WORDS COUNT: LET’S PROMOTE ONLY ‘PHYSICAL DISTANCING’

WORDS, concepts and phrases are repositories of meaning. They reflect philosophical outlooks to which the message carrier subscribes.

Philosophical, political, legal and other contests about human social organisation often revolve around words and concepts, their use and abuse and, above all, the world outlook they promote. The world is, after all, organised around conceptual paradigms and assumptions.

Words, concepts and phrases sometimes come into popular use without critical examination of their meaning and social implications.

In sociological terms, the concept of “social distance” refers to and describes the level of social interaction and relationships between racial, class, gender, language, sexual orientation and other social categories.

Often, it manifests in “othering” and “laagering” between groups who perceive themselves differently from others. It leads to insular and subtle or pronounced social practices that are at variance with social cohesion.

Politically, the phrase decries forms of conduct that disregard, neglect and are contemptuous of the majority; especially the poor, by a self-serving political, economic and cultural elite.

With Covid-19, “social distancing” has entered our common lexicon inasmuch as it has assumed a new meaning which denotes the act of staying some metres apart from others. However, for progressives, the most appropriate phrase is “physical distancing”.

As we battle the pandemic, we dare not forget that language facilitates the progressive and regressive social norms and values that are ingrained in our collective consciousness. The fight against Covid-19 is a broader philosophical and political one.

To paraphrase the Chilean author Ariel Dorfman, a crisis of this magnitude can lead to our renewal, humanisation or even our destruction.

Our renewal also depends on our ability to socialise thoughts and discursive concepts as critical tools to construct a future inspired by humanist values and ideals. The process also calls for a measure of vigilance and robust engagement with concepts and their uses.

Physical distancing is what we are engaged in when we stand a metre or more away from one another to avoid the spread of the coronavirus. There is social interaction. Social distance is neither what humanity needs nor requires to tackle the pandemic and its aftermath.

The ramifications of the Covid-19 outbreak will underscore the need for multiple social convergences: social inclusion, social solidarity, social compacting, social cohesion, social harmony, social consensus and more even as, like any non-fictitious society, we will continue to differ.

We will be well served by privileging language and thought paradigms which help to promote the unity of purpose in maximising our capacity to address collective human challenges.

So, “physical distancing” it is, as it reflects a temporary and transient feature of a lockdown which will soon be a thing of the past.

“Language facilitates the norms and values in our collective consciousness