Tuesday, February 16, 2021

Be My Web Valentine

 



It feels like getting back some semblance of "normalcy" will be like Star Trek. You pull into Dodge and it's become a ghost town. Does anyone think that midtown Manhattan's forest of skyscrapers will suddenly be filled with worker bees--when a good deal of the work force has been operating on line with greater efficiency and productivity, due in part to the less time wasted on the commute. Is this the end of classical Freudian analysis? Will patients be reluctant to return to the couch, when they can Zoom with their doctors, who simply disable the video function to insure analytic neutrality? Of  course, socialization will have to occur someday. Neither love nor work can take place indefinitely in a chat room, though the legacy of the pandemic may well be a number of test tube babies which are the product of "cyber" marriages Will some lovers find that it's more exotic to express sweet nothings by way of teleconferencing media? The physical greeting card business has undoubtedly already been diminished by Jacquie Lawson. Will there be a certain romance in not formally meeting your significant other--under the theory that what doesn't exist always has an advantage over the real human being warts and all? Imagine sharing a virtual reality ski vacation without having to worry about broken legs (something which is undoubtedly already in the repertoire of certain "virtual reality" travel agencies). If 70-80% of Americans get vaccinated and herd immunity is achieved by the summer or fall, a kind of reverse Exodus is likely to occur, only what the Chosen, who have survived the pandemic, will return to may be Aldous Huxley's Brave New World with a touch of A  Clockwork Orange thrown in for spice.


Read "As I Lay Down" by Francis Levy, Noise

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