Writing Skills Re-Discovered in Times of the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic
The current SARS-CoV-2 outbreak resulting in the Covid-19 pandemic is a real change agent. Governments are implementing measures with effects on whole countries and even the whole planet that the democratic world last saw in wars long past.
Social distancing policies around the globe keep families apart, completely alter daily routines of millions of people, and, therefore, have even a disturbingly negative effect on economic life. Suddenly, masses of people are forced to find alternative ways to stay in touch with their loved ones or other humans in general— a necessary condition for staying sane as many a research shows.
On Twitter and LinkedIn there is widely shared post that suggests the Covid-19 pandemic to be the ultimate force in driving digitalization initiatives world-wide — a more effective game changer than any Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Information Officer (CIO) or Chief Digital Officer (CDO) has ever been able to be (see, e.g., [1]).
But there are still a lot of people that find themselves trapped in a void. Virtual communication is only a mediocre replacement for face-to-face conversations and no mach to physical contact. Sports activities are very restricted. Vast numbers of people work from home with all the commute time freed up. And, of course, there are also a lot of people that lost their jobs.
Taken together these factors lead to many people idling for significant amounts of time. Many are even confronted with an inner emptiness or lack of purpose. And many are also struggling financially.
In that condition of societies all over the world it can be observed that people are again focussing more on making a contribution for the common good. Many a hidden skill is brought out into the open. Creative thinking and do-it-yourself activities blossom — reports of such abound in print electronic media.
There is also an observable drive in people to write. Be it text messages to familiy and friends, chatting away with co-workers, or on social media, the volume seems to be increasing significantly. But it is not only volume that is increasing. I would suggest that a lot of these written encounters are also better thought-out and offering more truthfulness than it was the case before the pandemic. Surely, that is not universally true. Nevertheless, the majority of conversations I am involved in or I am observing on social media are now increasingly bringing better crafte ideas to the table.
Given the easy access to publishing means we enjoy nowadays, I suggest that many people are filling their inner emptiness by writing about issues that really touch them. Lacking normal face-to-face conversations I observe a tendency of people to divert to writing about topics important to them and put it out to the public to get feedback. For some, it is not really the public but their friends on social media. But many people crafting texts to focus their thoughts and bring them into a whole that makes sense.
I suspect that it is the lack of feedback people get from virtual interaction that makes them turn to expressing their thoughts in writing. In our nature as human beings it seems to be encoded that direct interaction with other humans is one essential source of a sense of self. Deprived of face-to-face conversations a lot of this feedback function is lost. Hereby, I implicitly assume from my own experience and that of friends, that phone and even video communication is not able to provide the same level of non-verbal feedback as face-to-face communication does. And with that lack of non-verbal feedback it is obviously better to put more thought into the verbal expression — there is an efficiency benefit of writing when direct face-to-face interaction is not available.
In the past, writing was a central part of everyday life. People used well-written letters to exchange ideas and build meaningful relationships when large distances inhibited frequent face-to-face interactions. Maybe it was due to high prices of newly introduced telegraphy and telephony services that made people stay with the traditional remote communication using letters — mostly in hand-writing. On the other hand letters, and written texts in general, are also a very efficient means for elaborating on significant issues and conveying nuanced ideas and emotional context.
Now we have the chance to use the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic with respect to our communication means to re-discover old skills that have been forgotten or at least not used broadly. Letters and other well-crafted texts helped develop long-lasting relationships between humans living apart and most of the great inventions brought about before the age of electronic interaction. Maybe it is my wishful thinking that I sense a trend of people focussing on improving their skills in written communication — instead of hastily posting half-baked and unconnected statements on WhatsApp, Facebook, and other social media. It might also be a transient development that subsides again once the pandemic has ebbed. That would be a pity and I really hope that is not the case.
As all mankind, we now have the opportunity to grow and come out of the Covid-19 pandemic better equipped. We can take advantage of the situation by training and again utilizing skills developed in the past with technology that is available nowadays. In our time, everybody is able to easily publish their thoughts to a world-wide audience. If we train and get better at writing and also in written disourse we will be able build the basis for a new way of bringing together the diverse capabilities of people around the globe to tackle the grand challenges we are all facing together as the human species.
I took myself accountable to that thought by sharpen my writing skills through writing more longer and better structured texts and stories. Getting away from fast shots on Twitter towards expressing connected ideas is not that easy. But in the end, it is necessary to be able to interweaving ones own ideas with other people’s work, so that we can create something really new — for the benefit of all mankind. That is the ultimate purpose. And will lead us to overcome the challenges of our time.
Reference
[1]: Blake Morgan. (Forbes Online).2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2020/04/05/is-covid-19-forcing-your-digital-transformation-12-steps-to-move-faster/#2f65f5f1617b. (last visited 04/12/2020)
Title picture
Petar Milošević / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0). Taken from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Writing_a_letter.jpg without change.
