#proximity
We are clamouring for an end to social distancing and isolation.
If you watch the UK Government daily briefings, members of the UK press appear to be pushing the decision-makers for an end to social distancing and enforced isolation with a date.
As the death toll of COVID-19 hits a heartbreaking 1,000 people per day in the UK, I can’t help but feel the insensitivity of the persistence of this line whilst understanding we crave the certainty of when we can be released from this lockdown situation to see other loved ones and go to work again.
But really? Do we need that ‘line-in-the-sand’ so much? Right now?
I’m perfectly happy with no end date. I seem to always have been. I know it might be my circumstances in my place of residence; nature of work and so on. I get that.
And that if things are not so comfortable for others, we might crave the return to what once was because — even though the commute/role/relationships, whatever, weren’t perfect — they were better than being stuck in somewhere. like we are now.
And I hear the cries for the return to mass social connections in person we have and need so much. I get that too.
If you’re familiar with neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman’s work <see here> that would support his theory on social bonding as our most deeply-set need and driver.
We feel social need and pain (togetherness and loss; distance) as much as we feel physical need and pain (affection, hugs and a stubbed toe; a burn to the skin).
So the proximity title to this post is about that.
Social need and particularly, is our social connection always so fused because of real-life, physical, same-space proximity and closeness to each other?
I’ll use the example of how the team at PTHR works.
In forging this team spirit, we have representation in Australia, Romania, Mexico, Scotland, different parts of England and now some support from Slovenia too — so we’re distant but strongly connected. We have forged relationships with not too much physical proximity and used digital to know, feel and bond.
One of the team, Broch, gave up her life down-under in 2017 to work with me. And she and I — at that time — had never met in person: Zero physical proximity. That’s some leap/trust shown there. And now, into our third year of collaborating — and ironically back to being in the same other-side-of-the-world location — we’re going from strength to strength.
Incredibly limited proximity and yet incredibly strong bonds supporting each other.
I see us having to adapt in really challenging circumstances and perhaps my lack of anxiety about the ‘release date’ is because for years, I’ve been engineering things to be socially distant, yet strongly connected.
People who know me have said that in the lockdown times of now, that maybe I’m bouncing off the walls because of craving that social connection to others.
Not so, at all.
I’m very comfortable in my civic duty of isolation and connecting with people — as I have done for some years now — through digital communication apps and platforms. I’ve made extra efforts in this way to the point that I’m almost as exhausted as if I’d spent a day at a conference networking or an immersive ideas and design session with a client and so on.
I spent the first 3 weeks of the COVID-19 impact in what I called Operation: Fightback (going from 15 projects to 2 in a matter of days and then back up to 12) and then messaging, talking to and coaching people I knew and I’d never met.
It didn’t make me feel any less obliged to want to help; we didn’t need to meet over a coffee to get connected. We shared — sometimes very candid — exchanges. We helped each other. Yet we’d never met. We’d not held that physical proximity and still we knew we were ‘there’ for each other.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t crave physical social contact and that sort of proximity, that we know is strong and even mystical in power. And I might have subscribed to that before all this. And now feel that if that is what’s behind the urge to have a lockdown release date, I’m less convinced about its real value and hold on us than I was BC (Before COVID-19).
We can wait. We have to wait. And I believe, we have to adjust to differnt social aspects as we’ve never adjusted before.
And of course, I believe that the physical proximity of those fighting for others’ lives in healthcare (particularly) is a huge part of what’s keeping them going. I can only imagine the strength that is built by sharing the ICU wards by those new-found heroes of ours.
Yet, in connecting to others outside of that traumatic place to be; through more distant means, they may be able to gently decompress by talking to others from their isolated state using digital calls. They long for a hug but they know it’s not safe so they gain from a call or a video message.
I guess, for now certainly, we owe it to those heroes to suppress our normal social desires and find other ways. So let’s have no more ‘when is lockdown going to be over’ questions. Please.
I am also beginning to suspect that our adjustment will be significant in that eventual exit from lockdown. It will, I believe change what we previously held as unmovable needs and desires to be in social proximity situations with others.
Why? Well, I am in no rush for crowded places, trains and airports. Offices, restaurants, coffee shops or meeting rooms.
I’ve adapted over the years and perhaps put up with those physical, social spaces; and maybe this is why I’m finding physical proximity-based social contact a lot more unnecessary than even I’d imagined.
I realise I might spark all sorts of ‘what do you know’, ‘science and even our own chemicals will us otherwise’ type reactions. And you’re entitled to call me out from that and your perspective; but just as I’m not talking about anything other than my perspective and those closest to me (now distant of course), I don’t speak for everyone but from a personal (and perhaps shared) realisation.
Already thinking post-pandemic, if you want me to come into London for a 1:1 to ‘get to know me’, I’ll respectfully offer an alternative that involves digital proximity not physical. And if you don’t like or want that, it’s something I’m prepared to stand by and let that go.
If you want a conference speaking slot from me, and I feel I could present digitally, that’s where I’m going to start from. If I HAVE to be there for some reason, let’s see.
