The negative effects of the pandemic and our response are being exhaustively documented. But one positive is that people pulled apart by COVID-19 are trying to recreate a spirit of community and connection with others.
Community is about interdependence, so it depends on constant renewal of personal relationships. "The existence of community is always under threat because that process of renewal can always fail or become perverted or distorted. It cannot simply be taken for granted,” Cordner says. Society - in some form - will continue after the pandemic, but community is more fragile.
The isolation forced upon us by the pandemic may lead to a fundamental re-evaluation of what is important to us.Yet Louise Newman, professor of psychiatry at Melbourne University, finds it heartening that people pulled apart by COVID-19 are trying to recreate a spirit of community and connection with others.
At the Royal Women’s Hospital, where Newman is the director of the Centre for Women’s Mental Health, staff have been working 16 hours a day preparing for a surge in cases.
“What that meant in practical terms was that Christians were very, very busy serving everyone that we would say was beneath them, such as slaves. They didn’t think there was an above or beneath.” This self-sacrificial approach lasted three centuries, until Christianity became the Roman Empire’s official religion, and Christians became seduced by power and wealth. But over the centuries Western culture has become so Christianised that a Christian view of community has prevailed, Dickson believes.
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