06
07
THE ALLEYNIAN 709
OPINION, INTERVIEWS & FEATURES
While acknowledging the negative impact of social distancing, Ned Wildgoose Bulloch (Year 13) does see some positives from our response to the virus
TESTING TIMES
ARTWORK — ENNIS YUKSELIR (YEAR 11)
Whenever I watch anything produced more than a year ago, whether fictional or not, I am struck by the lack of social distancing. Writing during the third lockdown, I am reflecting on the ways in which the Covid-19 pandemic has distorted the way we live and think. When speaking with someone whom I may not have seen physically for a month, or even interacted with for five, I want both to lean in, and to step away. Covid-19 is testing our ability to adapt our most fundamental social behaviours in ways we weren’t expecting. The spread of this disease, as much as our daily lives, thrives on the short distances we typically keep from each other. What are the results of this Covid experiment we are undergoing? For sufficiently wealthy countries, lockdown has stop-gapped disaster. We have conveniently hidden away from the virus. Yet many of us have struggled with lockdown. Not seeing family or friends for months on end – we’re just not used to it. Or not all of us. Others of us are more accustomed to this way of living. But even then, not quite so continually. When we physically distance, it is easier to emotionally distance. We have the capacity to become entombed within our own personal circumstances. When lockdown means lockdown, we are locked into the meaning and significance that home has for each one of us. Every day repeats the same way. For the lucky few, the only issue is boredom. The same curtains and carpets and piles of schoolwork can stifle us. Making the unchanging constraints seem different is the game we play. For the not-so-lucky of us, there can be siblings to look after, loved ones lost, or mouths we can’t as easily feed, and day after day we sink deeper into a much harder survival game than we had anticipated. Digital technology has been one of our tools in lockdown. We try to convince ourselves that remote learning is just like learning, but remote. If only. For those with the required technology, it has served as wood filler in educational
“
I want both to lean in, and to step away
terms. Ultimately, though, while the computer is a machine, we are organic. The computer is on or it isn’t. It’s so easy to go from unmute to mute in a Microsoft Teams video lesson, but this cannot adequately reflect the way in which we’d naturally modulate the volume of our voices. Equally, our life online is less spontaneous. We either message someone or we don’t and either are or are not part of a group chat. We don’t bump into people as much at random. And when we think that we found a profile, idea or video of our own accord online; did we? Or did a recommendation algorithm decide we definitely wanted to know about YouTube’s cutest kittens? Within countries, within communities, the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted inequalities. We’ve also seen inequalities between countries. Richer countries can afford to convert deaths into economic losses. Survival becomes a pay-to-win game. If we look
at how quickly the virus spread, and how countries introduced such different measures, we can see how fragile our globalised world is. These interconnections are brittle; our world isn’t equal; our technology isn’t a golden bullet with which to beat a virus. Will we go back to normal? Will we return to standing closer? When it’s safe to do so, I don’t think it will take long. It’s only human. But I feel we can learn from what we’ve seen during this outbreak. Lockdown has shown me how uncontrollable life can be, while the lack of control and the highly restricted environment within lockdown has brought a certain clarity. If I feel I’m doing all I reasonably can, as a human, to do my best, then I find that I am less stressed about a problem than I would have been a year ago.
That’s one lesson from lockdown I don’t want to forget.
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online