The chaos of COVID-19

I am making use of the explanatory power of Complexity Theory to make more sense of my lived experience. Once we understand the complexity of the COVID-19 pandemic a little better, we can learn from it. We can grow. We can do things better now in the crisis. And we can certainly do things better after the crisis. 
I believe, it would go a long way, if we did not just think about protecting ourselves and our loved ones from catching the virus. Given the numbers I will show below, I find it far more important that each of us thinks first about spreading the virus. Feel healthy and fine and assume you have the virus. It is the safer assumption in this chaotic situation, where all of us know so little. Think of it as physical distancing. Don’t come close to people. Especially not your family in other houses and your friends. Don’t be an unknowing spreader. Be safe and be an unknowing non-spreader. Protect others in any way you can: don’t leave the house if you can do that, wear a mask if you have one, stay your distance to other people, if you can. I believe every little bit of comfort each of us is willing to give up will help all of us a lot. Disproportionately. It’s nonlinear, remember. And stay in touch socially more than ever before. Phone, message, chat, send pictures and jokes, write emails and letters. Do it often. Talk with many.
And the learning for after all this? The opportunities? A crisis makes it very easy to identify our collective and individual vulnerabilities, weaknesses, shortcomings. It also makes it very difficult to address them during a crisis, because it is more difficult to see our robustness, strengths, and achievements. Take note now and let’s remember what we learned about about the quality of our leadership, our societal institutions, our processes of and attitudes to health, education, and the environment. I am sure there are things we can do to at least mitigate the next crisis and perhaps even avoid it. To save lives and make all of our lives a little bit better all the time, not just in crisis.

On the complexity of change

A fractal phenomenon of sacrifice and comfort, of loss and gain, of hope and fear. An experience of chaos. And a time of chance. And opportunity.

Below I will make use of the explanatory power of Complexity Theory to make more sense of my lived experience. Once we understand the complexity of the COVID-19 pandemic a little better, we can learn from it. We can grow. We can do things better now in the crisis. And we can certainly do things better after the crisis.
I believe, it would go a long way, if we did not just think about protecting ourselves and our loved ones from catching the virus. Given the numbers I will show below, I find it far more important that each of us thinks first about spreading the virus. Feel healthy and fine and assume you have the virus. It is the safer assumption in this chaotic situation, where all of us know so little. Think of it as physical distancing. Don’t come close to people. Especially not your family in other houses and your friends. Don’t be an unknowing spreader. Be safe and be an unknowing non-spreader. Protect others in any way you can: don’t leave the house if you can do that, wear a mask if you have one, stay your distance to other people, if you can. I believe every little bit of comfort each of us is willing to give up will help all of us a lot. Disproportionately. It’s nonlinear, remember. And stay in touch socially more than ever before. Phone, message, chat, send pictures and jokes, write emails and letters. Do it often. Talk with many.
And the learning for after all this? The opportunities? A crisis makes it very easy to identify our collective and individual vulnerabilities, weaknesses, shortcomings. It also makes it very difficult to address them during a crisis, because it is more difficult to see our robustness, strengths, and achievements. Take note now and let’s remember what we learned about about the quality of our leadership, our societal institutions, our processes of and attitudes to health, education, and the environment. I am sure there are things we can do to at least mitigate the next crisis and perhaps even avoid it. To save lives and make all of our lives a little bit better all the time, not just in crisis.

Why am I only writing about this now?

My colleagues and I have been teleworking from home for the last three weeks. I did predict that I would have more time to read, to think, to write. It has been 25 days since the first post with my initial thoughts on COVID-19. The next came four days later. And then nothing until now. I had not predicted that I would dedicate longer hours and more effort to my day job, thinking that working from home meant saving work time, having time for other pursuits. I was wrong. And I have been very lucky. Not only my mortgage payments are still withdrawn on the first of the month, my salary comes in at roughly the same time. I have a job to go to and I don’t even have to go to do it. So, the least I can do is do my job well to keep our contractors in gainful employ as newly minted teleworking teachers. And I hope that some good is coming of sharing my thoughts on the COVID-19 pandemic through the rational lens of complexity. And chaos!

Really? Now also Complexity Theory has something to say about COVID-19?

In earlier posts I referenced the Cynefin framework of problem solving by Dave Snowden and his collaborators. I talked about simple and linear problems—which he calls complicated—and I slowly began a discussion of complex problems and complexity in general. Little did I know at the time that I would feel that now I have to dive right into a discussion of the societal and individual situation of COVID-19 as a chaotic problem and could not develop my thinking further about complexity and the solving of complex problems.

