Four Lessons for Life When this Is All over

By Delela Ndlela

It has been almost a year since South Africa went into its first COVID-19 lockdown, and in that time, a whole decade’s worth of change has occurred in the way we live. Most of us are completely different from what we used to be. I am, and the world certainly is. The changes COVID-19 brought were momentous, and the devastation heartrending, but it has not changed the fact that there is still a world out there, one for which we are responsible. When all of this is over, or becomes the permanent normal, we will need to slip back into a full rhythm of life. To do that, we will need to remember everything the pandemic has taught us about ourselves and the world around us.

Here are some things the pandemic has shown me:

1) The office is dead; long live the remote workspace!

Here, I’m not talking about the hit sitcom (that would be blasphemy) but the idea of a fixed workspace. The closure of office spaces during lockdown would have rendered most businesses unproductive for huge periods had they not moved online and worked remotely. In fact, according to a study at Harvard University, not only did remote work salvage production, it raised productivity. It makes sense that workers are more productive at home, given that they spend less time travelling and preparing for work, and are thus able to sleep longer. Remote work also saves costs on fuel, reduces traffic and the need for cars, thus making our cities and towns more walkable spaces. However, remote work is not an unalloyed good. Cleaners, gardeners, security guards and the other workers whose livelihood depends on people working in offices, were hard hit by the impact of the transition to remote offices. Further, some companies in the US have taken the success of remote work as an excuse to pay workers less. ‘If you don’t need to travel or live nearby’ goes the argument, ‘we shouldn’t have to pay you as much.’ The final detriment of remote work is the erasure of the work/life division. It is much easier to separate life from work when the two live in separate places, but when the dining table is also a workstation, things tend to bleed into one another.

2) Avoid fox fake news

Over the course of 2020, we saw stunningly ridiculous narratives, such as the 5G conspiracy theory and antimask ideology, gain traction. These narratives were spread and started not just in the deepest reaches of the internet, but in tabloids, on social media, and on television networks. Fake news is not only an evil, but it also does harm in the real world. BusinessTech, the largest business news website in South Africa, ALTUM SONATUR 17

‘There is something deeply In 2020, Media24 either shut down, comforting about the fact downscaled, or outsourced a whole range of that we are still the same its publications, leading to job losses and creatures our ancestors were, and we are not a poorer media ecosystem. It is expected that publications that fail to find and keep an audience will eventually fold, but the completely lost to the problem for most publications today is not rational, cold world of that they lack a reading public, but a paying technology.’ one. We are absorbing more and more news and paying for less of it, which is a major reports that three telecommunications towers were problem for journalists. destroyed in KZN in January 2021. It would not be Visual and performance artists might have it worse, as too farfetched to claim that the 5G conspiracy had most are self-employed and depend on commissions something to do with it. and grants for a living, and these did not come in 2020 or 2021. Again, it is not that we are not consuming The anti-mask narrative is even more dangerous, media, it is just that we, as individuals and society, are mostly because it is not making verifiable claims, not funding the people who make it. This needs to but rather constructing an incontrovertible world change, fast. view. The reality is that news is not just information; it is also ideology, and ideology is the lens through By paying for our news, we provide media houses which we consider information. Fake news knows with security. Once the bills are paid, journalists this and works to create in its viewers a belief that any can do work that society needs, instead of work that information that does not fit neatly into the ideology advertisers and owners demand. By funding the arts, must be a lie. This is just what right-wing media in we ensure that artists and writers can continue to feed the USA has done. There, masks are not a subject of our art habit with A-grade art instead of commercial scientific argument, but political objects, markers fluff, to be bought and marketed by large corporations. of the tribe. No doubt, this has led to thousands of The reality is that if we do not fund or pay artists, preventable deaths. The profitability of fake news has journalists, writers, and researchers, they will either left us exposed to all sorts of dangers. stop doing their work, or rely more on and supply advertisers, corporations, and other kinds of nefarious It seems counterintuitive that people whose job is actors uninterested in good art or journalism. We have to provide news as accurate as possible would profit to make the media we consume possible, or it will die from lies, but we live in an economy that rewards out. entertainment and politics, not journalistic rigour. There is an incentive for news media to provide us with news that keeps us hooked whether by confirming 4) Computers cannot do everything, and that is a good thing our biases, entertaining us, fooling us into feeling informed, or stirring our paranoia, all of which make Some things cannot be replaced by the internet. us more irrational. The solution to this is to be more Throughout the many stages of lockdown, I have discerning in choosing our news sources, to learn to come to realise that despite technology’s increased note and thus thwart our biases, and perhaps most sophistication, it has not and cannot fulfil or replace importantly: our fundamental human needs. We are still fleshy beings, creatures of the physical world. We still want to 3) Pay for news; fund the arts be present with each other, and to touch one another. We are still creative, random, feeling things and that is In the past year, we have relied on news media, good. There is something deeply comforting about the musicians, actors, novelists, poets, and essayists to fact that we are still the same creatures our ancestors keep us informed of the world around us, or to help were, and we are not completely lost to the rational, us escape it for a little while. However, even as our cold world of technology. There is still the irrational, reliance on artists, journalists and commentators has physical part of human experience that computers risen, our support of them has plummeted. have not mastered or made redundant. We are still human, and we are not done yet.