Have watched and read numerous things on the apparent mental health and social damage done during the…

Have watched and read numerous things on the apparent mental health and social damage done during the pandemic. A few thoughts about that, going back to some key assumptions. /1 #COVID19Aus

Nearly all of this analysis makes the assumption that social mixing is our default healthy state. I think for many people this may in fact be true, and without it they feel ‘lonely’. But maybe we need to be a bit wary of equating what’s best with what makes us feel good. /2

As some experts who deal with trauma in children have pointed out in this pandemic, school (as a key social site) is, for many children, the most traumatic place in their lives. Bullying is rife and intense, and the pressures of social comparison and building…/3

…and constantly maintaining status networks is exhausting and damaging. Schools aren’t unique there, the essence of sociality is imitation and comparison, at all ages. We see that on social media, an amplifier of the same essence, with constantly curated presences, and…/4

…the passion to put something out there that will ‘go viral’ i.e. be imitated and reproduced. “We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.” Orson Welles bells the cat,…/5 https://t.co/zAuHhgx7fJ

…trying to show us that sociality is illusory, in the way we usually think about it. We are always alone. Those who have been forced into ‘loneliness’ in a pandemic may be encountering this truth for the first time, rather than being damaged. /end