I didn't introduce the figure, only riffed on it to try to make my point more clear. If it's become a distraction, we should indeed discard it. That said, unique or no, I don't think a situation in which no one is willing to speak to or be spoken to by anyone they don't recognize is one that's especially ordinary for this species either. Certainly it has been anything but in my lifetime, and not only for happening to grow up in a place that wasn't Boston or Seattle.
One of the things I've loved about Baltimore for the quarter century I've lived here has been exactly that it differed in this, but lately that hasn't seemed very much to be the case, and that bothers me, especially to see happen in such a relatively short time.
I'm not inclined to haste in accepting it as normal, especially in the wake of a pandemic that seems to have significantly accelerated a process of cultural disintegration in at least the US. Things were not like this at all five years ago, and it legitimately frightens me that people seem to struggle to remember that, because it means I have to wonder what else may have come to be thought normal five years hence.
One of the things I've loved about Baltimore for the quarter century I've lived here has been exactly that it differed in this, but lately that hasn't seemed very much to be the case, and that bothers me, especially to see happen in such a relatively short time.
I'm not inclined to haste in accepting it as normal, especially in the wake of a pandemic that seems to have significantly accelerated a process of cultural disintegration in at least the US. Things were not like this at all five years ago, and it legitimately frightens me that people seem to struggle to remember that, because it means I have to wonder what else may have come to be thought normal five years hence.