Isolation XIV:We Are Each Other

A killer, a virus, that preys on us in our tens of thousands is terrible and devastating enough but one that does so not despite, but because, of our social nature is worse. Sporting occasions, gigs, weddings, days in the park and even funerals are the events in which the human race shows itself at its finest and these, now, are the very things we cannot involve ourselves in.

Things we'd previously considered the height of rudeness (people crossing the road to avoid us or washing their hands if they accidentally touch us) are now signs of good citizenship. We're closing borders, we're cancelling holidays, we're not visiting our family or friends. There are no hugs, no pats on the back, and no comforting hand on the shoulder when we're down. As many of us are right now.

Worst of all there is no realistic plan, or even idea, of how we'll return to those things. There's a lot about what they call normality that I'm not missing at all but walks, restaurants, pubs, and, most of all, friends and family are not among them. At least there's no FOMO now though. There's no worry that everybody else is having fun and you're missing out. Because there's nothing going on and all the fun that does happen is happening either in our front rooms or in our own heads.

Now's not a good time for people who struggle to live within themselves. Today marks the 41st day of my isolation and after fifteen years of living on my own I am at least, to a degree, prepared for this. I love, and often crave, company but I spend a lot of time on my own and always have done. I've actually come to quite like myself over the years and, thankfully, I've got enough friends to suggest that other people might like me too. Or at least tolerate me.

I'm sure I annoy them at times (that's what friends are for) but, right now, I'm appreciating my friends and my parents more than ever (not really heard from the rest of the family). This week I've spoken, for nearly an hour each day to Mum and Dad (Mum talks about the news and we've been talking a lot about the loss of my brother Steven and my friend Bugsy recently, Dad sets me quizzes - horses for courses) and I've also chatted to Michelle, Adam, Darren and Cheryl, and Rob H up in Handsworth. 

On Wednesday night I enjoyed another great Kahoot/Zoom quiz hosted by Jo, set by Dylan, and won (again) by Tony and yesterday I had a lovely walk in the Horniman Gardens admiring the views, the beautiful spring flowers, and the blossoms of the trees. People were sunbathing but people were still social distancing sensibly and being respectful of each other. My heart felt full of warmth.

On a late night journey into yet another YouTube wormhole I found myself listening to The Fall performing Smile and 2x4 on The Tube in 1983. It was great (obviously) but, with time on my hands, it had me wondering what MES would have to say about all this. Which got me to wondering what others who have passed might make of it all. David Bowie, Christopher Hitchens, Aldous Huxley, Graham Greene, HG Wells, and George Orwell. I even started to wonder what the likes of Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle would have to say about such times. I started reading The Plague by Albert Camus (for a second time) precisely because it might give some idea about how the psychological aspects of all this may be played out in the longer term.

Camus, like Bowie, MES, and all those others, is of course no longer with us. But our desire for understanding, direction, and culture continues and the books they wrote, the music they made, and the ideas they gave us continue to inform us. We're moving in uncertain directions right now as the British government are being divided into doves (who want to extend the lockdown, their main concern being health) and hawks (who wish to relax the lockdown for the sake of the economy but, often, pretend they believe it's better for all our health in the long term).

For me, some hope was been restored that we can have a rational, reasonable political debate when Keir Starmer opted to be forensic rather than adversarial in his questioning in the first session of a gradually reopened parliament. During a session that saw some members socially distanced and others Zooming in from remote locations (which should have looked bizarre but now barely registers as unusual) Starmer made reasonable points and didn't call anybody a rude name or make anything up.

It was a refreshing change following the last few years in which we saw some (definitely not all) Corbyn supporters treating the Labour party as if it was a cult or a protest group rather than a serious political party with hopes and intentions of gaining power. That kind of behaviour allowed Johnson to build a government of toadies and arch-Brexiters consisting of people with neither the adequate skills, sufficient seriousness, or, in the cases of Patel and Rees-Mogg for example, the empathy and humanity required for such a huge crisis.

On the first day of the government's furlough scheme 140,000 business applied, the value of oil (after years of people actually fighting wars over it) dipped below zero (they, literally, can't give it away), and in the US, Trump supporters continued to wave guns around and accused medics of being 'fake' actors, in some cases actually physically attacking them. Even as the US death toll passes 50,000. Nearly double that of Italy. The second most seriously affected nation.

It's a complete shitshow (Trump's now suggesting people inject themselves with bleach) and no mistake but while we point at them aghast or even in laughter we should remember there are plenty of pretty nasty people, radicalised by the right wing press and Boris Johnson's dog whistle racism, here in the UK. In the early days of Facebook I added as a friend a kid (now a man) that I knew at school. I've not really paid much attention to his posts (they're mostly him gurning next to celebrities like Bruce Forsyth and Richard Osman) but I took the bait yesterday when he posted this:-

"Happy St Georges Day, a day that amazingly isnt celebrated in England.Every other Country and Religion we accept ant let them Celebrate but our day Might offend someone. When did it go so wrong !!"

