Cafe Rouge. Hanging out in Place du Tertre at the top of Montmartre in Paris.
For the past eight years I have taught an online graphic design course. This is for my old university where I worked when I lived in New York.
When Covid hit, educators all over the world were frog-marched into online teaching. With a stupendous effort by the enormous tribe of teachers and administrators, education limped through the pandemic. This was not entirely successful. While plenty of kids passed their classes, lots of others didn’t or were handed sub-par classes that were a shadow of a true education.
I went from teaching students who chose to learn online to students who were compelled to. Some of the students kind of closed down. And some of them are still closed down. They avoid in-person interactions and have a tendency to do the minimum asked of them. The computer is their problem as well as their escape.
Digital life is draining our creativity. It’s draining our impulse to interact. It’s harming our personal skills. It’s making easy, reactive emotions feel like normal life.
Don’t get me wrong, my students are almost universally lovely people. But I feel an undercurrent of lassitude which is difficult to overcome. Maybe this started before the pandemic but Covid supercharged it. Can you supercharge apathy? Can you combat it?
We as a society and as individuals need to take this on board. Talk to people! Live in the real world! And paint with actual paint. Lmc
This story comes from Living & Painting in France, my monthly pdf magazine. Click here for your free subscription.