Am I going to become a social hermit? On the strength of how I’ve been this past month: No.
I’m more social (admittedly online) than I’ve been in years. It’s been a lifeline. I’m closer in bond, belief and trust to that team of people who’d just started to create the teamwork that is apparently so necessary to succeed. Whether it’s because we’re in a crisis or not, we’re stronger despite the distance.
In conversation with one of the team today — Kirsten — we reviewed how we’d gotten to know each other. We met when Kirsten marketed and supported conferences I went to and we exchanged some nice introductory conversations and the rest was over messages. And now, a new Mum, Kirsten’s committing to work with me and the team to help our work in a really flexible manner. No interview; no test; no protracted trial — we just acted on exchanges (via a messaging format be that email or other forms) and have now proven how good we are for each other’s professional interests. We’ve held the same social proximity space less than 10 times. Sometimes even then, for a few fleeting minutes.
Kirsten reminded me of Blink — the book by Malcolm Gladwell. An interesting figure if ever there was one. Blink contains three central ideas: “fast and frugal” thinking is a natural attribute of the human mind and often works better than slow-and-careful reasoning; this ability can be distorted or misled, and fast cognition can be trained and improved.
Some of these concepts, not the least, the oft-maligned trust of a hunch, a gut feeling and the like.
We get a gut feeling about people (which has given rise to the view we have some of our thinking and doing feeling/thought in places other than our brain and spinal stem). We sometimes, often maybe, act on them.
What about that then? How can we form judgements when we’ve not been in the same proximity as someone. We can’t pick up all those other signals like body language and overall ‘vibe’?
I don’t have a strongly convincing answer to that except my own experiences not forged through lengthy, established physical proximity to others.
Our more simplistic, instinctive, forager selves didn’t live in vast city-metropolis areas and forced ourselves onto tin cans zipping around an underground rail line. We had small, social, often entirely family-based units. We didn’t have much beyond that and we looked after each other in a very harsh, and unpredictable world.
As we’ve ‘tamed’ those dangers, we’ve been able to build the mega-cities we see now and live in a crowded ‘social’ space. Yet, isolation, loneliness within that seems to be on the rise.
So let’s not kid ourselves that the bustle of many is what social is all about.
Because it isn’t — it’s a bit fake social. Physical proximity but often very limited in social interactions.
For example, I go into a dining place to meet 3 other people and the other 106 people there are strangers. Would I be happier in a space JUST with those 3 people? What about the atmosphere and ambience you say?
Well, apart from ‘people watching’ distractions, I’d like to think I was only ‘there’ for those 3 other people anyway so who cares about the 106 strangers? I certainly don’t. Who needs an atmosphere when you’ve got the 3 other people you wanted to be with anyway? You’d create that atmosphere you needed amongst you.
Sure there’s chance meetings and the like. Sometimes they work out. And of course, we tend to be thrown together somewhat by neighbourhood, school, work, sports and hobbies and the like. I’m not suggesting they need to be disbanded but they may well become very different post-pandemic experiences.
Take a sporting affiliation. At 3 pm most Saturdays, I’m with 5,000 other people in a stadium to watch football and support my home-town club Northampton Town FC. If you segment those 5,000 into those who may share political, professional, spiritual and emotional elements, I’m probably truly with 5% of that crowd. People I’d relate to and want to spend time with. Many of the others, outside of that footballing affiliation, I’d have no shared beliefs and wouldn’t want or need them in my most trusted and close social circle.
Physical proximity in that stadium is fleeting and a specific of my social connecting — the shared arena of sport. Have I missed that? Not as much as some might seem. I miss more seeing my Mum pre-match and sharing the experience entirely with my Dad.
Yesterday evening, my wife Teresa and I Zoom-dined with our nephew (Shaun) and his fiancee (Dominika). Was it is as good as when we’d shared the same proximity as in previously co-located dining experiences? Bizarrely, yes. We talked the same, laughed the same and took ages to bring the evening to an end. Without the need to use our cars, someone as designated driver and occasionally interrupted by our respective pets, Dotty and Ella.
I’m really beginning to grasp that a post-pandemic society and social habits will not just be a bit different, they’ll have to be very different.
And we’ll no longer look at digital proximity as a poor second, it’ll become a preference for many and we’ll make it work and adjust and value this more than we might have done before.
We’ll keep strong relationships. Forge new ones. Establish working and hobby collaborations and be distant but together.
To me, social connections are vital. They may have to be reimagined and very different in how we ‘do’ social. And our digital world, often a very poor second until we’re in lockdown, may well become more than a choice for many of us, and more a necessity to build a new world order that involves social connections forged in a very different, but still meaningful, way.
This post may jar with some. I am not writing it for likes, I’m writing it as a sense-making for me, and wondering where others are on their shifts to less physical proximity models of the mind for their social, working and living ways.
Because as I see it, in the blink of an eye — timewise — what we knew social to be, physical proximity-based looks set to become a very different way of being together and yet physically apart.
