The self-isolation regime, extended until the end of April, is not just a necessity that we have come to terms with: many of us are gradually learning to receive benefits and pleasure from an unusual situation. However, the philosophy of internal quarantine can lead to certain consequences. Why can’t we shut ourselves out of problems by slamming the door behind us, and are we ready to act together when we go outside?
Life in self-isolation has become the most discussed topic, and despite the fact that new borders have been erected between countries, we have stepped into a world where everyone is connected, where someone else’s misfortune becomes ours, whether we like it or not. Having recovered from the first wave of horror of general entropy and worries due to the collapse of plans, we are slowly starting to settle in a new reality.
The Internet carefully provides recommendations on what you can spend unexpectedly free time on, and we are trying to bring a little comfort to what is happening and even have fun. Self-isolation seems to be the only possible plan of salvation. However, in order to finally overcome the common misfortune, this is clearly not enough. Today, many experts believe that we will have to deal with the consequences of not only external, but also internal quarantine, to which we are beginning to adapt.
“Self-isolation does not give any harmony with oneself,” says the Jungian analyst Lev Khegai. – It is based not on the desire for solitude for the sake of self-development, but on fear and a ban on contact with the real world. And the dangerous virus only exposed a negative trend – our long-standing unconscious attempt to isolate ourselves from people and reality.
At the end of the XNUMXth century, Europe began to tilt towards secular humanism, which puts the individual above society. This was an understandable reaction to the bloody consequences of world wars and totalitarian ideologies, which, in turn, degenerated into extreme individualism, the desire to live only for oneself, beloved. The image, first media or advertising, and then digital – an avatar, an account on social networks – began to displace a real person. And symbolic quarantine began before the coronavirus.
We are equally developed inclinations both to cooperation and mutual assistance, and to the idea of “even a flood after us”
“It happened a long time ago on a mental level,” says Lev Khegay. “The other person as the source of today’s infection turned out to be an illustration of our desire to exclude living people and any external reality with its inevitable limitations from our world for the sake of the virtual reality that illusory satisfies all our desires. Exclude the Other as interfering with the internal quarantine, for which we seem to have been preparing for a long time.
We stay at home, ordering online, and we are determined to keep everything the same as before: hot pizza at the click of a mouse. It still seems to us that if we slam the door, there is hope that nothing bad will come to our small, fenced-in world. However, it gradually becomes clear that the philosophy of strict quarantine alone will not save. Is there any hope that the forced departure from the “big world” will eventually give us an understanding: we can all equally be defenseless and need each other?
“Right now we are seeing a successful example of #wetogether volunteer units, helping the elderly,” comments Gestalt therapist Maria Lekareva-Bozenenkova. “However, we are equally developed inclinations both for cooperation and mutual assistance, and for the idea of “even a flood after us.” Isolation, virus, collapse will write everything off. To whom is war, and to whom is mother dear.
In the end, we run the risk of discovering that if we are all united and equally vulnerable to the disease, then we are not at all equal before the consequences of the economic crisis that accompanies this disease. And social stratification will cause further tension.”
When sooner or later we take to the streets, we are likely to face difficult times. And if we do not help each other, do not try to find a common language on many difficult issues, do not conclude a truce, do not think about those who cannot provide themselves with the most necessary things, then it is unclear how we will feel after the pandemic we have experienced. If we leave the house all with the same philosophy of internal quarantine.