, actual social connections. That's something worth waiting for, surely.
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