The Beagle editor, In this piece I want to write about what’s wrong in my community, what the cause of that is, and one small way to address it.
Brief Context
(For people not from my region) the Eurobodalla Shire is a small ‘county’ on the southern end of the East Coast of Australia — approx. 40,000 people. It is a popular retirement community (temperate climate, relatively flat topography making nature/ beaches accessible) and the closest ‘beach’ to Canberra — the Nation’s capital city, which means it has a cyclical economy driven by tourist seasons.
During the 2019 fires, the people of this Shire showed an amazing spirit of sharing & caring when it really mattered. The same cannot be said of our response to Covid. As a hospitality operator, I have seen the best and the worst of people. Over the last year the level of rudeness and abuse has risen to unprecedented levels.
A Community Disorder
I will expand on and explain with specific examples, but generally speaking (but relying on direct, personal long-term experience as well as extended, reliable anecdotal evidence) the community exhibits dysfunctional behaviours characterised by:
A marked increase in aggressive behaviour
Impatience
Selfishness (including hoarding) and entitlement
Blame shifting
Low empathy & low tolerance for divergence
Embracing victimhood
It got me thinking why this might be so, and I have developed a theory — as you do.
It seems to me that the community suffers from a malaise that we must label in order to talk about it. I am not a psychiatrist or sociologist, but it seems as if Chronic Community Stress Disorder (CCSD, as opposed to PTSD) may be one way of labelling the dysfunctional emergent community culture.
This community (and others too) have been suffering from a chronic, low grade level of stress for more than 18 months. Rather than one traumatic event/ period, the disorder is characterised by a continuous, lower level of stress that may even be subconscious for many people but manifests itself as a ‘disorder’ because of dysfunctional community behaviours (described above) that significantly depart from the norm.
I am personally somewhat old-school, and not a fan of how ordinary trials and tribulations are labelled as mental health issues to elevate the seriousness just to gain sympathy, seek excuses or get a day off work. I normally subscribe to the idea that people should eat some concrete and just harden up a bit. But I think we may have reached a tipping point here where it is serious enough to warrant honest discussion.
To be clear, the current set of circumstances I have labelled CCSD is by far not the worst times experienced by many communities or even countries. It is just now that we understand mental health better, we can identify things as they are and maybe deal constructively and proactively with it again. (One could argue that the Hippie Movement of the 60s was exactly a global counter-reaction to decades of war and fighting — Vietnam war being the tipping point.)
Similar circumstances may prevail in other regions, particularly neighbouring shires, but I cannot speak to those regions as I am writing from personal experience. Furthermore, the Eurobodalla Shire has the (fourth?) highest median age of all Shires in Australia, which makes the community more susceptible to life’s tribulations, as an aged community is less resilient, and the disorder (CCSD) is more pronounced.
It started with the raging bush fires of the 2019 Summer. It was a traumatic event for hundreds of people who lost homes and loved ones, but it was also a trigger event that raised the level of stress for the entire community for weeks on end. After the fires were extinguished, the levels of stress abated, but did not disappear. How will we recover? Will the insurance pay out? Where am I going to live in the meantime? How do I rebuild if I don’t have enough annual leave? How do I help my elderly parents with this?
Because fewer people were subjected to a traumatic level of stress, the rest of the community could rally and help out. The rest of us experienced some stress. (Is my insurance in order? What will I do with my pets? How will I look after the neighbour’s house while they are away?)
The level of stress was real, but not debilitating. In fact, one might argue that the level of empathy was raised because we had sufficient stress to empathise with others who had more stress.
The fires were followed by flooding which extended the period of stress, and then not long after in mid March 2020, Covid struck. After the initial traumatic event, a community would ordinarily regroup with celebrations and festivals to ‘rebuild’ and even honour the heroes and raise funds and the like. This time around, there was no time for these community healing events.
Anxiety levels spiked. Initially it was fueled by misinformation and later by fear. Irrational hoarding (toilet paper, sanitiser) was rampant, being symptomatic of CCSD (and why one may well call it a ‘disorder’.)
This raised level of stress has now persisted for an extended period of time. For some people it again is catastrophic — they actually became infected and feared for their lives, and for all the rest the number of stressors compounded — albeit not at a traumatic level. People feared for their jobs and were actually without income for extended periods of time. The fear of contracting the virus, employment uncertainty, the physical vulnerability of large portions of the community, the social pressures to comply with rapidly changing ‘rules’ etc.
So, if my theory holds true that this community (and possibly others) suffers from CCSD, then the symptoms of the disorder makes life very difficult to navigate.
The collective mental health of the community is well above my pay grade, but there are a few practical things we can do as a community to make our interactions with each other less fraught with tension and thus contribute to the overall reduction of stress.
So stepping down from grand theories to mundane realities, what can we do to make life better — indeed ‘normal’ — if that is at all attainable?
I doubt very much many people will change their minds from reading a letter to the editor — but maybe, just maybe just a few people can have conversations amongst themselves, or maybe the silent majority can stop being silent. Because we are in this together, and the only way out to do it together.
