I participated in a video conferencing philosophy discussion group last night.  Given the images, screen facsimiles of acquaintances, along with audio, it was an enjoyable session.  I greatly miss the face to face, embodied dialog of the pre covid-19 era.  It is unclear if or when we will return to the traditional mode of being present together to work out ideas, to achieve a better understanding/foothold on life.  Is that not what philosophy has always been about, to gain a firmer foothold?

A topic that received thought and some discussion was whether the social distancing, the requirement to wear a mask in public, to shun a gathering of more than six people might be the ‘new normal,’ the state of things indefinitely.  And if so, how much added stress will this entail, and whether the threat of becoming very, very ill, is something we can live with?  There is no abstract answer to this speculative imagining of our future.  I am doubtful that the impact of the social disruption can be assimilated, put into the background of our psyche, so that life goes on with no anxiety driven waves breaking on the surface. 

To my experience, modernity brings a full quotient of stress already with the complexity, and the precarity of living in the United States prior to the coronavirus.  We have seeming infinite choices of video information from our small screens, and from the big screen TVs.  With that comes the challenge of learning the software.  By comparison to our parents, the multiplication of choices brings much stress to all of us.  If you are lucky to live in an affluent community you likely have everything that you need, as well as excess, but you have unrelenting professional responsibility, living in rhythm to the economy.  If you stop to think about it, you register the stress.  Also it is worth asking, are you drinking more alcohol these days? I confess that I have been.

If you are a blue collar worker, it is SOP that you are overworked, and underpaid which is more than a cliché.  That is a brutal fact.  The medication that you need, you can hardly afford.  And every day you live in fear of getting sick, and losing your job.  Now in these days of quarantine, you have not been working, and who knows if you will be called back when your company resumes?  The abstract term is ‘job precarity,’ the terror of losing a livelihood, in a season of scarcity of the kinds of jobs that you are qualified to do.

Yesterday I caught a glimpse of this story on my iphone newsfeed.  I believe it was carried by the Washington Post.  I was shaken by the story of an institution that will not survive.  Shock waves of stress roil the community.  This is a story from Petosky Michigan of a business closing, a company that has provided livelihoods for families since 1881.  Michigan Maple Block is shutting down.  Fifty six employees will be without their work.  You can read the story from the Petosky News-Review CLICK HERE.

Do I think we can assimilate the stress of a post onset covid-19 society?

No.  I do not.