Current Philosophy student, Daniel Terry, reflects on the past year. This blog post is the result of the six-week Pandemic Philosophy Project conducted by Head of Department, Dr Graeme A. Forbes and philosophy students at Kent.<\/p>\n
By Daniel Terry<\/strong><\/p>\n For a philosophy student, isolation can be a blessing and a curse. \u201cA blessing, for sure\u201d I thought as I headed out of my last Stage 1 lecture back in March 2020, \u201cPhilosophy is probably best done within the familiar walls of my own head anyway.\u201d Back then, it was all too easy to believe in that age-old stereotype of what you might call \u2018the philosopher in their natural habitat\u2019: red armchair, fireplace, book in hand, alone<\/em>. So, I went about embracing the country\u2019s lockdown announcement with welcome arms. \u201cHunker down and do philosophy!\u201d Mr Johnson seemed to tell me on the news. And so I did. How did that go? Not as well as I had hoped.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t really take long for my confidence to crack, in all honesty. Beneath the readiness to tackle studying in a new setting, I had no idea how to make sense of the whole thing. Moreover, I had no idea how to even feel<\/em> about it from the outset. The prospect of ploughing on with reading philosophy, in truth, simply stepped in for an unsettling inability to gauge the severity and likely consequences of a new virus, a national lockdown, and<\/em> remote learning. There was no \u2018global disaster\u2019 to fork out of my memory for guidance, meaning every thought I had about the future of Covid played an endless game of ping-pong with itself in my head. Watching your worries go back and forth like that is manageable for a while, but eventually it takes a toll. To be specific, my ability to maintain focus on my studies \u2013 something I actually wagered would improve<\/em> in isolation \u2013 became more difficult with each passing week. It\u2019s worth pointing out that only now, with the benefit of hindsight, is it clear I wasn\u2019t the only one dealing with this problem.<\/p>\n Consider this: when we refer to \u2018uncharted waters\u2019 on a map, we mean that the part of the map we\u2019re talking about is still being figured out. And by \u2018figured out\u2019 I mean that we\u2019re still communicating<\/em> between ourselves about what\u2019s out there and how we\u2019d go about navigating it. This is, very broadly, what philosopher Donald Davidson in his work calls \u2018triangulation\u2019 \u2013 the idea that forming concepts about the world requires us, among other things, to engage and communicate with the other people <\/em>we share the world with. We keep confusion about the world at arm\u2019s length by exchanging and comparing our descriptions of it with descriptions made by those around us. Whether people smile or frown at your descriptions isn\u2019t important; what matters is that you\u2019ve got some kind of intelligible response that you can work with at all. <\/em>How much does this have to do with Covid and isolation? A lot.<\/p>\n As our familiar social habits become distorted by isolation, so too does the way in which we communicate with one another. In spite of their boons, not even Zoom and Microsoft Teams tick all the boxes here. The problem isn\u2019t that it has been impossible to communicate in isolation full stop, but rather that communicating what emotional state we\u2019re in has become a whole lot harder. The subtle signals we deal in when we socialise in person, from reassuring smiles to worried eyes, play an essential role in how we \u2013 to draw on Davidson \u2013 emotionally<\/em> triangulate ourselves in the face of the unknown. In other words, when we\u2019re clueless over how to feel in the wake of a global pandemic, we need these signals to provide a rough guide. Without them, there\u2019s never an answer to the question \u2018Should I be worried, relaxed, or something in between?\u2019, which, as a result, turns our heads into echo-chambers recycling the same anxious thoughts over and over.<\/p>\n To those still wrestling with anxious thoughts of this kind, the news that in-person interaction is making a return might not have the ring of relief to it. The truth is that, having gone so long without the ability to emotionally triangulate, many of us are going to feel off-balance walking fresh into a crowded room again. I can\u2019t fault that feeling \u2013 it\u2019s simply the unwanted cost of having lived a year with no social legroom. But, it\u2019s a cost that I\u2019m personally determined to make up for. Overcoming the effects of isolation will mean stepping back into communal life blindly in spite of the temptation to throw the towel in and stay indoors. It means being ready to communicate with one another openly in the knowledge that everyone is resurfacing with the same cautious steps. For those students who feel more reclusive than ever this year, doing this will sound awful. But I sincerely encourage you, from one ex-isolated student to another, to try. I just as much encourage those who weathered isolation better than most to try to be mindful of the mental hurdles blocking others from interacting with a room full of faces this time around. Socialising after the last year will be tough and, at times, it\u2019ll feel incredibly awkward, but it\u2019ll be worth it. We\u2019re facing uncharted waters again, only this time we\u2019ve got the opportunity to navigate it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"