Numb

I was heartbroken 💔 watching the short film below.

What are we doing to our kids? Ourselves and our future?

This heartbreaking three-minute film made by Liv McNeil documents the withering of a teenager’s life in the time of Covid lockdown. The camera lingers over photographs of her having fun with her friends. Then onto her computer screen, her assignments, scrolling, scrolling… her life now held in a box. And then scores of still shots of herself sitting on her bed, day after day, trying to stay upbeat as her patience gradually gives way to numbness.

Did the lockdown really save lives or did it enhance suffering and promote gradual decline?

The following is an excerpt from Charles Eisenstein essay on the short film,

In modern society, saving lives is a paramount value. (Actually the term is a misnomer – there is no such thing as saving a life, since we are mortal and will all one day die. Therefore let us use a more accurate phrase: postponing deaths.) Much of public discourse, from healthcare to foreign policy, revolves around safety, security, and risk. Covid-19 policy also centers on how to prevent as many deaths as possible and how to keep people safe. Values such as the immeasurable benefits of children’s play, of singing or dancing together, of physical touch and human togetherness are not part of the calculations. Why?

It appears modern policy and everything around us is geared toward surviving life and not living life,

..the mania for safety, the denial of death, the glorification of youth, and the all-encompassing program of control that has engulfed our society. Here I will state a simple truth: There is more to living than merely staying alive. We are here to live life, not just survive life. That would be obvious if the certainty of death were integrated into our psychology, but in modern society, sadly, it is not. We hide death away. We live in a pretense of permanence. Seeking the impossible – the infinite postponement of death – we fail to fully live life.

Memento Mori.

We are not the discrete, separate individuals that modernity narrates to us. We are interconnected. We are inter-existent. We are relationship. To live fully means to relate fully. Covid-19 is a further step in a long trend of disconnection from community, from nature, and from place. With each step of disconnection, although we may survive as separate selves, we become less and less alive. The young and the old are especially sensitive to this disconnection. We see them shrivel like fruit in a drought. As a psychiatrist friend recently wrote to me, “Among the elderly, the fallout has been truly disastrous. Being quarantined in the room and isolated from family is causing massive amounts of invisible suffering and decline, as well as deaths. I can’t tell you how many anguished family members have told me that it’s not Covid that is killing their loved one — it’s the restrictions.”

Even though covid is largely over, the restrictions, rules and policies have remained in place. It is evident that the charade was merely a driver of the infamous Fourth Industrial revolution rife with more disconnection, isolation and complete dependence on technology.

Life withers in isolation. This is true on a biological level, as we require ongoing intercourse with the world of microbes and, yes, viruses, to maintain bodily equilibrium. It is true as well on the social level: one prominent meta-analytic review concluded that social isolation, loneliness, and living alone, cause an average of 29%, 26%, and 32% increased likelihood of mortality, respectively.

..even if we could postpone death forever by isolating each person in a bubble, it still wouldn’t be worth it. I know that when I watch “Numb.” I know that when I see my own children doing their best to cope in a socially impoverished landscape, when my older sons speak of loneliness, apathy, and depression; when my 15-year-old sees his friends through screens or, very occasionally, through masks and six feet apart; when my youngest begs constantly for a “play date.” What are we doing to our children? Will no one stand up for the value of a game of tag? A gaggle of kids piling all over each other? I can’t put a number on the value of these compared to postponing X number of deaths. I just know that they are far more important than society has made them.

Reevaluating societal values is incumbent for our continued civilization.

We have to reverse this trend both in our parenting and in our public policy – to revalue play, outdoors, connection to place, interaction with nature, and community gathering.

There is more to life than 'keeping safe.'

* Read Charles’s beautiful essay here.

See you next week!

- Ope