There are so many things all happening at once that its difficult to select one particular thread that can bind them all together.
But over the last few days especially, a certain feature has become more prescient for me. The increasing use of conferencing apps and software for friends to remotely connect in order to bridge the sense of there being a divide and an effort to keep at bay the spectre of loneliness.
But I see the emerging trend towards the use of technologies that require increasing levels of our belief invested into it in order to render the experience as real as possible, a bit of a double-edged sword. I
Belief is such a fascinating currency. And civilisation needs to run on the shit. At the same time belief is just a belief. It's nothing really.
And so at this particular moment in time, facing a predicament which is a concentrated and necessary version of the thing which the system was eliciting anyway - namely social alienation. This is quite dangerous territory I think.
What happens when the yearning to be connected with other can be satisfied no longer? When people's desire for the real thing cannot be fully quenched by imbibing synthetic or artificial replacements?
Life doesn't cease being Faustian at any point, but more so during a global pandemic. There will always be a price to pay, at some point in the future, for whatever you have just gained even though may seem as though you are only accumulating good beneficial shit.
And the thing is, it's not all bad. I quite like and approve of many of the things that are getting clarified right now. The coronavirus is a clarifying event. THIS is the event which helps us see clearly, in 2020.
COVID-19 is making is painfully clear that pandemics do not care much for marketing rhetoric. They are nonplussed about your rapidly diminishing hopes of election success.You cannot gaslight a contagious disease even if you feel like you speak its language.
So clarification of what is, is the take home for me from all this. The reassertion of science and facts (not alternative ones). A reassertion of the value of love, of compassion, of truth, of cooperation and the sharing of burdens which in turn boosts performance and efficiency and expertise naturally. With a bit of luck, it will all become clear to us.
