Has it hit you?
For a little while now I’ve been working on this ongoing project of creating a Zettelkasten. I’ve been taking a lot of notes in and out of class in order to build what has essentially become a second brain. After reviewing the thoughts I had compiled I noticed some ideas that were starting to connect.
I wanted to explore this idea about distance and how distance can impact how we judge a problem. Because I think people have a hard time acknowledging a problem that isn’t directly impacting them 1.
It’s Just a Cold… It’s Just a Storm
I can’t deny that in the beginning, I had my doubts about Covid 19. Perhaps I was afraid of what it would mean for me and my family if it reached Canada or perhaps I was confident in our Governments ability to handle a pandemic but in the beginning, my friends and I would treasure each other that it was just like the common cold and that it would never make its way to Canada. Silly me…
It wasn’t until the first case in Lynn Valley that it really started to worry me. More information about the virus was becoming available and suddenly the fear of a global pandemic was becoming a reality.
In one of our lessons at school, we talked about Hurricane Katrina. After listening to people tell their stories about the disaster I noticed that some residents of New Orleans reacted to Hurricane Katrina the same way the people I know reacted to Covid 19 2. For the residents of New Orleans, hurricanes were not scary. They had experienced their fair share of them and to some, Hurricane Katrina sounded like another night of harsh winds and lots of rain. For this reason, many who had the option to evacuate felt they did not need to.
At Least It’s Not Happening To Us
It’s hard to look at something terrible that’s happening to people across the world and imagine if that were you. No one wants to place themselves in a difficult situation. Unfortunately, it becomes a problem when we detach ourselves so much that we are no longer prepared for the “What If”.
Terrorism was on the rise in the 1960s and ’70s, with groups like the Provisional Irish Republic Army, Black September, the Baader–Meinhof Group and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. However, all these groups were operating and fighting in Europe or the Middle East. Many American’s believed terrorism only happened on the other side of the world 3. It wasn’t until it made its way to America with domestic terrorist groups like The Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army that they realized terrorism is a threat to every country.
It’s interesting how we detach ourselves from these problem situations, whether it’s on purpose or not. With the people of New Orleans, it was a “boy who cried wolf” type situation. They’d witness so many hurricanes in the past that they were no longer perceived as a threat.
I think our denial of domestic terrorism reaching the west – in the same way as covid – came from this notion that our governments would be prepared to handle such a situation. Or that it wasn’t as big a threat as people say and would fizzle out on the otherwise of the world.
I created this comic strip to summarise the idea that people have a hard time acknowledging a problem that isn’t directly impacting them 1.