Why Complexity Theory after toilet paper, shelter-in-place, social distancing, self-isolation, unemployment, recession, …?
The quality of a theory can be gauged by its power. Many theories have predictive power. When we apply an appropriate powerful theory to a set of observations of a system, we have a chance to predict in what state the system will be next or some time in the future. For complex systems, this is very difficult and perhaps impossible. I would argue that Complexity Theory is often not applied for its predictive power—maybe it even has less of it. For me, its strength is its explanatory power.

Is this chaos?

When is a complex dynamic system—a global process such as the pandemic COVID-19—in chaos?
When we perceive it as such. When the many interacting agents, components, and variables produce stark contrasts of change rapidly. At times, it looks like this rapid change came out of nowhere. At times, a minute action—the ill-informed and ill-advised tweet or utterance of a prominent political actor; the well-intended intervention of a country doctor—impacts the system at an extraordinarily disproportionate scale. At times, a draconian measure—a shelter-in-place order in a whole state or country; the closing of a national border to all non-residents—has dramatic and unpredicted side effects. Especially, when a dynamic system grows nonlinearly and exponentially. This is when it becomes increasingly difficult if not impossible to ascertain the temporary relationship between two agents, between two components, between two variables, because the relationship of any one of these to other agents, components, or variables is blurred. This makes it difficult and nearly impossible to carefully consider the context of the two agents, components, or variables.

Exponential growth

What does nonlinear exponential growth mean? I am not a mathematician; I am simply a person who derives a lot of meaning and sense from numbers. They hardly ever tell the whole story, but they tell you often what to look for in a story. In the story of COVID-19, you might have heard a lot about the doubling rate. Let’s do a very sad and saddening thought experiment because we often remember them better: We have a country—let’s call in Drumland—with 200 million inhabitants. It’s doubling rate is three days. Every three days, twice as many people get sick of an infectious disease.
Day 1=one Day 3=two Day 6=four Day 9=eight
Day 12=16 Day 15=32 Day 18=64 Day 21=128.
After three weeks, more than 100 people are sick. Nobody really notices. People get sick all the time. Yet, these are in addition to the ones who normally get sick during these three weeks.
Day 24=256 Day 27=512 Day 30=1,024 Day 33=2,048
Day 36=4,096 Day 39=8,192 Day 42=16,384.
After six weeks, people begin to notice. Especially, if there are large clusters of sick people in a particular community or group. Some begin to worry. Some take action. It is difficult to understand what is going on. Some action works, some does not. But the infectious disease does not slow down.
In Week 7=65,536 after Week 8=524,288 Week 9=2 million
in Week 10=16 million in Week 11=67 million.
At this rate of exponential growth in this artificial thought experiment, all 200 million people of Drumland are sick after 12 weeks. If this exponential growth were homogeneous.

Nonlinear and not homogeneous

Any process—a complex dynamic system—in a community or society is, of course, not homogeneous. Each person in Drumland can help slow down or speed up the growth rate. Some will stay home and not spread the disease virus. Some are healthy enough to not only be immune soon but also not contagious any longer. Some will help the more vulnerable to be more protected. Some will help heal the sick.

So, we could ride it out? Theoretically, maybe. Some governments worldwide still seem to think so. As I said in a previous post, I have no background in medicine or public health at all. All I can do is look at the numbers and think of the people. If only 1 in 100 infected people dies, in Drumland, this will be 2,000,000. If the health system is fragile, many people did not have a good chance of living healthy beforehand, or measures introduced sped up the growth of the infection, it could be more. Every single person in Drumland who knows at least 100 people will in all likelihood know one other person who succumbed to the virus, to which no one was immune before it arrived.

So what?

So, does Complexity Theory predict doom and gloom? For me it does not. It explains the seriousness of the current situation worldwide. I realize that it is far more serious in some countries, far more threatening in some cities, far more frightening for some families. Yet, I believe that the numbers show clearly that it is not a national problem nor an individual problem. I believe a pandemic is a problem for whole societies, for the world. Individually, we can get through this by staying home and strengthening our immune system further, if we are lucky to have our livelihood secure. If we all assume our individual responsibility for our society as a whole, for our neighbors and the people we have never met, and the people in other corners of this world, what can we do, once we understand one small aspect of this chaotic complex system a little better?

