By Holly Georgious

Does anyone really know?

Life is constantly evolving; we live in a world where change is inevitable, where uncertainty is the only truly certain thing we have. Anything can happen in life, but rarely are we faced with the realities of this until recently. Recently it has become more stark.

It is not the first time that we have been seen the extremes of life nor will it be the last. In 2010 we had swine flu, the NHS computer virus in 2017 and the invention of the internet (quite a bit before my time) in 1983. But this is the first I can remember where there have been two extremes at once. 

So what are these worldly extremes am I talking about? Well the way I see it is there are two types of extremes. These are not only perfectly seen in our current state of affairs but also below with examples:

1) Godly change

5 blooming G. Need I say more. I have spent the last month of my life looking in to 5G. What it can do, what it could do, what it probably won’t but may potentially do and I have to come to the conclusion about something that, like most things in life, no one really knows. 

Some people, many actually, believe it will change the world. That it is the biggest technological advance of our age and that it has the potential to solve some of the biggest problems facing our generation. The environmental emergency withholding 5G has been claimed to ‘save the NHS’, connect the unconnected, predict illness, improve AR, VR. If it’s claims are true then 5G could quite literally saves lives. But that’s just the problem. Nothing is ever as good as it seems. 

We have a tendency to take a something new, something exciting and exaggerate it, put it on a pedestal, treat it like the holy grail and more often than not it’s not.   

2) Doom and gloom

Coronavirus is a great example of  the other kind of worldy extreme. This is where we panic, bulk buy, start tapping elbows instead of shaking hands, wear masks, prepare for Doomsday, when in reality most of us will probably be fine. We may get ill, sure but the majority of people will live to tell the tale.

Mass hysteria, media hysteria is not rare, it’s not new. Schools shutting down, events cancelled, supermarkets selling out – it’s all happened before. Think of  swine flu, mad cow disease, Ebola, foot and mouth, all these things (many significantly worse than coronavirus). And yet this one, this one seems the most end of worldy. 

There are many reasons for that, which are not really worth going in to. But is worth acknowledging this… The truth behind these extremes and our reactions to them all seem to me to stem not from the possibilities of what they can be, but instead from our not knowing. Because what do we really know? The truth with things that are new is that the majority is guess work, a well educated prediction. Ask scientist or doctor honestly about what will happen with coronavirus, or a technologist or mobile operator with 5G and they will tell you the same thing. They can tell you possibilities, estimations, opportunities, but they cannot tell you exacts because the truth is they don’t know. Nobody knows, how can you ever really know till it’s happened. Maybe that’s why we look at the new things in hyperbole, because we are preparing for the best and the worst, or maybe even dreaming up the possibilities. Seems as though we are all just guinea pigs in an ever changing world.