Suspicion

Lockdown is all about breaking the social contacts between people: those many and varied interactions we have with other people, everyday.

Social interaction is a huge part of our lives. To paraphrase the Nobel Economics Laureate Thomas Schelling, in his Micromotives and Macrobehaviour

most human life consists of individuals responding to a context of other individuals’ responses to a context of other individuals’ responses to those who were there to begin with

A walk to the shops, negotiating space those you encounter on the street, on the bus or in the supermarket – all of these things bring other people into close physical contact with you and you with them. Stick humans on a bus or a commuter train, in a cinema or pub and you multiply physical interactions hugely.

All without words.

All without reasoning or reflection.

It’s just how human life is for most of us most of the time: other people (not quiet meditative isolation)

Most of the time our curious soft-haired pink-palmed Super Social Ape lives relatively happily in the presence of strangers.

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s fabulous book Mothers and Others reminds us that this is pretty unusual for apps, for our close cousins even.

Chimps wouldn’t take their offspring to the park to play – they’d not trust other chimps to leave them in one piece.

Chimps on a plane – imagine the Hollywood version – would be one long bloodfest.

We are one of the few higher primates that aloparents – that allows non-relatives to get involved in parenting our offsprings.

To do this we have developed an amazing ability to read each other and each other’s intentions – some of this shaped by genes (e.g. our brains are best understood to have evolved as social barometers rather than utility calculators according to Robin Dunbar). Some of this is culturally shaped (e.g. the etiquettes and social rituals that different communities create and deploy use to make safe spaces with strangers).

But COVID-19 has unpicked some of this: how are we to trust  the people we meet in our daily lives, on our daily exercise or our trip to the shops?

People aren’t showing symptoms but they can still infect us.

People who look like you and me.

How do I know  that you are following social distancing guidance?

How can I tell if you’ve been washing your hands for 20s, several times a day?

How can I tell if you’ve had or not had the virus?

How can I not be suspicious of you and everyone like you? And you of me?