If we’ve learnt anything at all from modern news coverage, it’s that we’re unable, or at least unwilling to engage with anything at all unless it’s compressed and simplified into the format of dull sports journalism. At least that is the commonly held belief of every major media outlet and political commentator in the country today. Leave vs Remain, Left Vs Right, Cummings Vs Sense, Masks Vs Freedom, Lockdown Vs the herd. Even a biological pandemic is a political hot…
When pressed for a reason why it’s worth bothering to vote, you’d find it hard to do better than the response and aftermath of the emerging COVID crisis. If there was ever a cure to the mass apathy and voter lethargy brought on by successive elections then it could be easily found in contrasting responses to the 2020 pandemic. “They’re all as bad as each other” and “it doesn’t matter which one you vote for” are sentiments being proven false…
The world is a terrifying and dangerous place, at least so the saying goes. There are those who would have us believe that daily life is more dangerous today than it has ever been in living history. None of it’s true, of course, and those who would try to convince us it is are almost universally selling right-wing ideology, religion, or newspapers. Occasionally all three. Those selling as if it were, don’t really need it to be true either. A…
The way we respond to crises and adverse events is perhaps the most telling and the most interesting into our own behaviour we have. It’s certainly a lot more revealing than a social media photograph of our own meal or a selfie taken in a queue. It’s the way we do act weighed against the way we wish we, and others around us, acted instead. It’s tempting to imagine we’re highly adaptable creatures who can weather most storms—even pull through…
It would be useful to know how close to home a lesson has to be to learn anything from it at all. Does a near-crash prevent you from speeding in the future? What if it happens to the car in front or the one behind? Does near-death illness prevent drinking, smoking, or drugs? We now know China is too far from home, too remote, and too different to apply lessons learnt from the outbreak to our reaction here. With over…
While much of the world self-isolates from viral contamination, we seem to remain willingly compliant and almost eager to spread an entirely different kind of virus globally. As the first major pandemic to strike in the social media age, it’s hard to argue the technology has had a profoundly positive effect on an acute and growing crisis. A quick browse of the usual feeds and sources churns up a truly staggering amount of misinformation, outright lies, and apathy to responsible…