And a verbatim repeat of the beginning:

Once we understand the complexity of the COVID-19 pandemic a little better, we can learn from it. We can grow. We can do things better now in the crisis. And we can certainly do things better after the crisis.
I believe, it would go a long way, if we did not just think about protecting ourselves and our loved ones from catching the virus. Given the numbers above, I find it far more important for each of us thinking about spreading the virus. Feel healthy and fine and assume you have the virus. It is the safer assumption in this chaotic situation, where all of us know so little. Think of it as physical distancing. Don’t come in close proximity to people. Especially not your family in other houses and your friends. Don’t be an unknowing spreader. Be safe and be an unknowing non-spreader. Protect others in any way you can: don’t leave the house if you can do that, wear a mask if you have one, stay your distance to other people, if you can. I believe every little bit of comfort each of us is willing to give up will help all of us a lot. Disproportionately. It’s nonlinear, remember. And stay in touch socially more than ever before. Phone, message, chat, send pictures and jokes, write emails and letters. Do it often. Talk with many.

And the learning for after all this? The chances and opportunities?
A crisis makes it very easy to identify our collective and individual vulnerabilities, weaknesses, shortcomings. It also makes it very difficult to address them during a crisis, because it is more difficult to see our robustness, strengths, and achievements. Take note now and let’s remember what we learned about about the quality of our leadership, our societal institutions, our processes of and attitudes to health, education, and the environment. I am sure there are things we can do to at least mitigate the next crisis and perhaps even avoid it. To save lives and make all of our lives a little bit better all the time, not just in crisis.

Boundaries – Physical, Part 1: What’s “social distancing” got to do with it?

Well, this is turning out to take much longer than I had originally anticipated. I set boundaries for myself at the beginning, and created accountability by announcing what they were. I originally intended to finish my exploration of the Boundaries portion of my BASE model in about one month. Two and a half months later I am just past the halfway point. FAIL! (That’s the unkind voice in my head, and maybe in yours too… but we’ll get to that in due time).

Should I be upset about this? Does it mean I cannot practice very well what it is that I preach? Maybe… nah. This is yet another case where the process is much more important than the product. I hope you’ll agree before all is said and done.

At any rate, this time around we will consider a couple of the areas pertaining to Physical Boundaries. As the post title and headlining GIF imply, physical boundaries are, in some way, similar to other foundational (but often overlooked) things in our lives. Like running water and reliable access to electricity, neither seem to make much of a difference in our lives until they throw us a curve ball; at which point they come to matter more than almost anything!

Since Physical Boundaries are so foundational to successful interactions (look at the GIF at the top again if you’ve already begun to doubt), let’s unpack them according to the first two Boundary aspects under the BASE model: Temporal and Kinetic.

Temporal Physical Boundaries really boil down to the question of how you spend your physical time. So much of our daily physical life is dictated by rhythms and routines that are, at least somewhat, beyond our direct control. We suspend our sleep time and get up in the morning most often because it is necessary to do so in order to be somewhere (work, our child’s/children’s school, an appointment of some sort) by a certain time. We eat at intervals that are as much dictated by imposed societal structures as by our bodies themselves. We do social self-care (e.g. the energy replenishing activities with other or within ourselves) in the spaces between because it is considered “optional” or, worse yet, something superfluous. And then, at day’s end, we return to sleep either because our exhausted bodies and minds force us to, or because of some other external factor, like a spouse or partner whose preferred sleep schedule somehow becomes our own, or one of our many screens that lulls us into a state of semi-conscious surrender.

Whatever the specific circumstances around your personal routines and their attendant physical implications, what I am getting at here is that all too often the interactions between our bodies and the passing of time lacks intentionality and/or is largely reactive. We owe it to ourselves to push back against that default state.

So, do you have a wake-up time that is in your personal interests, and not in the name of your job or some other external obligation? What about your bedtime? Sleep is wonderful and necessary, but it does not need to be something that we just passively try to “do,” or that, worse yet, just happens to us. It really can become an activity that we engage in with intention and deliberation. In fact, it has lately become something of a trending topic. So, naturally, there are people making money off of it! Here are a couple of examples:

Dr. Michael Breus, “The Sleep Doctor”

Hal Elrod (author of “The Miracle Morning”)

My intention here is not to hawk either one of these gentlemen’s products on their behalf. They both do offer sufficient free content, and Elrod’s book is hardly a big investment, for you to begin to educate yourself at very little to no monetary cost. That’s my jam. What you do from there is completely up to you.

What about your eating? Does it feel like something that has meaningful boundaries around it, or is it perhaps more like this (disclaimer – If Louis CK is triggering or otherwise upsetting or unacceptable to you, please skip the video):

If this describes your temporal physical boundaries for food, umm… maybe that’s bad?

