Social Trauma

An article on the CNN website got me thinking.  It's about how friendships and relationships have suffered during the pandemic, and the different politicized responses to the pandemic, and the political divide over assigning the responsibility for too many deaths. 

We've all experienced, first- or second-hand, conflicts over the extent to which others keep themselves and those around them safe.  We've seen the pictures of crowded bars and heard of individuals who haven't gone out of their houses since March.  The simple act of wearing a mask unleashes a Byzantine web of rules and beliefs and codicils and dogma.  And we've at least heard about countless encounters that have exploded into vitriol and violence, between the adherents of one set of rules and another.

The article focuses on how this landscape of conflict has affected and often ended relationships and friendships.  We tend to gravitate toward others who share our cultural values, and it seems certain that a vast number of us form connections only on the basis of these somewhat superficial connections.  So when we are each required to act in a deeply fraught environment, we discover depths in the other we had never known.  Who knew she would value personal freedom to choose over the safety of others?  Who knew that he would stay home when everyone else was going to... and so on.  And all this is not to mention the relationships which have suffered from safety-based unwillingness to meet face-to-face.

This is social trauma on a huge scale.  Will these relationships - many of which have been declared permanently over - heal, and regrow, in the new world?  If not, how will that change the social landscape?  Will we be more wary, probing our prospective partner's deeper beliefs and motivations before making stronger commitments?  And if they do, for the most part, heal and grow, will we forget about those simmering depths that we know nothing about?

The ideal new world would be a place where we talk, and listen, about the important things, in case we have to act on them again.