Isolationist policies
By William Corden
When I was young and growing up in Liverpool we knew every neighbor for a few blocks around. We knew their Moms and Dads, knew who they were, what their Dads did for a living (Mom’s didn’t have jobs back then)
We’d go into their houses and watch TV or they would give us a sandwich for lunch and the whole society was like a village.
That doesn’t happen any more (at least where we live now in urban Vancouver.)
Three houses have sold recently, the owners were our neighbors for the twenty years that we’ve been here and we didn’t even know their last names. Never been inside their houses and had no clue how they made a living, the moving truck just pulled up a week or so ago and they were gone.
No leaving party, no tears for the years and no idea where they were going. Only thing we knew about them was that one family was Chinese and the other French Canadian. The third was in the movie business but we’d never even got to know his first name, never mind the last name..
We maybe said “hello” in passing a few times over that twenty years.
The houses will be ripped down and redeveloped in a couple of months ‘cos that’s what happens here and so there’ll be not a trace of their existence here before the year’s out.
Early last year another neighbor on the next block passed away suddenly, not so much as a requiem for her. Nobody knew if she had relatives or not, nobody knew who was looking after her affairs and there was not even a hint of sadness, sympathy or concern from anyone.
This is where we’ve come to as a society with our “work from home” policies and our “online shopping”. Everybody lives in their own little capsule and there’s no glue to hold us together.
Is it the same all over?