Photo by Takeshi Furuishi
Dear Community,
We are social creatures. This period has been -- and will continue to be for quite some time -- both a profound illumination of that, and a deep test of it. How will we use our social-creature qualities (adaptability, creativity, empathy) to think about the long term, while we satisfy our social-creature needs (our desire to connect, touch, see) in the meantime?
We went to visit my mom this weekend, safely with masks and distance and a bag of groceries, books and a challah. We wrestled with it, and ultimately, it felt good. Was it right? There's no simple answer. It will be very interesting -- and important -- to continue to question those things as the re-opening phases roll out. And to question, as we look at schools and workplaces and businesses, what parts from life before are immediately wonderful to bring back, what parts have we lost altogether, and what parts need readjustments from what we've learned?
Again it feels like we’re in that sci-fi movie where we're all experiencing the same movie, just at different parts of the story, and, even though we're now well into Act 2, we still don't know the ending. The difference now is that we're all actively writing the story. Our actions and our decisions determine what comes next.
So how do we wrestle with being social creatures right now? We continue to try to be patient, and listen to the science, and make the best choices we can make as social, creative, interdependent, adaptable humans.
In this week's newsletter, my Zoom talk on Tech, Humanity in the Time of Corona on May 13, this week's #ZoomChallahBake with guest Jake Cohen, my brother Dr. Jordan Shlain's latest Dispatch #8, three short films, and a must read op-ed from Dave Eggers.
To the social creatures in all of us. See you soon or on a square on Zoom.
Love,
Tiffany, Sawyer, Jenny, and the Let it Ripple Film Studio
