The rumors are flying – Coronavirus will be short-lived; no, it won’t – There’ll be three days of darkness; no, there won’t – 5G lowers immunity and promotes susceptibility to a virus; no, it’s perfectly safe.
If I could hold everything else constant and just run one variable and look at it (which of course I can’t), it’d be the extent to which people, though isolated, are talking to each other.
On all levels of society, in all manner of software applications, in blogs, vlogs, documentaries, tweets, emails, discussion groups, in media, mainstream and social, even from their balconies with violins or pots and pans, people are talking to each other. And everyone has an opinion they want to be shared and heard.
The article, below, (1) shows how online classes and discussions in schools that have closed down is increasing online literacy.
At the same time, our public discourse has in the last few years often seemed to succumb to an inordinate amount of name-calling.
To use the metaphor we’re most aware of right now, I’d be so bold as to say that our public discourse up to now has been hit by a virus. We’re in a pandemic which even has a name, a Latin one at that: Ad Hominem.
The phrase means a personal attack rather than the balanced discussion of an issue. You can have it and not know it. It’s not fatal but it can leave a person alone and emotionally crippled.
Take left vs right, for example. I don’t think those two words have much meaning any more.
They seem to include many people who, I think, wouldn’t have a clue about what it means to be “left” or “right.”
The two words simply seem to denote people we don’t like. By calling people names, we bypass the need to examine the proposals they bring to the table. We dismiss them with an allegation that has no basis in fact and no relevance to the discussion at hand. (2)
But that all gets revealed when people start talking. I believe Ad Hominem is a feature of public discourse when it’s languishing, lethargic.
When it awakens and begins to pick up, the lethargic ways of being become more visible. People who won’t drop them then lose the other person’s ear.
Of course, these are all speculations. At the same time, there are initial signs that the media are being liberated.
I speculate that the short-term antidote to this virus is to fan the embers of those discussions while the long-term antidote is to re-attain a civil manner of discussing, one which follows a basic etiquette, where we wouldn’t think of attacking one another. That was the way it was when discussion groups – then called bulletin boards – first started.
Meanwhile the animated discussions of policy, process, and goals that are going on right now all over the place are refreshing.
It’s often said that the most difficult part of a peace process – and we are in a peace process on planet Earth – is getting people to talk to each other. On all our media, mainstream and social, I think that’s happening, thanks to loosing our distractions and having little else to do right now than talk to each other.
Footnotes
(1) See “How Schools Worldwide Are Tackling the Coronavirus Challenge” in “Coronavirus Response, April 2 – 1,” April 2, 2020, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2020/04/02/coronavirus-response-april-2-1/
(2) The use of an irrelevant modifier is an example, as in “the black senator from New York” or “the Jewish professor who created Coronavirus” where blackness or Jewishness are irrelevant to the discussion at hand.