Wearing a mask (I have a surgical mask I’m reusing, and we’ve ordered a couple of cloth ones off Etsy) really alters your perception of the environment. You feel like an invalid even if you’re fine. When only a minority are wearing masks, the perception is of paranoia/illness.
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My actual unconscious need for personal space has increased with just 3 weeks of distancing. Reminds me of how quickly I got used to arms length queuing in the US, when I moved from India where the norm is inches rather than feet, including contact in a crush.
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Ie it’s going to feel weird standing close to others when we get back to doing that. It’s not rational, but I suspect personal space is a very basic knob in the human psyche. Social distance *is* the right term. It’s not “just” physical distance because the physical is social.
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And I say this as someone generally averse to physical contact to begin with. I dislike presumptive huggers, arm-around-back-ers, etc. Tbf I don’t even like shaking hands. So if distancing feels like psyche reprogramming to me, I imagine it must be like PTSD to touchy-feels types
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Every night I have at least one dream of the form: doing normal stuff from the Before Time. Suddenly realize I am way too close to these people, and in a public space without a mask. Then I panic and wake up. This is being deeply internalized as fear for me, 100%
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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OR it becomes the new normal. Until _The Machine Stops_ Maybe surveillance Asia goes one way (crime free, disease free utopia) while the West goes another (theoretically free to leave the house untracked, but there's disease+violence -- safer to stay indoors)? The Libtrn utopia?
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There've been a lot of trends in the West towards staying at home. On the right warnings of crime (regardless of its reality); on the left a fear that every wrong word or gesture with a stranger will be called a micro-aggression, every attempt at courtship could land up in court.
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This thing needs some cheering up