Leaving aside his horrific spelling (if you love your country so much why not learn the language?), grammar, punctuation, and orthography (I counted nine mistakes in three sentences) you have to ask yourself if he's so keen on celebrating St George's Day why he didn't just do that instead of ranting about foreigners and snowflakes on the Internet? He could have supped a nice nut brown British ale at his local off-license, had fish and chips delivered, and listened to some stirring music by Edward Elgar but, for some reason, he thinks he's not allowed to. I replied in a fit of pique:-

"What a load jingoist, incorrectly spelled bullshit. You're free to celebrate St George's Day however you like and many are without to coat it with a thin veneer of xenophobia. Also, many of those people from other countries 'we' let in:- many of them work for the NHS and are the frontline of trying to save people's lives. I'm defriending all racists so bye"

Then I defriended him (and blocked him as I didn't want to get drawn any further into a pointless Internet shouting match). Reading my response back I wish I'd waited until I'd calmed down a bit because it's nearly as poorly constructed as his but the message still stands. The weeks, months, and years ahead could be very tough for a lot of us. Social media can be a useful tool for people like me, living on their own, to stay in touch with their friends. If people are going to use it to spout hatred and poison (now, of all times) it's best we remove those people from our lives. They can only damage us.

Let's hold our friends closer to our hearts than ever but with COVID-19 we've got a big enough problem. I've not got the time nor the inclination to put up with those who have been infected with the virus of stupidity and hatred.

A global pandemic has shone an unforgiving light into the nooks and crannies of our institutions, our relationships, and even our own inner psyches and we've all (me, you, your friends, your families, our enemies, complete strangers) been trying to rationalise it through the view of the world we already hold - and why not? What other tools do we have? Humans cling to their systems of belief like Linus hugs his security blanket.

Everbody knows that things must change but everyone thinks it's everyone else who should do the changing. If you felt disgusted and horrified by Chinese wet markets (as I did) or even eating meat full stop (as I do) this will further entrench your views, if you don't understand even basic science and think 5G is something to fear then 5G conspiracy theories will speak loudly to you, if you felt immigration is a positive thing (as I do) you'll look at the 100,000 immigrant NHS staff and feel emboldened in that view, if you felt immigration was a bad thing you'll somehow imagine this virus is down to immigration (makes no sense but you'll find some way), and if you thought the Johnson administration were a bunch of feckless cunts concerned only with covering their own arses and helping their rich mates out well, you'll have been proved to be right all along.

But if we can't change our views and our adversaries can't change theirs how can we change society when we ever so slowly start to tiptoe our way out of this. Make no mistake. The snake oil salesman that will arrive and offer us easy solutions rather than inconvenient truths will be, in many cases, the very same people that sleepwalked us into this tragedy. The very same people that exacerbated this crisis.

We must learn our lesson and not fall for them. If a death toll in the hundreds of thousands isn't enough for us nothing ever will be. Every now and then I think to myself, arrogantly, that, yeah, I'm tough enough to do this. To get through this. We're all tough enough to get through it, and we all are. At least until we're not. At least until the long lonely days of isolation start to wear away at our resolve, at least until one of our family members of friends gets ill and we can't visit them, at least until we cancel and postpone so many birthday celebrations and holidays that we break down in tears.

We're all individuals, nobody truly knows what happens in another person's mind, and our individuality and our ability to sustain ourselves is vital (now more than ever) but it was our sociability as a species that made us dominant. We are ourselves but, also, we are each other. We exist in the way our loved ones touch us, look into our eyes, and how they both listen to us and speak to us. Our sense of self is never more reinforced than when we are in the company of someone we truly love and care about.

It's humanity that makes humans great and right now I'm seeing more of that than I have for a very long time. 'Preppers' in the US (enabled by Trump and called protestors in the media instead of the correct word - terrorists) have boasted for years that they could survive a major existential crisis by stockpiling guns and food are out on the streets waving weapons about, and participating in major super spreading event that should see US death tolls go ever more stratospheric, because they can't get out for a burger.

They packed their cellars and they stocked up on ammo but one thing they completely forgot to do was to prepare their emotional toolkit for such an event. Now there's a huge likelihood that their toxic nature will result in the deaths of many of their own family members just to prop up a cruel capitalist system that literally couldn't give a fuck if they lived or died. A system, in fact, that if you're not buying into (being a useful member of society) would probably prefer you did die.

COVID-19 will continue to kill but one day, we hope, we'll find a cure for it. The even bigger question is can we find a cure for a capitalist system that is equally indifferent to the lives of the people who are forced to live with it?