4 votes

The coronavirus pandemic is reminding us to look inwards and self reflect

1 comment

  1. Kuromantis
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    An article on how the lockdowns and social distancing have above all else given us free time to think about not just the world but ourselves and what that could imply long term. Admittedly the...

    An article on how the lockdowns and social distancing have above all else given us free time to think about not just the world but ourselves and what that could imply long term. Admittedly the counter argument is 'more time watching TV and on Twitter isn't really gonna help us'.

    We have created a frenzied lifestyle in which not a minute is to be wasted. The precious 24 hours of each day are carved up, dissected, and reduced to 10-minute units of efficiency. We become agitated and angry in the waiting room of a doctor’s office if we’ve been standing by for 10 minutes or more. We grow impatient if our laser printers don’t spit out at least five pages a minute. We cannot sit quietly in a chair for 10 minutes. And we must be connected to the grid at all times. We take our smartphones and laptops with us on vacation. We go through our email at restaurants, or our online bank accounts while walking in the park. We have become slaves to our “urgent” appointments and to-do lists and addiction to nonstop stimulation by the external world. A momentous but little discussed study by the University of Hertfordshire in collaboration with the British Council found that the walking speed of pedestrians in 34 cities around the world increased by 10 percent just in the 10-year period from 1995 to 2005.

    (Why the hell am I posting this at 2:30 in the morning again?)

    By forcing many of us to slow down, to spend more time in personal reflection, away from the noise and heave of the world, the frightening COVID-19 pandemic may be creating such a change right now. With more quiet time, more privacy, more stillness, we have an opportunity to think about who we are, as individuals and as a society.

    2 votes