2020 — the year we spent apart
The preventative measures of Covid-19 have forced us into social isolation worldwide. This is totally counterintuitive to our social way of being. How are we — as social beings — coping whilst forced to socially isolate? How will our interpersonal relationships change as a result?
The year we spent apart
Living in a time of government-enforced social isolation is not a future I ever imagined for myself. I could never have imagined police breaking up small social gatherings. Nor could I have imagined shopkeepers stating “2m apart” as they sanitise your hands upon entry.
Our current reality is totally unprecedented. But what I see as most unnatural is the social isolation we are facing globally.
Socialising is a primary behaviour encoded in our DNA. It feels odd not to hug, touch or to engage in human contact. It feels reminiscent of a dystopian novel and couldn’t be more counterintuitive to our social way of being.
It all feels rather odd and like many of us — I don’t like it at all.
Other people as our way to meaningfulness
Reflecting on a philosophical approach I once studied, the ‘Other’ (other people) are deemed essential to our worldly understanding. The very fabric of our lives as dependent on the other's existence. For example, to understand ourselves we must have the ‘Other’ to orient and anchor us.
The ‘Other’, therefore, becomes necessary for access to meaningfulness in our world.
I find this approach convincing since my life in recent years has been almost entirely with other people. Going to festivals and social events, living in shared housing at university and in Canada, my life has meaning as a result of the people I have spent it with. Without the ‘Other’, the life I know and love would cease to exist.
The preventative measures of Covid-19 — social distancing and government-enforced isolation — has thus made our need for others even more apparent. Without the interpersonal human connection that makes life meaningful, we are deprived.
Technology: a poor or equal substitute?
So how are we coping now we find ourselves deprived of the human connections we crave? We find ourselves in the arms of modern technology.
Through the use of modern technology, we are connected virtually though physically apart. We have social media, mobile phones, telephone lines and Facetime to bring us all together. Isolated yet virtually hyperconnected; the substitute for the social interaction we are all missing.
Personally, it is hard to see how Covid-19 would have been navigated without it. From the moment I wake up to when I go to sleep, these technologies are deeply intertwined within my quarantine days. From video calls to exercise classes and online shopping, my life could not be as it is without it. So of course, I am grateful.
However, these virtual connections cannot match the magic of real, face-to-face human connectivity. Technology has connected humans from all over the world, yet also disconnected us to those nearest on a basic, human level. The phenomena of phones at the dinner table, phones recording music gigs start to finish or phones distracting your attention to the person right in front of you. Technology can take away the magic of human connection, yet now it is all we have.
Hence, I am sceptical of the value our virtual connections have in contrast to real-life, interpersonal relationships. We have a substitute through modern technology — but it remains simply that, a substitute which cannot match the magic of face-to-face human connectivity.
Covid-19 has validated our ever-increasing reliance on technology to communicate and connect, but we cannot so easily forget it’s flawed.
Isolation under the spotlight
Having social isolation forced upon us has also highlighted to me a life lived by many others — with or without Covid-19. Elderly members of the community who are hit hardest by all of this.
Not only are elderly citizens more susceptible to the effects of isolation and loneliness but they are most at risk to the virus. The freedoms they once had — going to the shops, visits from friends and family, going to public parks — have been taken away for the protection of their lives.
Moreover, not all members of the community will have access to modern technology. An old neighbour of mine never has and never will get a computer or smartphone. She has no desire to. Yet the way we are becoming ever more reliant upon virtual communication alienates members of the community even further.
My grandparents are thankfully both willing and able to connect virtually — joining Zoom family quizzes and video calling me across time zones. Although they can’t even leave their houses to get their own shopping, remarkably I can connect with them worldwide. For this, I am grateful.
Yet still, they are struggling. Having one’s freedom taken away causes life to lose its lustre, even with access to modern technology. The lustre that the joy of other people and our ability to connect with each other — in real life — once gave us.
When I asked my old neighbour what she had been struggling with, she stressed that she missed hugging, inviting friends over for drinks and visiting shops and friends’ houses. Notably, the small joys of face-to-face human contact, not virtual connections, is what she misses most.
So where we can we should reach out to offer support to our communities and those most at risk of suffering from social isolation. Whatever we can do, we should do, to help bring that lustre back.
This slower pace of life we are experiencing thus encourages us (or at least me) to look more locally — to our communities, our neighbours, our nearest and dearest — strengthening the relationships physically closest to us.
Isolated but globally connected
The unique nature of this global pandemic likewise offers an opportunity to build a powerful new connection — the connection of humanity worldwide against the common enemy, Covid-19.
Covid-19 is a global pandemic putting a population of millions under the same restrictions. Wartime restrictions but without a human enemy. Modern technology hence enables us to build connections worldwide sharing the same common ground, against the same enemy and bringing together a global community as a result.
There is unlikely to be one person on Earth who has not been in some way affected by this pandemic. That is, in this case, powerful.
Our virtual connections thus have the power to strengthen global solidarity and empathy for others worldwide. Although we may be without what instinctively brings humans together — face-to-face connectivity— this unique time in history could grow a powerful new global community with empathy and solidarity at its core.
How will our year spent apart change us?
Social isolation is counterintuitive for us as social beings. Without the ‘Other’ we lack access to meaningfulness in our lives. As a result, social isolation is changing our relationships both locally and globally.
Slowing down has caused us to look closer to our local communities, neighbours and loved ones. Being unable to move as freely has taken us back to the communities we live in, strengthening the relationships that are physically closest to us.
Similarly, in our use of modern technology and in the unique nature of this global pandemic, we can build powerful connections worldwide. Billions of people under the same restrictions have the power to strengthen global solidarity and, as a result, our global community.
Facing social isolation worldwide, our lives after Covid-19 are thus unlikely to look the same.
Be that because you’ve stricken a new friendship with your elderly neighbour, or because you visit your Mum more times than before, or because you have empathy for those who prior to Covid-19 you could never relate to — life will not look the same. Our relationships are bound to change; I think for the better, both on a local and a global scale.
What is even more evident is that our social nature remains undeterred. In the use of modern technologies or not, we still desire to be connected to other people — delivering meaningfulness to our lives that we need in order to be.
2020 will be the year we all spent apart, but I have no doubt that when we return to normality our connections will only be stronger.
