The Days of Lockdown week 6

 20 April 2020 - Sanity and sanitisation

At no other time in history have people washed their hands as much as they are doing now. Signs of sold-out sanitiser have never been so commonplace. It makes you wonder what the environmental impact of all this handwashing is: how much has our water consumption increased and what’s the effect of all that soap? In any case, the message has sunk in that we need to keep our paws pristine.

Human contact has been deeply sanitised too. Social distancing ensures that nothing ‘untoward’ will occur: no kissing, or even holding hands, let alone sex with someone you’ve just met, or conducting an illicit affair. Our hands are clean, and our behaviour could withstand the scrutiny of the Puritans. “Cleanliness is next to godliness”, we are taught, and we’re doing a great job at the moment.  

One wonders, though, what effect all this sanitisation has on our sanity. The lack of human touch may not only cause depression and weaken our immune system, it can apparently also make us less empathetic. We need to be touched to be touched. The longer the lack of contact continues, the more chance there is that people will start caring less about the ones we’ve been trying to protect with this lockdown. We already see resolve crumbling, people starting to wash their hands of the whole business.

Another side-effect of the lockdown is that life lacks excitement. However, humans have come up with a brilliant scheme to keep the adrenaline flowing. More and more of my sanest friends are falling under the spell of conspiracies. The theories have to become increasingly outlandish to keep the rush going: more fear and outrage are needed to keep the adrenaline-junkies pumped up.

Clean Mind. Source: The Pioneer

In order to keep my own sanity, I have had to clean up my social media accounts. Last week I talked about ‘snoozing’ people, but this week the deluge became so great, I had to stem the tide by unfriending and even blocking some. I have started weaving what I call a ‘web of sanity’ around me, with friends who still retain their critical faculties. So, corona is not just making people sick, it also exposes sick relationships and helps clean them up. ‘Every downside has an upside,’ soccer legend Johan Cruijff used to say.

The fact is, we don’t fare so well in a sterile environment, both mentally and physically. We literally need the microbes on our hands to keep our immune system informed. We need to get our hands dirty, get stuck in with something concrete to do, or we lose our sanity. Hands and minds, the outer and inner world, that’s what it all comes down to now. If we can find a balance, we may be able to clean up our act as a species, and perhaps even cleanse our souls.