COVID Warning
Reading about Leadership in small scale societies reminded me a lot of the current pandemic we are living through. Being responsible by social distancing and not physically interacting with others has taken a toll on our norm of interacting in college. Just like small-scale societies, we humans look for face to face contact and even though our generation has grown up entirely around technology and social media, I believe we all still need that physical interaction. Humans are emotional beings that need interaction from others often. I know for myself personally I look to interact with someone everyday while I’m stuck in my house.
In the midst of this crisis, we all waited to hear from President Crutcher about what will happen with the rest of our Spring Semester. In our small scale society at the University of Richmond, we look towards our leaders for answers that concern the whole population. It is interesting to see how we as humans have our own small societies and how they affect us on a daily basis. Having a complete change to routine is definitely going to take time to get adjusted to.
In Methods of Gathering Scientific Evidence, it brought into my mind the amount of experiments scientists must be doing in order to know more about this virus. I can imagine sociologists studying how the public reacts during a crisis and how ‘panic buying’ has influenced many people across the US. So many questions can be asked during this crisis using various scientific methods to achieve an answer. It will be interesting to read about the results from all these findings once we finally move past this pandemic.
I completely agree with you that leadership during times of crisis and panic is extremely important and people’s dependency grows. I think it is interesting to think of our UR community as a SSS because that was not a connection that I had made throughout the reading. I wonder how von Rueden and van Vugt would explain the interaction between SSS and LSS, or specifically for our current situation how President Crutcher interacts and influences (or is influenced) by the larger community of universities or the nation?
I agree with the fact that leadership is important, but we need to remember that leaders are also human. This pandemic is something that is new to ALL of us. Dr. Crutcher, President Trump and even our proffersors are making decisions in a tumultuous and ever changing environment. The times we are facing need a lot of patience and willingnesss to adapt.
It is interesting to think about how evidence is gathered at a time like this in regards to the virus. I recently watched the Netflix show “Pandemic” where they basically did retrospective studies on each of the global pandemics of the past. It shows you that while useful, these studies are limited because every situation is different and avoiding our mistakes from the past cannot prevent new issues in the future.