Living through a pandemic - some thoughts

Let’s continue with the discussion of the traits in Western societies that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought into the light. An important factor to understand the global response to the pandemic refers to the way we collectively handle the information available to us through the internet. And I must admit that the outcome is not promising… A controlled tsunami of information When the internet technology was open to the public, around thirty years ago, it was seen as a vehicle to share information around the world, contributing to make our societies wiser and more intelligent. It is hard to argue against the fact that the internet is making available an unprecedented amount of information: for example, the opening time of a grocery in Würzburg, the price of house in Comillas or an article on the role of ghosts and witches in Shakespearean tragedies. That is particularly stunning when we compare it with the situation some centuries ago, where books and oral communication were the o...

After an initial entry describing some basic aspects of viruses and two entries on how our society was when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, it is time to look a bit deeper into some of the vulnerabilities in our societies that the pandemic has brought to life. The previous entries were looking at the past, while here I intend to add some ideas on how to re-define our lives once the pandemic is over. For today, we will get started with selfishness, something I touched upon slightly in the previous entry of this blog. From selfies to selfishness One of the main words added to our vocabulary in the last years has been “selfie”, intended to define a photo taken of oneself with our own mobile phone. It should be placed in a special location or while we are doing something particularly interesting. In many cases, the selfie is uploaded to social media to show others our achievement. Unfortunately, too often the selfie is more important than the experience itself. For instance, it is...