Biden shakes invisible hand11/20/2023 ![]() It is also now considered normal to take and post photos of people in public places without their permission, just to call them out for some supposed infraction. One effect is the staggering presumption with which people will gatecrash into the lives of strangers to tell them that they are stupid and wrong. Social media, with its culture of oversharing and its weird, hybrid tone of public-private utterance, brings strangers together in chaotic ways – lurking, eavesdropping and joining in on each other’s conversations. Living so much of our lives online doesn’t help. Our broken politics and culture wars mean that conversations between strangers on contentious subjects often move quickly into rancour and name-calling. The post-cold war capitalist dream of a borderless world has ended in a wave of wall building and the strict policing of borders and migration routes. Recent surveys reveal a steep decline in social trust and hardened attitudes towards immigrants, refugees and others deemed to be outsiders. How far apart should we stand? When can we chat casually with strangers again, if we ever did it in the first place? Is shaking hands now abolished? The politics of mask-wearing, already fractious, will become more so as shops, buses and trains fill up.Ĭovid has shone an unforgiving light on our already strained relations with strangers. But as life opens up, many of us have forgotten how to behave around those we don’t know. But do people have to stand quite so close together? Must their singing be quite so lusty? Do they really need to put each other in friendly headlocks when someone scores? Well, yes – that’s what fans do at sporting events. How lovely to see Wembley and Wimbledon’s Centre Court almost full. ![]() There should be a new word for that strange mix of hope and alarm inspired by the sight of a post-lockdown crowd.
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