Our current situation with its off-and-on lockdowns and quarantines has certainly produced a vast collection of changes to the way we do things. A common belief among most of us is the old saying “The world will never be the same again”.
There is considerable discussion about the long-range consequences of this experience we are all undergoing. We have learned to appreciate the contributions of the health care professionals and folks in the service industries, much as we did with first responders after 9/11.
I am sure we all have gained a deeper appreciation of the blessings of friends and family. I am fortunate to have Beth’s family nearby, but deeply miss holidays and vacations that included Sara’s and John’s families as well. Family “Zoom” sessions are fine, but are no substitute for all of us being together.
The same applies to my close friends. Our Book Club traditionally meets at Max’s Allegheny Tavern each December; how wonderful it will be to resurrect that tradition when things “get back to normal”. Equally wonderful will be the opportunity for our high school gang to return to frequent brunches at Bob Evans.
The success many people have had working from home raises questions about the future of the traditional white-collar office. The effectiveness of holding remote meetings using live, face-to-face messaging technology suggests that a certain amount of business travel will be eliminated in the future. It is easy to suspect that our newfound workplace flexibility will make it easier for families with two breadwinners to balance work with parenting if both parents can work from home most of the time.
An interesting side effect of our isolation has been our dependence upon “home delivery” for a wide variety of items; it seems as if there’s a box outside my front door every time I open it. Ironically it is reminiscent of the 1930s when families without easy access to automobiles relied on home delivery heavily. Will this become a permanent part of our future?
The whole concept of the world not being the same is a matter of degree. The world is changing in some extent continuously, and many of the changes happen so gradually that we are hardly aware of them. Consider, for example, the transition in photography from hand-held cameras with film, to SmartPhones.
The idea of a crisis or earthshaking event producing an irreversible change in the way we live is not new. The first one I recall is the Depression. The adult generations that lived through it were insecure the rest of their lives and committed to frugality and a fear of debt. Somehow this did not transfer to their grandchildren and by the 1980s that aspect of our world had returned to the “Roaring Twenties”.
For Americans, Pearl Harbor was a world changing event. For the rest of the world it was merely one more episode in a horrific drama that began with the rise of totalitarianism and genocide. In this country it was a “wakeup call” reminding us that we were not immune to the unbelievable political and sociological sickness that accelerated in Europe following World War I.
The short-term consequences were immense. The Depression immediately ended and our economy made a dramatic shift to munitions. We quickly morphed from fighting for survival of our country into being the “White Knight” that would save the world for democracy. For a brief time we functioned as a single purpose society.
Hiroshima was a significant world changing event. Suddenly mankind had developed a weapon with the potential to completely wipe out our species and leave the world to cockroaches and their ilk. How well we remember bomb shelters and nearby missile sites.
My next candidate is Sputnik. What a shock it was to realize that the Soviet technology had surpassed ours so much that they were able to orbit a satellite passing over us every ninety minutes! The next thing you know they will be spying on us and dropping bombs on us, without impunity. This event did succeed in shaking us out of our postwar lethargy and initiating programs to enable us to catch up.
Then came the three assassinations in the 1950s and the shock that such things could happen, followed by the realization that our society was permeated with evil. Did they actually change the world? Certainly they changed our perception of it.
Ironically, my wife and I had tickets at the Nixon Theater an evening in November, 1963, when we learned of John Kennedy’s death; the play we were hoping to see was “Camelot”. Despite some complications, our society was enjoying its own Camelot along with Jackie and John Kennedy and their children. Having this illusion shattered changed the world for most of us
What about Supreme Court Decisions? “Brown vs. Board of Education” (1954) and “Roe vs. Wade” (1973) both have had long-term consequences, consequences that did indeed change our world.
Our world has definitely not been the same since 9/11. That event led to our involvement in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an involvement we are still trying to reduce today. For me the biggest shock of 9/11 was the sight of Muslims all over the world dancing in the streets, celebrating the destruction of the Twin Towers. I couldn’t believe so many people hated us. It, of course, also led to a massive increase in the involvement of the federal government in surveillance and policing of individual citizens.
My personal world has changed dramatically twice. Before I met the young lady who became my wife, my life was progressing on a predictable path; I was a confirmed bachelor content to focus my life on my career as an engineer. The world we built together was a wonderful one, dominated by children and ultimately grandchildren. Fifty-four years after we met she died, and my world has not been the same since.