Dear Editor,
I was born and raised to study and ponder history. My dad was a habitual student of socio-political history, as well as editor of a weekly newspaper — the two seem to go together. One is the presentation of what’s happened recently and the other is the study of what happened a while back. My dad’s interest dwindled out when the study wandered back in time beyond the (American) Civil War. My interest tends to dwell in . . .
more eldred times. I’m fascinated by the remnants of the cultures that dwelt in North America before the European invasion. I’m also fascinated with findings about the earliest creatures that could be called the ancestors of humans.
There was a time, the fossil evidence indicates, when proto-hominids lived in the trees. For a variety of possible reasons, some of them began to spend more and more time on the ground. Speculative reasons include that the tree cover began to dwindle due to climate change. The new ground-dwellers were more susceptible to certain predators, but on the other hand, could travel much farther and seek out a more varied diet. Upright walking required a different kind of feet, legs and hips, suitable for walking and running, rather than grasping tree limbs. This must have taken many generations and meanwhile, the tree-dwellers on the ground were at a disadvantage. The old normal they were used to had slipped away and there was no going back.
Let’s fast-forward to the present day. A viral outbreak has brought into focus a world of causation we had previously ignored. In order to survive, we must now climb down from the trees, and develop new and different mechanisms of social interaction. Any predictions we might make as to what forms the new mechanisms will take is fraught with the peril of false prophesy. We’ll just have to wait and see. Some are basing their hopes on a vaccine that will diminish the death and morbidity rates of COVID. While that will ease the suffering for some, I don’t think it will allow us to ‘return to normal’. As sad as it is to contemplate, for someone like myself, wrapped in romantic nostalgia, the normal which we enjoyed a year ago is gone, like the safe tree habitat of a million years ago.
Get ready to claim your place in the new normal, whatever that may entail. You may have to change the shape of your feet, or your brain, to be prepared to dwell in the new reality.
Robert Wills, Thorne and Shawville, Que.
