A friend sent me this link to a story I’d never heard of by EM Forster. It is set in a world where humanity has surrendered to science and technology and accepted that life is better and safer when lived cut off from other human beings, alone in cells that are well-provisioned with electronic communication and entertainment, taken care of by the Machine.
It is a world where “people never touched one another - the custom had become obsolete.”
One character makes a break for it and experiences the outdoors, briefly. “I had got back the sense of space and a man cannot rest then,” he tells his mother, once he is back inside, safe under the control of the protective Machine again.
I don’t generally enjoy science fiction of this kind, where no explanation is given for how the usual way of life - as experienced, with minor adjustments, through all of history - has been swept away and replaced with whatever brand of weirdness the writer would have me believe has taken its place. But after the last two years I don't feel so strongly about the need for some kind of back story. I've had to recognise how easily and quickly everything can alter, and how little anyone really seems to mind.
At a certain point in the story, quite a radical change is made by the Machine. “The development was accepted quietly”, Forster tells us. Once I would have scoffed and insisted to myself that this was poor psychology. Now I know better.
I think the acid test will be when all adults over 18 have been vaccinated (refuseniks excepted). If people are still willing to continue living a purgatorial existence, then we have a problem.
ReplyDeleteI occasionally meet a group of men in the pub and none of us worry about about masks or social distancing. One of them is an anaesthetist at a local hospital and he's usually quite sanguine about Covid, but he recently saw a healthy, 30-year-old man sent up to a specialist unit in London, as both his heart and lungs were packing up. In percentage terms, these are rare cases, but the numbers are growing, so I'm willing to tolerate the mask wearing in crowded places for a little longer.
However, if this really does become the "new normal" with an endless succession of unseen enemies to fear, then the ghost of Orwell will be congratulating himself on his prescience and at that point, we will have to rebel. Either that, or let's ban all the other things that make a premature death more likely, like car driving, sun bathing, drinking alcohol, eating too much cheese, sitting down...the list is endless.
I’m wondering about this bit of your comment: “These are rare cases, but the numbers are growing.”
DeleteBut in any case I don’t question the danger of the virus, only the methods used to deal with it. I was brainwashed at the beginning. I now realise I was completely wrong to be wanting lockdown - whatever the risk, persuasion through leadership was the way to go. Britain has slipped into dangerous waters where dictating to the people has become the norm. I don’t want to be protected; I wanted to be given the information that will help me protect myself & others & I want to be trusted by my government, not patronised & pushes around.