{"id":8716,"date":"2020-03-24T14:54:04","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T14:54:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2020\/03\/30\/social-distancing-as-an-act-of-love\/"},"modified":"2022-09-07T15:32:34","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T19:32:34","slug":"social-distancing-as-an-act-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/social-distancing-as-an-act-of-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Social distancing as an act of love."},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"speakable-p-2 p-text\">The global pandemic of the coronavirus (COVID-19) has called into question everything our culture has taught us about how we space ourselves in relation to other people. By now, we&#8217;re all familiar with the concept of social distancing. But, why is social distancing so hard for us to do?<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_44327\" style=\"width: 460px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/218\/2022\/08\/McArthur-John.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-44327\" class=\"wp-image-44327 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/218\/2022\/08\/McArthur-John.jpg\" alt=\"Outside portrait of John McArthur.\" width=\"450\" height=\"300\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 450px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 450\/300;\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-44327\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">John McArthur, associate professor of communication studies at Furman.<\/p><\/div>\n<p class=\"p-text\">In this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.greenvilleonline.com\/story\/opinion\/2020\/03\/21\/opinion-right-now-social-distancing-act-love\/2882742001\/\">op-ed in the Greenville News<\/a>, and in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.greenvilleonline.com\/story\/news\/2020\/03\/23\/coronavirus-social-distancing-has-changed-how-we-commonly-interact\/2885026001\/\">this news story<\/a> about the same subject, John McArthur, associate professor of communication studies, explains that &#8220;the simple action of declining to engage with each other at personal distance feels awkward because it&#8217;s not what we&#8217;ve been trained to do with people we like. It&#8217;s what we&#8217;ve been trained to do with people we don&#8217;t like.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">However, he wrote, &#8220;in a public health crisis, social distancing is not an act of rejection. It&#8217;s not even an act of fear. Social distancing is an act of love.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The global pandemic of the coronavirus (COVID-19) has called into question everything our culture has taught us about how we space ourselves in relation to other people. By now, we&#8217;re [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":389,"featured_media":18438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,51,76],"tags":[246,255,256],"class_list":["post-8716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-communication-studies","category-top-four-news-3rd-story","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-social-distancing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}