Duty Now For The Future (part four)

What’s the point of enduring a good dystopia if you can’t share it with everybody, hmm?

Trapped at home (as millions of others are), I find ample time for pondering the pandemic and wondering what we’ll find on the other side.

It’s not going to be hugely different, but it’s going to be profoundly different.

And so, following up on previous predictions and prognostications…

The future is masked

Until there is a vaccine, my wife and I plan to wear masks when shopping, running errands, doing indoor appointments, etc.

Expect to see more and more people using masks when they feel slight colds, etc., coming on, especially in communities with large Asian or Middle Eastern populations.

It will become a norm, even if everybody doesn’t do it.

Our family and eventually a few close friends will eventually be allowed back into our home (and we visiting theirs) for socializing, but not as frequently or as many as before.

Not everybody will follow this, especially those who are younger and healthier, but for those of us 60 and older, taking proactive precautions for the foreseeable future only makes common sense.

For me in particular it means no more large scale conventions, possibly even no more small ones if there isn’t a vaccine, quite probably no more club or group meetings.

I’ll be happy to participate in remote programming (see below)  

. . .

Brady Bunching

Zoom and similar apps will replace a lot of meetings, not just business and academic but social gatherings such as clubs and religious groups.  

We will learn to organize in “Brady Bunch”-able numbers, with 9 becoming the optimum maximum number.

For certain types of meetings, recording the proceedings and turning it into a vlog or video for others to share will be an attractive ancillary purpose.  Like panels at conventions, you pack the original bunch with erudite and entertaining people (entertaining in a pundit sense) and others will want to watch / listen in.

We see this (hear this?) already with podcasts; add video / image / media capabilities to enable participants to share film clips and mp3s, and convention panels become a lot more intimate.

I can see something similar happening with religious groups, with a minister / priest / rabbi / imam / guru / shaman interacting with small groups throughout the day / evening / night.

A medium size Protestant church may seat 250 people on a Sunday.  That pastor has an hour or two to preach and interact with congregants, all of whom are pressed for time.  On the other hand, scheduling 6 - 8 mini-sermons / homilies a day for a maximum of 8 participants (beside the pastor) gets the same message across but in a much more personalized manner, and if the pastor spends on 20 minutes on that, there remains 40 minutes to privately chat with any member who needs personal attention.

Indeed, in many churches it’s not usual for the pastor to pass along the personalized attention to deacons or associate pastors who specialize in specific ministries (i.e., children / teens / young adults / newly married / recently divorced / elderly / widowed / etc.)

Separate the church (i.e., body of believers) from the church (i.e., real estate) and suddenly the community can spread around the globe.

(There’s already a movement in this direction, and outside of religious setting there are therapists and consultants who also adapt their practices to online work.)

. . .

Public schools serve as day care for working parents

There, I said it. 

Their most important function is to give single parent families and families where both parents work a place to park their offspring during the bulk of business hours so mom and dad (or just mom, or just dad, or mom & mom, or dad & dad) can earn a living.

That part of the schools’ function will come back -- along with guaranteeing at least one hot meal per child during weekdays -- with students spending much of their time in sports / field trips / music / arts classes to keep them from being bored.  There will be academic and STEM classes, but they will be smaller and only once or twice a week instead of daily. 

That way out of every 100 students, 20 at a time are peeled off from the day care activities and given a short but intensive class on a topic, then swapped out with another 20, etc.  Kids will get more recreational time but academic and STEM classes will stay more sharply focused, offering more one-on-one interaction and facing less disruption from bored students).

The time clock demands of the industrial aged shaped out modern school system, but there’s no need to stick with that outdated model.  Let kids spend 80% of their time in safely supervised but relatively unstructured play (and “play” is only a dirty word to those irredeemable Calvinists out there; the truth is play is one of the most productive things a human beings -- especially a young human being -- can do).  Those that lean hard into academic and STEM topics can be steered into magnet programs to encourage and nurture that, the rest can receive an adequate basic education in math / science / civics / home ec / basic skills and then go to a trade school of their choosing. 

(And for those who fear mass truancy, obviously we’ll need to step up supervision and security, which opens job opportunities…)

© Buzz Dixon