The Good of the Many - Leads to Loneliness

I grew up watching Star Trek.

Well - obsessing over Star Trek.

I suppose I am lucky that I chose a show that reflected a deep sense of moral value back into the world. Or perhaps I was already someone who held the values of love and inclusion close to my heart and so I loved the show because I saw myself in it.

Nonetheless - I have lived 50 years with the idea of  "do no harm" and that the good of the many outweighs the good of the one. I have lived my life believing that race does not matter and that interfering with the way another person saw the world was wrong.

So the measures being taken to flatten the curve already make sense to me.

I also have been reading about how the same things happened in the early 1900's around the Spanish Flu. The Universities and schools shut down, for example. And there are undoubtedly many other examples.

The real difference I suppose is ease of travel. Back in the day we had to wait weeks till the ship crossed the ocean. Now we are there this afternoon.

I will not pretend that I mind social isolation. I am not a gregariously needy person when it comes to social interaction. I prefer writing on my laptop or playing skyrim.

But my role in life is to interact and care for those who are vulnerable and who need attention. And to offer a spiritual dimension to the reality I witness. Being the op ed type of journalist who tries to delve deep into issues that others find impermanent - like art and faith and society - sometimes means taking a different view of things.

So here is a thought that I think you might all agree with but that not many are putting out there.

The world is a lonely place.

It has been becoming lonelier and lonelier as we spend more time at home, on the internet, as we move away from family and become a global citizens.

We already struggle to find meaningful connection. And this is going to make it worse.

I fear, not the loss of 20% of the population or whatever this pandemic may do in the short term (which, I do not dismiss, it is sad and scary - but reality) What I truly fear is the aftermath.

9/11 changed the world forever. In subtle but interesting ways. We became a nanny state where agreement with the majority became the greatest social value.

It changed us.

Looking back sociologists will be able to point to that one event and say that society was moving in one direction and the twin towers altered the trajectory of social development.

Somehow 9/11 also changed science. I do not know if you remember, but before that we could clone people, we could build space stations, teleportation was right around the corner...

A decade later people turned against science and now we cannot even convince people that the planet is getting warmer or that they should wash their hands.

So what will the outcome of the Corona virus Pandemic be? How much will this change who we are?

That is my fear. That perhaps social contact and the idea of togetherness is at risk. Perhaps we will come to see people who want to be around other people as abnormal. Perhaps we will no longer have group events, concerts, sports...

I don't know. Things never happen in obvious ways because human beings are bizarrely unpredictable. Witness the fact of toilet paper shortages with a disease that does not alter your "regularity" at all.

So I might be wrong about "what" will be forever changed. Still, I worry that something will be forever changed - and not for the better.

I guess my hope is that we continue to value the good things - love, peace, hope, joy and that we fight to remember to keep those things alive even as the world shifts beneath our feet.