While I doubt many of us in are the throes of the kind of chaotic eating habits described in the video, I am also willing to wager that we do not all enact intentional boundaries on our food consumption.

Do you have a daily eating schedule or plan? Not just a routine, a plan. Do you think you could follow one? If you have never given it too much thought, but if you also have felt at times that your relationship to food and food consumption is not where you’d like it to be, there are many options to consider that aren’t keto, paleo, or some other highly restrictive “diet.”

For instance, have you given serious thought to simply implementing some temporal boundaries around when you eat and when you don’t? You’ve probably heard of intermittent fasting, but maybe you immediately rejected it because you thought it might just be another extreme, or passing fad. I’m not here to advocate for it one way or another. All I will say is that having a temporal physical boundary for your food consumption could be an effective way to jumpstart a change for you, especially if you are unsatisfied with how you are currently handling this aspect of your physical life.

Have a look at some options and decide for yourself whether you want to learn more or not: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322293#seven-ways-to-do-intermittent-fasting

And what about social self-care? How much time do you set aside for it? How much of it is driven by external factors, like work or school norms and routines, or by plain old inertia? One of the best ways to start to do more deliberate social self-care from a Temporal Physical Boundaries standpoint is to understand where you most naturally fall on the introversion<->extraversion continuum, and then examine whether how you allocate and spend your time matches up well with that or not. Yes, if you think of your “free” time as similar to any other highly finite resource, like money, then you are more likely to budget and “expend” it wisely and deliberately.

Kinetic Physical Boundaries, or the physical/movement activities in which we do and do not engage. In the case of Physical Boundaries, however, the Kinetic aspect also refers to HOW we engage in certain kinds of activities. Let’s look at just two: social greetings and leave-takings, and then body care.

Remember the hug/handshake fail GIF from the beginning? I have found this to be a great dividing line among people who are otherwise similarly sociable. Some of us are huggers, and some of us are handshakers. Some of us, thankfully an apparently much smaller number, are neither of those two, and prefer to avoid direct physical contact altogether. I call these folks head-nodders. You know, the people who greet you from up close or from afar with just a quick upward or downward nod of their heads. It’s also a particularly United-Statesian move, and one that has thrown many of my international friends and acquaintances for something of a loop. But I digress.

As the caption on the introductory GIF asks, if you are more of a handshaker than a hugger, do you literally use your body to enforce it, putting your hand out at arm’s length before those dreaded huggers can get in too close? Let me be clear, I ask because I am a notorious non-hugger and I am curious how others in my category go about their business. I ask because I have managed to avoid unsolicited hugs for most of my life just through the power of my gaze, facial expression, and general demeanor. I have actually stood next to my partner at social gatherings while people come up to hug her vigorously and then, with barely a glance at me, proceed to step back and extend their hands in order to shake mine. In extreme cases I have had people reach out to start to hug me and then, without a word or overt action on my part, pull back for a more “socially distant” handshake.

So, what does “social distancing” have to do with it? In recent days and weeks, we’ve all had to force ourselves to think differently about our physical proximity to, and degree of interaction with, our fellow humans. Has it been comfortable for you? Has it come somewhat naturally? No answer is “better” than another, but it may give you some concrete insight into your unconscious tendencies and preferences around Kinetic (and Interpersonal, to an extent, but we’ll get to that in a different post) Physical Boundaries.

I’ll just close this segment by saying that, wherever you may default to naturally on the hugger<->handshaker<->head-nodder continuum, you are by no means stuck there. Several months back, a trusted advisor of mine and I were talking about my tendency to enforce physical distance-keeping with just my demeanor. We kept going back and forth about the hows and whys of it all, until she finally said, “Why don’t you just put more energy into have a more open, welcoming way about you? Why not just try it and see what happens?!” Well, she was right. I spent the next weeks and months making more eye contact with strangers, co-workers, friends, and family. Not only has it made people more likely to greet me warmly, even just in passing. More smiles, more friendly hellos, and yes, more hugs. Heck, I’ve even started initiating some hugs with people I would otherwise have never hugged before. We can be more conscious and deliberate about our social distancing, even when there is nothing so urgent as a pandemic pushing us to do so. And we can do it not just to avoid illness, but also to pursue wellness. I hope you’ll keep that in mind…

Lastly, what about body care? Do you have an exercise routine? What about simple stretching, massage, or meditation? Have you ever considered chiropractic or acupuncture? Many of these things are costly, no doubt, and all too often are not (fully) covered by insurance plans. The only counter I would offer to those facts is this: the bill always comes due, either way. If you are not building body care activities into your life in a structured, sustainable way, you are most likely just kicking the physical health can down the road.