Required Community Behaviours
I know there are a range of opinions about everything about Covid — and I am sure YOUR opinion is right.
But I want to stick to the FACTS for just a moment:
THIS is not going to go away in a hurry, so there are a few things we as a community can do to make it more tolerable — particularly when it comes to interacting with each other there in the streets and in the shops.
1. STOP ABUSE
It is not the cashier/ operator’s fault that there is a line. Don’t abuse us for it. Every now and then someone will post something about this, yet you persist. Just. Stop. It. And I am talking to YOU, the silent majority, who stand there in line and just watch your ‘neighbour’ abuse the staff without saying anything. You too are guilty of making the problem worse; so please say something.
And BTW, if you get pulled up for bullying like that, don’t turn ‘victim’ and blame the business for poor service.
2. SIGN IN
No small business chooses to force people to sign in, so don’t tell us it’s a conspiracy, tell your Premier or your MP. Because believe me, we have heard every story multiple times. Whatever WE believe is irrelevant, we are bound by leases/ legislation and all that. Just. Sign. In.
Don’t make me complicit in your rebellion, because I am the one that will be fined when the cops arrive, not you.
3. GET SMARTPHONES
Politicians are making stuff up as they go — because to be fair, none of them have any experience in managing a pandemic — so their ‘rules’ don’t always make sense. And once again, WE did not make those rules, so don’t abuse us. One such rule is that we must provide you a means of (manually) signing in if you don’t have a smartphone.
But think about the FACT of the situation: You are making the ‘rule’ worse, and you are making it OUR problem, AND the flow-on effect is that everyone behind you suffers from your decision. So either GET a smartphone, or use your phone that you pretend you don’t have. The FACT is that you are already probably being tracked by CCTV going into that café, so not so sure why you worry that your phone is being ‘tracked’. (I get that there are a few individuals who really can’t afford one, but am equally certain that, given how the community responded during the fires, a plan can be made if you really want it to be made.)
We have helped many of our senior citizens to learn how to use the App, and I am sure so has every other café/coffee shop. All you have to do is ask.
4. SUPPORT LOCAL
The FACT is, it is easy to SHARE a meme on Facebook about ‘supporting local’ and then to feel good and feel that you have done something. The FACT is that sharing a meme and actually shopping local are two different things. Everybody TALKS about the high vacancy rate and someone ELSE must fix the problem (usually the landlord) but the FACT is that the ‘market’ (that is YOU the community) have spoken, and you did not want that shop. That’s tough on the business owner, but that’s the risk we/they live with. But don’t bemoan it, and don’t shift the blame — just support if you want a business to continue.
Supporting local does NOT mean you have to spend money you don’t have. It can be as simple as NOT walking off in a huff when you have to wait in line for a few minutes.
Supporting local means that you check to see if your local business has an online option — they may not be able to rank on the first page of your search, so make the extra effort to search them out specifically.
Support local means NOT writing that bad review even when you had a legitimate bad experience; because the FACT is that no business tries to deliver poor service, and they certainly want your patronage and your money, so there is probably a good reason (as simple as an inexperienced staff member not to mention high levels of anxiety for copping constant abuse) for service not to be up to scratch.
5.CHECK YOUR ENTITLEMENT
When your local coffee shop publishes ‘rules’ — just follow them. You may not agree or understand, but the FACT is you don’t have the context as to what their Covid plan necessitates. Seriously, if there are five open tables, don’t go and sit at the one that has not been cleared because you like the view better. There is a REASON why you should not touch an unsanitised table. To make things worse, you then get impatient and loudly demand the table to be cleared when you have other, safer options. Don’t. Do. That.
For the same reason, don’t bring food or drink from one establishment into another. It should not have to be said from a social etiquette point of view anyway, but it is unhygienic and unsafe, you are disrespecting the effort of the chefs & cooks who are trying very hard to deliver a certain experience, only for YOU to feel YOU are entitled to turn every café into a food court. And, NO, you buying a cup of coffee (or anything else) does NOT entitle anyone else at the table to BYO.
And THAT is how you support local.
In Summary
I really want to appeal to all who read this to understand that almost everybody in this region has been under some level of stress for (going on) 18 months.
We understand that is why normally nice people lash out at service staff and normally sensible people start hoarding toilet paper. But these types of behaviours must stop because it is only human nature for someone being abused to lash out and things escalate pretty quickly from there.
Now the people who are guilty of these behaviours won’t change because they read a post on the internet. So this is an appeal to the people who are one step removed from these situations to call out their family, friends, neighbours and occasionally even strangers.
All you have to say is ‘hey mate, that’s not on.’ Inject a little bit of sanity, one incident at a time.
As (probably) John Stuart Mill said:
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
If we are going to survive this with any sense of community (and to avoid a future outbreak of Hippies again) — just say ‘hey mate, it’s not on’. That’s a great start. Dennis Price
