Some of What I Learned During 2021

People need people! We need human contact! It is written into our biology. Living in isolation from our family and friends has had terrible consequences for us physically and for our mental health. Community matters to us, we must live together!

What is the mental attitude we need right now? We must recognize our need for other people and in so doing use common sense and judgement. Don’t engage in extreme sensory deprivation. There is a cost to seeing nobody. Balance judgement and intelligence.?

I have a new awareness and appreciation that our children are not really represented [powerlessness of children and poor job and sloppiness of adults in terms of surrogate to represent children]. There must be a rigorous focus on the rights of children. In effect, we have pulled the children from their future into the present to deal with this pandemic. We must shelter them from the high cost associated with this pandemic. I have often thought of the price our children have already paid. We must put the children’s interest ahead of ours! We must find the best way to compensate and support this generation, who through no fault of their own, nevertheless, are very burdened, unlike prior generations of children. In other words, we owe them a special duty of care going forward.?

Science was a standout performance! The global community of scientists competently pooled their resources together to produce vaccines responsibly and at an unprecedented rate to combat the Covid-19 challenge. The only downside from my perspective was the awful inequality of the vaccine’s distribution. Which by the way still exists!?

Social media during lockdowns and isolations became exaggerated. It’s philosophy of make it-break it-we will fix it later flooded people with misinformation and disinformation. The question now becomes how to recapture benefits and minimize the harms? During the 21st Century, totalitarianism without bodies will use these new technologies of mass surveillance, machine learning and social media to modify human behaviour. This is the struggle between autocracies and democracies. The ‘BIG LIE’ comes at you, now, by many channels.?

Listen-don’t fly off the trigger- to contrarian views! It is important to preserving our democracy! Expose yourself to contrary dialogues and opinions. Listen! Learn! Expose yourself to a book with a different perspective. Don’t be an intellectual bot! Step back from polarization, rage, righteousness and have a little humility. There is no hope for democracy if we can’t listen to people that we radically disagree with and listen to them with civil courtesy and with an open mind. Listening is hard work, especially listening to someone with contrarian ideas.