If you do not yet have a body care plan and routine, I urge you to start making one. Even if it is just implementing a regular 10+-minute walk into your day, five or more days each week. If you only go to see a physician (of any stripe) when there is something acutely troubling you, I would offer the alternative view that ongoing maintenance is frequently superior to sporadic, urgent troubleshooting. If you are already a regular exerciser, do you do enough to give your body opportunities to rest and recover? And, when you do exercise, do you push yourself productively, but not destructively, via varied workout routines with a range of emphases?

These are challenging kinds of equilibria to pursue, much more to achieve. A former fitness instructor of mine used to frequently urge those of us who took his exercise classes to “find that edge” in whatever we were doing. So, whether we were performing the most challenging version of a particular movement, like a burpee or a pull-up, or a modified version designed to help us gradually improve our strength and flexibility, he was coaching us to find the border between comfort and growth, because that is the space where the most productive investment of physical energy is made.

As leaders, we should always be ready to engage in these kinds of considerations about how, when, and where to invest resources. That is the very nature of most Boundaries, and certainly of physical ones. When conceived of correctly, they are not meant to simply hold us back; when conceived of correctly, they are an excellent tool for helping us grow.

Online—off-line in time of COVID-19

Set of the film “Good bye, Lenin” (Photo: DPA)
from https://www.thelocal.de/20190925/films-east-germany-legacy-east-germans-perceive-them

On the complexity of change

COVID-19: In many parts of the world, regions and institutions are in lock-down, venues of education, culture, and entertainment have been closed, people return to their homes and stay there, supermarkets have closed for a time because their shelves are empty, education administrators advocate the move from – what they call – face-to-face instruction to – what they call – virtual teaching online … I would like to talk a little about the latter two, calling them off-line and online:

This seems to be a good time to tell a story, one of my stories. So, why don’t you sit down comfortably, protect your back, don’t hunch over your reading device … this story might get a little longer. Because it is a story, I will give my best to refrain from weaving in scientific or theoretical references; I will leave the look through the theoretical lens for another time. Why can I do that? Our stories, interrelated narratives, anecdotes are not only complex in and of themselves, they are also a way to make sense of complexity (and sometimes chaos) around us or even in us.

Once upon a time in the last century, I was born in a tiny country that called herself Deutsche Demokratische Republik. Others called her East Germany or Soviet Occupation Zone. There was on-line and off-line even there and then.

Quite early on and also later, my mom would send me shopping with a list, which was off line on a small piece of paper. I would go and stand in line, ask the shop assistant for things from my list. My question never was: Could I have …? It was: Do you have …? And often the answer was: No.

My mom sent me shopping well before stuff was needed – so were many others or they went by themselves, when they were old enough. Mom seemed to know when and where yoghurt or toilet paper was in store. I would buy it then, so we had it at home when it was needed.

Signs on shelves often said: Take Only 2. And that was what I did – as did many others – I took 2, whether I had it on my list or not. It was cheap, and who knows what was to come, we might need it.

Shortages were frequent. One day, I was in a butcher’s. In stead of cold cuts and schnitzel, two small flower pots were on display. I asked whether there was anything behind the counter and was told that, no, everything was exported to make hard-currency cash for the COMECON economy. I did not buy a flower pot, because it was not for sale.

I had always thought that these were characteristics of a command economy with overwhelmed, partially educated, paranoid, underwhelming elderly men in government. The economy was not geared toward consumption; infrastructure and logistics were poorly funded and organized. Well more than 30 years later, I did not expect to see empty shelves in supermarkets …

Let’s move to the second part of my story. Let’s go online.

And then I went online. Occasionally. With the telephone. During my year abroad in Kaluga, Russia, I would go to the local post office. Waited in line. Was told to go into booth number 7. Picked up the receiver. And could talk to my mom in Germany. The line was neither stable nor clear, but we were both grateful about the marvels of technology – I was in the post office booth, she was at a neighbor’s house which actually had a landline telephone. We stayed in touch by whatever means available: telephone, letter (sometimes also given to somebody traveling back from Kaluga to East Germany), or small packages with treasured goodies, in my direction only.

In the early 1990s, I moved to England. Staying in touch with the family got easier. Phone bills were high, and connections were stable and from home to home.

