"Be well" we sign our emails now, even in business messages to total strangers. But what does it mean? How do we "be well"? During the coronavirus epidemic it means don't get coronavirus, and the sub-text is "stay away from me". Go home. That's what the doctor ordered, and fear has made us obedient.
But is it making us more well or less well? "Well" is one of those ancient monosyllables with a richly suggestive host of meanings. In English the word comes via Saxon from the Old German "welle", meaning wave. Health and good fortune well up like water in a well, or waves on the sea, or they sink like the water table in a drought.
Famous wells such as those at Bath, Wells Cathedral, or Struell Wells in Ireland are fed by actual underground springs, and carry spiritual connotations. Religious structures like cathedrals are built on them. They illustrate the inseparability of the physical and the spiritual.
The COVID19 pandemic has licensed a hazardous flight from the physical. From the biological world we flee to cyber-space, and find that an easy, slack, undemanding and habit-forming place. We are rewarded for withdrawing indoors in front of computer screens, pretending that online networking is no different than meeting others in a cafe or lecture theatre.
Sedentary idleness too is an epidemic, and spreading ever-faster.
Something is lost when scholars, knowledge seekers and philosophers
don't communicate face-to-face. “Virtual” life
is sterile life. We need body language, unconscious
perception of hidden cues, the emotions below words, the expressions
on faces. Our sensory-neural equipment evolved along with our
need to be social, adept at sensing moods of
those around us.
We also
need cues from other species: the scents we pick up while
forest-bathing, the pheromones of plants and animals, the sound of
birds whose songs probably birthed human language. Did early
feminid mothers not chirp at their infants, lulling them with the
lilts of birdsong? In the fullness of time lullaby became verbal and words spun epic stories: religion, drama, literature were born.
These could all but die in isolated cells where people merely watch computer screens. Poets made verse to the rhythm of walking,
musicians created wind instruments with the living breath in their
lungs: we've always tied creativity to physicality, we've never been
robotic – until now. Now that we've created robots we've let them
become the teachers. We follow them, instead of the peregrinating
philosopher talking to the crowds in village after village. Maybe our future world ruler will be Top-Robot-Doctor, who welled up from the poisoned springs of digitalia.
There's
no agora in the middle of town now; it's closed. No village green for the players
to entertain us on, no spicy, sensuous and variegated Silk Trail,
only the online retailer. Its delivery drones save us the trouble of
going outside, getting up from the couch, being physical. It's not
only our muscles that get flabby but also the parts of our brains
that register muscular sensation, and the parts stimulated by smell, touch, vision and hearing.
Fearing
that our bodies might catch a virus, we abandon bodies. We live without enchantment, a word
related to “chant” and “cantare”, to sing. We
don't sing and we don't recite; we merely speak to “Siri” and
“Alexa” in their language: cybernetics. We have
abandoned our inner animal, but our wild selves still keen and
howl at night in dreams of lost
physicality, dreams of longing.
The
region of the brain supporting memory lies alongside the area devoted
to smell. Leaves and flowers, humus-y soil and salty seas give off
smell for a reason. They trigger communication among species, and
they stimulate memory. Without physicality we become dumbed-down prematurely senile amnesiacs.
Solitude too deepens life and mind, and hibernation
provides rest, but immersion in online chatter is not real solitude,
and the point of hibernation is to wake up refreshed. Let's not consent
therefore to the theft of sensation and the freedom to roam, for physicality is our robust
core (“robustus” -- strength). Without strength you cannot
fight any virus. So let's call up our physical being, out of doors. That's what “be well” means.
Stay strong - let nature be your guide
