(mysterious music)
- Is the handshake dead?
Amidst the discussion of if and how COVID-19
will change all of our lives for good,
the future of the world's most common greeting
has prompted the greatest debate.
Etiquette experts, culture writers, comedians.
- Let's say elbow bump.
- They've all chimed in to announce their takes
on the fate of the handshake.
While changing centuries-old human nature
doesn't actually sound that easy,
a look back at history reveals wide-spread disease
has been a major driver of innovation,
and that right now is an optimal time
for adjusting some of our most ingrained habits.
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Everybody is trying to figure out
what life is supposed to look like
in a post-COVID world.
For many, it's completely unnatural
to resist shaking hands or hugging friends
or brushing past strangers.
And the reason this feels so off
is because these norms are deep rooted
in Western culture.
- Shaking hands is such an old practice.
It is really a cornerstone of some of our most
basic sociality.
- This is Martha Lincoln.
As a medical and cultural anthropologist,
she studies the connections between health and culture.
- The handshake I think, to Americans feels like
this is what it means to be a member of the public sphere,
is that we touch each other in a specific way.
And there are a lot of studies about how shaking hands
builds trust or perceptions of trustworthiness,
how it affects outcomes in business,
how it makes students perceive teachers
if we shake our students' hands when they're
coming into the classroom.
- Suggesting that something like the handshake
might be gone for good has inspired
such strong reactions because it feels
like this extreme change.
It seems fundamental to how we interact with other humans.
But history suggests that crises can often bring
major, lasting shifts into daily life.
There are early examples from the 14th century
of Bubonic Plague in Europe.
The reason that English people do not kiss cheeks
when they greet each other is because Henry VI
banned the cheek kiss in the 14th century
because of plague.
As the Victorian era is ending and giving way
to a new 19th century discovery that many
infectious diseases are indeed caused by germs.
So we're used to seeing a nice, bourgeois way
to have your home with thick carpets and soft wallpaper,
and lots of ornate furniture. That starts looking like
hiding places for germs.
So that's when bathrooms start to be built
more with porcelain and enamel than with wood, for example,
because there's an understanding that wood is permeable
and germs could get in there.
There was a replacement of wallpaper by paint
and carpets by bare floor.
The way that we that we buy our food now
seems very normal to us.
They used to get food out of a barrel at the store.
And with the awareness that someone might have
touched your food, someone sick might have prepared
your food,
we start seeing individually wrapped candies and pastries,
and we start seeing crackers in boxes instead of
in a barrel. All of that comes from this rethinking
of sanitary norms.
Even though there's been a great deal of change,
those changes get assimilated.
We don't associate them with disease any longer,
and our sense that things are normal is restored.
- So a lot of the things we live with today
are actually a result of diseases of the past,
even though we don't always recognize it.
And that means that not only would it be possible
to see the handshake disappear,
but that the changes from COVID-19 won't stop there.
- It's a door handle, and it's a telephone,
and it's the little pathway across a park, and the
bottle, drinking from a bottle rather than drinking
from a tap.
There's a wealth of little things.
- Michele Acuto is director of the Connected Cities Lab
in Melbourne, where he focuses on how to build
resilient cities.
He explained that crises bring about a period
of forced experimentation that can actually have
positive outcomes.
- Crisis brings about an experimental context
where even the most basic things are turned onto their heads.
- Acuto points to an incident from 2014,
when a transit worker's strike in London forced
commuters to change the way they moved around the city.
Researchers found that during this time,
people actually started taking routes that were
more efficient than their normal commutes.
- Shutting down the tube isn't just
a moment of crisis, but it's now an opportunity
for people to optimize their habits and to think,
well, I can't take the Piccadilly line from A to B,
so I'll explore a bus or realize
that it is but a short walk.
The forced experimentation there is the push
for people to find alternative ways.
That is about understanding the mundane design
behind lots of things and ask ourselves,
is that really the functional way forward?
- So there might be many new habits and designs
that arise and that could quickly become
the new normal.
Hand washing stations have cropped up in public parks,
companies have placed bulk orders
for glass office dividers, proposal for gloves
that also cleanse your hands, for foot-operated doors,
and home learning toys for children are already incoming.
It's not possible to say yet what's going to stick.
History tells us that people will adapt and innovate,
and moments of crisis are actually primed for improvements
that will stay with us long after this disease.
- The handshake, the humble handshake, definitely
deserves quite a lot of praise, because it's getting
people to think about
some of their mundane
and simple things.
The handshake is just the start of
an iceberg of mundane little gestures and objects
that the crisis should bring us back to think about.
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