Here's a baby essay about the pandemic and somehow The Walking Dead... idk.

Something a little different; I challenged myself to try to write on one specific topic that I have a definitive opinion about.  The COVID pandemic and its effect on what's already (in my definitive opinion) a jeopardized state of authentic human communication. (Maybe "authentic" isn't the word I'm searching for as much as "optimal/whole" art of communication.)

    I don't know anyone that says they expected the COVID-19 outbreak to occur when it did. I know a few “conspiracy theorists” who can cite “New World Order” predictions and some Bible enthusiasts who may say it was foretold in scripture, but when the virus hit in early 2020, no one was able to definitely state they knew what exactly this meant for humanity. As far as my experience goes, most people thought it was just something that would likely pass once we observed the precautions being implemented and like everything else in our instantly-gratified world, there would be a quick fix.
    Fast forward to a year later and we're still quarantined (to an extent,) we're still masked up, and half a million Americans are dead and plenty more are without jobs; struggling to get by. We've been de-synthesized to the alarming amounts of daily cases and deaths caused by the disease and we've been at each other's throats trying to shout our opinion the loudest into the internet abyss, the only reality we can co-exist in. The internet is where we are all allowed to live now, if we want to be together in mass. To me, this fact is the most noteworthy observation in respect to the pandemic that will carry over into generations to come. We are all getting used to seeing one another through lenses that aren't necessarily directly connected to our brains without a ton of other “noise” in between. Filters and screens and internet connections and all of these things have started launching us into a strictly pixelated existence.
    Maybe this is pessimistic of me, but I believe a lot has already been lost in the ways of authentic communication as we know it. Factors such as tone of voice, inflection and body language are all being tossed to the wavelength-transmission-wolves and I don't really know if that's a “bad” thing more than it's just a “this-will-change-everything-forever” type thing, which can be scary. I know I've, personally, never had to work so hard to feel authentically connected to another human being before and something about that doesn't sit well with me. As humans, I think transcending object permanence is kind of a learned skill and existing in a place where your ENTIRE world is fed to you via things you can simply “click” out of is possibly prepping us for a very lonely existence. Not to mention, I find the emergence of “cancel culture,” which is just a way to make certain individual's online presence disappear instead of confronting and communicating with it, extremely dangerous. You cannot just direct your gaze from an uncomfortable opposition and expect it to disappear.
    We've met this “magic” world where we can close our eyes to anything we don't like and continue our lives as if it doesn't exist. I go round and round with this because I do think people should, ultimately, be able to build their own lives and I do believe having power over what “steers” you DOES include not giving the “bad” things too much attention, but I think there is some cause for alarm.
    Let me try to present an example... This may be a weird go-to and a testament to how I've been spending too much time in quarantine, but fuck it. In the comic book turned TV series, “The Walking Dead”, Rick's group is taken in by Hershel's group. (You may need some knowledge of the show if you really want to grasp where I'm going with this, but you can probably still get it without having watched it, so hang tight.) These groups are VERY different in their exposure to the “outside/real” world. Rick's group has been living on the outside, surviving and learning from authentic experience whereas Hershel's group has been contained and protected by what they think they know about the zombie apocalypse. It's really impossible to say what absolutely would've happened had Rick's group not interfered with Hershel's group and nudged movement from their farm-life bubble to the outside world of gritty survival, BUT, if one reads into the episode where the “walkers” do finally overrun the farm and surrounding town- it stands to reason Hershel's group wouldn't have known how to handle themselves in the case of what was to come. For example, their water well being infected by a walker, unbeknownst to them, the closest town to scavenge supplies from being uncontrollably overtaken by the dead, and the surrounding living groups poaching land and resources.
    This is a case where “cancel culture” REALLY wouldn't work to Hershel's group's benefit and it wouldn't be known until it was RIGHT up on them, literally eating them alive. We can't know what we don't know and if we REFUSE to know what's a “threat” or “challenge” to our desired way of life, it may just eat us alive when it's close enough.
    All this to say, maybe it's not the pandemic specifically, but COVID restrictions have certainly taken the dying art of “being human with one another” and ran it into a new grave, paving the way for further disconnections to be considered not just acceptable, but encouraged commonplace. To be clear, I am NOT suggesting ignoring the advice provided from medical professionals in regards to the virus, but I am solely focusing on the psychological effects and potential aftermath it may leave behind in ways of communication. I leave you with this question that's plagued me long before our modern-day plague- how much does your physical experience with the world shape your metaphysical perception of it? And with that being drastically altered, what could that mean for the future of humanity?