According to Business Insider, 4 days ago, on April 3, 2020, via statistical analysis of governmental measures to survive COVID-19*, one-third of the World Population is on Lockdown due to the devastating effects of this novel coronavirus.
It is a strange and scary time.
People are suffering for many reasons that are the same and many reasons that are different. We are suffering from the illness, yes. Our friends, neighbors, and acquaintances are dying, yes. We are frightened and anxious. We are feeling stir crazy and bored. We are not experiencing as much of the life-giving air and sunshine that we need to thrive but, more than anything, we are isolated, kept apart from one another.
Our habits are changing. Our thoughts about our actions and those of others are changing. The world will not be the same once a vaccination is found and we feel free to leave the safety of our lodgings, coming and going as we did just a few months ago and for thousands of years before to the beginning on man living in dwellings.
I believe we will see very obvious changes to the functioning of our societies; there will be social changes that we will long for which may never return, longings that our unborn children, our grandchildren, would be shocked or repulsed by or even just curious about while simultaneously being so surprised to learn just how different our childhoods and life experiences were from what theirs is.
Will the future be filled with a world of germaphobes? Will we be wary of people standing too close? Will our children and grandchildren not yet born also be wary or will they be immune to these fears? Will we use Mork’s or Spock’s hand gesture of greeting, or will we organically create our own (and if so will it be a worldwide greeting or different greetings around the world) or, as I hope, will we be stuck with the elbow bump? Will little girls play Patty Cake and Miss Mary Mack? How about Say Say Oh Playmate, Down Down Baby or Down by the Banks of the Hanky Panky? Will adolescent boys give high fives for making baskets? Will first loves, young marrieds, or seniors stroll through parks hand in hand? And how will sporting teams greet one another? By standing in a very large circle and bowing in unison?
Time will tell and I think that some of these changes will be fascinating to see. I expect there are enormous changes coming, changes at all levels of our existence. I cannot tell you why I think this. I can only tell you that I feel this.
I suggest that in addition to outward changes in social behavior and thinking, there may well also be hidden changes deep within our subliminal selves, the not-yet understood definitions that make up each one of us, creating infinitely unique individuals from every spermatozoa and egg that unite, even those eggs that later split creating not one but two tiny babies that will grow into integral members of future humanity. There are changes taking place right now, today, in the mechanisms that guide us toward our behavioral choices, actions, beliefs, and feelings… our souls.
And could there even be something within us, as a species, that is changed forever? Will the impact of this cause a chemical change in our DNA that will be visible to science proving that we, as a species, made a sudden adaptational leap in the DNA of today to the DNA of the generation that follows? And, if so, what will that adaptation mean for all of us, the people who are walking our earth now and all of the generations that may come after?
I have written quite a bit about isolation over the years. And I believe firmly that isolation kills. But now, for our mortal survival, individually and perhaps as a species, we must isolate away from one another. And that is an enormous shift in humankind and it is why I suggest that this may, in fact, be the kind of event that changes who and how people are, how they interact with one another, how they think, as well as changes to their physical and sub-physical natures.
Of course, I could be wrong.
The wonderful photograph was taken by Aaron Burden and acquired through Unsplash. It’s a great source for free photos under the Creative Commons Zero license, so check it out!
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*“…statistical analysis of governmental measures to survive COVID-19,” is my laymen’s terminology of what was created and presented.
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