And, I used Gopher and later Mosaic to go online with my office PC. The Internet had emerged, and I was showing students how to find a few German fairy tales or the odd Spiegel article (still hosted on a university main frame computer). In the computer language lab, we used a web page that I had written with a set of annotated links to all texts that I could find and that were in German, in addition to little programs stored on computer disks. Soon after, things came on CDs and had images and sound. Hypertext. The students and I still talked. A lot. We sat in front of the computer(s) and talked. We shared screens in one computer lab and talked. We put in floppy disks and talked. We all learned to type – even umlauts äöüßÄÖÜ – and talked in and about clear writing. We recorded ourselves on stand-alone PCs and listened to audio files and we talked.

In 2001, a few colleagues and I began to design an online course – one semester of learning German from scratch. And we used the telephone to exchange spoken texts and we talked. Students would pick up the phone, punch in a felt 273 different digits upon request, and speak their oral assignment into the phone. The sound file was magically streamed to the server, where I would see it seconds later, listen to it, take some notes, pick up the phone, punch in 273 digits, and record a response that was streamed to the student. I still remember the system’s name: VERA. Vera means hope and belief in a number of languages.

Since, my students and I have emailed, Skyped, built wikis, blogged, discussed and chatted by both writing and speaking, and Zoomed. And we talked both online and off-line. All the time. More than ever before.

Long story. And I have not told the half of it. But where is COVID-19? Apart from the two mentions at the very beginning? The pandemic, the precautions, and the social and individual reaction to the unfolding complex web of events have been here all along. It is the counterpoint and context to my story. And the story is the counterpoint to the complex and – at times – chaotic phenomena of the pandemic, as I am experiencing them here in Southern California, at work, and through the omnipresent media and public discourses. So, let me finish my story by talking about this week. And then I will spare you the theoretical lens. This time only; I will put it on for the next blog post.

I have watched the clip with Walter Ulbricht denying the plan to built the Berlin Wall, listened to rambling propaganda word assemblies of the East German swamp and establishment, heard Erich Honecker explain that green salad just needed to be washed and it would be radiation-free after the Chernobyl disaster, and saw and experienced empty shelves and the shortage of toilet paper in days long gone.
Until 2017, I had hoped that such ill-worded and ideologically biased government statements and speeches at such a low level were a thing of the past. Until this week, I was so sure that I would not see or stand in front of empty store and supermarket shelves, in the country where I live, again. Full disclosure: I have not been to a supermarket this week, but I could not avoid listening to friends and family who have and seeing pictures online.

Online, I have been researching and advocating the considered pedagogic use of digital technologies in education for the last thirty years. This week, it seems, everybody in education, abruptly asked to abandon their classroom, is talking about online learning, virtual teaching, blended, hybrid, asynchronous, … Why am I not relishing the moment? First, the words! A blend should only happen in a blender in the kitchen. It is bad enough, sometimes, if it is done to whisky or wine, inmho. It should not be done to people and with people, I believe. In the relevant literature, hybrid used to mean (until this week, it seems) having a course that was done partially face-to-face, partially online. How is that gonna work when all classes are moved off campus. And virtual teaching? Most professors believe they know what teaching means. Virtual means “being such in essence or effect though not formally recognized.” So, I am asked to teach – virtually – and won’t be recognized for it? By whom?
For many educators who deep down have always believed that computers, digital media, and remote communication are either evil or at least vastly inferior to a close encounter, this change to education not in the classroom, lecture hall, or lab has come too sudden and was enforced from the top or forced upon them by adverse and unusual external circumstances. And I have come to believe, after being a student at the time of the Peaceful Revolution, that change better be gradual and voluntarily embraced by many to be sustainable.

Today, I am hoping that soon we are all going to come out of COVID-19 healthy, being again able to travel to different places without any fear, coming together in families, in small and large groups, and, if you enjoy that sort of thing, in huge gatherings, to have fun and a feeling of community. I am also hoping that online – teaching, learning, and talking – will finally be seen by many as what it is. Just another way of getting in touch with people, learning from one another and about one another. A way to communicate that is neither worse nor better than writing somebody a beautiful letter or chatting with somebody sitting next to them on the sofa or teaching a group in a comfortable classroom. It has always been more important to me that we talk with one another and learn from one another than through what channel and by what means we do this. It is up to us to learn how to use new(er) technologies and other means better. There is a tool for everything, but not everything is a hammer.

Especially in times of crisis or a pandemic, it is important to keep talking to one another truthfully and to keep learning.