5 ms·

> Intrigued by the pervasive sense of pandemic-induced time distortion, psychologists at first speculated that loss of temporal landmarks was at work: office, g

> Intrigued by the pervasive sense of pandemic-induced time distortion, psychologists at first speculated that loss of temporal landmarks was at work: office, gym, pulling on of pants. Words such as “Blursday” crept into the vocabulary, along with “polycrisis” and “permacrisis,” referring to the plethora of perturbances creating instability, pushing time out of sync: war, climate, politics. I dont know. To me it seems like the obvious answer is a bunch of people who have never been depressed before became depressed during covid.

atoav 3y ago
As a freelancer who always lived like that (but ironically had to work with people throughtout the whole pandemic): I thought it was kind of curious what toll that livestyle change took on people. Granted I did choose that life voluntarily and it naturally feels different if something is forced on you — but the pandemic was really revealing in many ways. I was surprised how afraid many people are of being left to themselves in their own flats and what a big topic this was for them. Many people don't seem to have any other interest than meeting other people. On top of they couldn't take it that a governmental body mandated some reasonable rules binding them within a global pandemic of a (back then: unknown) virus. So they priorized their hurt feelings over the literal existence of hundreds of their peers, whom they ironically longed to see. As if they were leeches who miss their hosts. It also revealed some interesting things about social contracts, about who is really essential for the functioning of a society and how little we value them. A friens of mine is kindergardener, and he came close to quitting, as his illusions of what his job is were utterly shattered, as it became clear that many parents did not care about the safety of their own and other kids or about the staff. People just wanted to get rid of their kids and they hated being alone with them as much as they hated being alone with themselves. Mow I am of course underlining all the bad actors and not the many heroic, reasonable, strong and caring people who volunteered to help others. But the number of bad actors shocked me. If anything, the whole episode left me with the feeling that I am a stable adult person with a good moral compass and that many people of whom I had assumed the same are neither.
- firstplacelast 3y ago
  That is a lot and while I agree somewhat it is lacking empathy, I think. I'm an introvert, I remember craving friendly interaction 6-months in and then being worried about my extrovert friends. If I am feeling crazy about the lack of human interaction, I KNEW some friends that must be having a hard time. I made it a point to call those people to catch up. I do agree about the weird "hero/essential workers", the same "salt of the earth" BS that has been spouted for decades. Essential people that we want to pay like crap to keep our society running. They should all stop, be willing to die, until they are paid enough to buy a crappy home. Essential means they have big negotiating power, organize/unionize and stick the screws to society. Think like a CEO. Also saw all the crazy bad actors, the insane takes on social media (on both sides- though more so on one side), the insanity, the lack of nuance, the shit throwing...I lost a lot of respect for humanity. As a person that was working in biotech in an R&D department at the time, something in my brain broke. Could not care anymore about making the world better, helping people live longer, contributing to coffers of multi-millionaires bc I was "making the world better". Just done with it. There's no global moral compass, otherwise you would jump off a bridge, just a local one, as far as I'm concerned.
  - atoav 3y ago
    > That is a lot and while I agree somewhat it is lacking empathy, I think. Don't get me wrong here, I am a very (sometimes overly) empathic person, I am the guy people run to for advice when they want to know how to talk to other people, because I can put myself into other people's shoes. But that doesn't necessarily mean I like what I see when I put myself into thoes shoes. So if my post sounds unempathic, it does so because it is the pure distilled cycism of someone who really has it up to here with a certain unempathic, egomanic type of person — call it a enritled, vocal, screaming minority if you will. I understand how horrible the whole thing felt to them. To a certain degree I even subscribe to Schopenhauer's notion of: "A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants", so I am not even sure they can be blamed that they felt that way. But because I understand a feeling doesn't mean I have to approve with the actions and words they derived from those feelings. That doesn't mean that in my view we gave those people way to much area on the stage of the pandemic as opposed to all the pressing social issues that actually emerged.
logicchains 3y ago
Recent research supports this: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2809947 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... . People staying at home led to depression, and the less people went out, the more depressed they were.

atoav 3y ago

As a freelancer who always lived like that (but ironically had to work with people throughtout the whole pandemic): I thought it was kind of curious what toll that livestyle change took on people. Granted I did choose that life voluntarily and it naturally feels different if something is forced on you — but the pandemic was really revealing in many ways. I was surprised how afraid many people are of being left to themselves in their own flats and what a big topic this was for them. Many people don't seem to have any other interest than meeting other people. On top of they couldn't take it that a governmental body mandated some reasonable rules binding them within a global pandemic of a (back then: unknown) virus. So they priorized their hurt feelings over the literal existence of hundreds of their peers, whom they ironically longed to see. As if they were leeches who miss their hosts. It also revealed some interesting things about social contracts, about who is really essential for the functioning of a society and how little we value them. A friens of mine is kindergardener, and he came close to quitting, as his illusions of what his job is were utterly shattered, as it became clear that many parents did not care about the safety of their own and other kids or about the staff. People just wanted to get rid of their kids and they hated being alone with them as much as they hated being alone with themselves. Mow I am of course underlining all the bad actors and not the many heroic, reasonable, strong and caring people who volunteered to help others. But the number of bad actors shocked me. If anything, the whole episode left me with the feeling that I am a stable adult person with a good moral compass and that many people of whom I had assumed the same are neither.

firstplacelast 3y ago
That is a lot and while I agree somewhat it is lacking empathy, I think. I'm an introvert, I remember craving friendly interaction 6-months in and then being worried about my extrovert friends. If I am feeling crazy about the lack of human interaction, I KNEW some friends that must be having a hard time. I made it a point to call those people to catch up. I do agree about the weird "hero/essential workers", the same "salt of the earth" BS that has been spouted for decades. Essential people that we want to pay like crap to keep our society running. They should all stop, be willing to die, until they are paid enough to buy a crappy home. Essential means they have big negotiating power, organize/unionize and stick the screws to society. Think like a CEO. Also saw all the crazy bad actors, the insane takes on social media (on both sides- though more so on one side), the insanity, the lack of nuance, the shit throwing...I lost a lot of respect for humanity. As a person that was working in biotech in an R&D department at the time, something in my brain broke. Could not care anymore about making the world better, helping people live longer, contributing to coffers of multi-millionaires bc I was "making the world better". Just done with it. There's no global moral compass, otherwise you would jump off a bridge, just a local one, as far as I'm concerned.
- atoav 3y ago
  > That is a lot and while I agree somewhat it is lacking empathy, I think. Don't get me wrong here, I am a very (sometimes overly) empathic person, I am the guy people run to for advice when they want to know how to talk to other people, because I can put myself into other people's shoes. But that doesn't necessarily mean I like what I see when I put myself into thoes shoes. So if my post sounds unempathic, it does so because it is the pure distilled cycism of someone who really has it up to here with a certain unempathic, egomanic type of person — call it a enritled, vocal, screaming minority if you will. I understand how horrible the whole thing felt to them. To a certain degree I even subscribe to Schopenhauer's notion of: "A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants", so I am not even sure they can be blamed that they felt that way. But because I understand a feeling doesn't mean I have to approve with the actions and words they derived from those feelings. That doesn't mean that in my view we gave those people way to much area on the stage of the pandemic as opposed to all the pressing social issues that actually emerged.

logicchains 3y ago

Recent research supports this: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2809947 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... . People staying at home led to depression, and the less people went out, the more depressed they were.