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The thing about groupthink or social media bubbles is that they aggressively feed and amplify repetition. And repetition, however familiar and comforting, will never challenge us mentally, emotionally or behaviourally.
We must strive to become intellectual nomads, keep moving, keep learning, resist confining ourselves in any cultural or mental ghetto, and spend more time not in select centres but at the margins, which is where real change always comes from.
Sometimes, where you genetically or ethnically seem to fit in most is where you least belong. Sometimes you are at your loneliest among people who physically resemble you and seem to speak the same language. There are many citizens across the world today – and their number is growing – who have a hard time recognising their countries, walking like strangers in their own homelands.
Right from the start the pandemic was not solely a public health crisis. Or about political incompetence, lack of preparedness and delays in response – though these were blatantly present. Nor will the post-pandemic landscape be solely about economic recession, high unemployment and a fall in the standards of living. What we are going through is also a crisis of meanings.
‘The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world as if it were nothing at all. No other loss occurs so quietly; any other loss – an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. – is sure to be noticed.’
Just as the colour white is a combination of all colours, apathy is a combination of many emotions: anxiety, disillusionment, bewilderment, fatigue, resentment … mix them fast, mix them hard and you end up with pervasive paralysis, lack of feeling, numbness.
After the pandemic, we won’t go back to the way things were before. And we shouldn’t. ‘What we call the beginning is often the end … The end is where we start from.’
