Photo by Gylfi Gylfason from Pexels

We’ve Been Zapped By The Shrink Gun

A lot of kids’ cartoons use the story telling device of the gun which can shrink/grow anything it’s pointed at. Cue ant-sized adventures, skyscraper-sized adventures, molecular-level adventures and everything in between.

It feels like there’s one of these contraptions pointed at us and it’s stuck in random mode.

First the world shrinks. We grow up in an increasingly globalized society with cheap international travel. We get the internet. Everywhere and everything is possible. The world feels small — in the palm of our hands.

Then the world expands. Climate change makes long haul travel less ethical. In the UK, we voluntarily sever our links to our continent. The world feels big — others, far away.

Next, pandemic. For months our world becomes our apartment, our street, as far as we can walk from our front door.

No wonder our brains are frazzled.