The Torment Of Virtuality

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

So the time comes to say goodbye to this year and move on to a new one. Traditionally, many summarize. time to say goodbye to the old year, take stock and open champagne. But for some reason I think that the results are still far away. And the year 2020, although it ends in its calendar framework, will last a little longer, capturing the time and lives of the second pandemic tsunami. This year can be characterized in one word - a pandemic.

The Pushkin Russian Language Institute named the topic of the pandemic and the word "self-isolation" as the most popular in 2020. Not surprising. After all, language is the soul of the people, as the German philologist Wilhelm Humboldt once said. And quarantine has just become our main mental anxiety, depriving us of the usual communication, income, seasons, confidence in the future - this list can go on forever. The pandemic continues to impose on us a different reality that provides at least some kind of protection from uncertainty and fear of disease. That which constituted an important part of our life, that which we did not value - warm live communication - in this other reality we received shaky but support.

Yes, the discovery of the possibilities of the global network has become a grandiose event of the last ten months - it's scary to imagine how we would have lived all this time without it. Of course, the Internet helped us maintain relationships and connections, gave us a chance to continue working and studying. And at the first moment online even seemed quite a convenient option for life. Now we can appreciate this accessible resource. But everything is cognized in comparison - at the same time we began to relate differently to the past, to that which we have lost. After all, any, even the highest quality replica cannot withstand competition with the original, forever remaining a surrogate.

The pandemic with its new rules of life made us think about what we have lost - the right to freely travel the world, visit exhibitions and theaters, and meet with friends. After some time, each of us began to feel an acute lack of something very important. And this important turned out to be the world of physical contact, which cannot be replaced by anything. Having lived in self-isolation mode, we all began to understand how much we lack the usual hugs and touches. A person who possesses all the senses with the help of which he is able to have all the fullness of life has lost the full ability to touch. And this deprived him of his strength and vitality. This is especially noticeable in children - it became difficult for them to study, their behavior changed, they became restless, anxious and at the same time detached. So no modern technology can replace the usual physical presence of another, because it is impossible to know the taste of a kiss through glass.

Isolation and lack of live communication give rise to a violation of the perception of oneself and the external world, as a result - depressive disorders. And a prolonged situation of pandemic uncertainty maintains feelings of fear and anxiety, leading to anxiety personality disorders and panic attacks. And what to do with all this? Of course, to extract the most important from the acquired practice. For example, to think about how to use new knowledge to preserve everything that cannot be replaced by online and high technology. Quarantine has already helped many of us find creative solutions, separate the meaningful from the secondary, and discover alternative sources of inspiration. The coronavirus as a developer literally highlighted on the photographic film of our lives what was previously invisible - we all live a completely new experience, which has every reason to become a collective, pillar of human life for many centuries to come. The main thing is to treat it with attention and remember: we always return from bad to where it was good.

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Psychoanalyst Karine Matveeva

Tel. +7 (985) 998-71-37