When Albert Camus published his allegorical story The Plague in 1947 about a deadly plague sweeping the French city of Oran in 1849, he raised a number of questions about the nature of the human condition. “I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends,” one of his characters says. Later Camus reflects that “a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour …when all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.”

As we share the experience of a dystopian world of rapidly spreading disease, political despair and economic disaster, Camus’s words have renewed meaning. They help us remember what is truly important in a world in which we find ourselves increasingly isolated from each other, not only now in an abundance of caution, but because of growing isolation derived from social media in a computer age which fosters disconnection from each other.

That kind of solitude has meant a notable decline in courtesy, responsiveness, and compassion such that we no longer feel it necessary to respond to each other, to check on each other, to truly care about others. Our communities are now virtual to a large extent and loneliness has crept into the lives of many, especially those with limited mobility or age-related restrictions.

We have for too long been disinterested in others and disconnected from each other. Basic responsiveness and reciprocity have all but disappeared. Now we find ourselves living on a planet spiraling out of control, its inhabitants pleading for a return to safety, and a return to communal well-being. It’s almost as if a higher order – some may call it God – is begging us to return to our fundamental humanity before it’s too late.

The earth itself seems to weep for what we’ve lost by casting upon us catastrophic floods, fires, and famine as we struggle to survive and now to cling to hope.

Of course, there are those among us who bear witness and who offer heart-based action. We donate money, share information, and volunteer while learning to grasp the lessons of isolation, among which are knowing how much we need each other for comfort and survival, practically and emotionally. We recognize our shared fragility and reach out to each other with virtual hugs.

In contrast there will always be those people who don’t look beyond themselves and who ignore and exploit others while remaining complacent, and even finding perverse pleasure in their ignorance and selfishness. We may never be able to expect more of them. As a Facebook post admonished, “Next time you want to judge boat people, refugees, migrants fleeing war-torn lands, remember that we fought over toilet paper.”

But the vast majority of us realize the urgency of compassionate, face-to-face interactive community. We often mourn the downside of computer-driven solitude and work-from-home opportunities, even though now our solitude and work are relieved by computer connection. Perhaps above all, we understand more than ever what can happen when our political leadership fails us and what we can do for each other in the face of such failure.

Still we carry on, and hopefully grow from the current experience of this shared, separative crisis. We offer virtual hugs and comfort, not in fear and despair so much as with the knowledge that our aloneness is no longer sufficient once we reach a new normal. We understand that we must actively and visibly renew our obligation to, and affection for one another. Perhaps in that renewed knowing we can dare to steward ourselves toward a new world in which we shepherd each other back to a place where we can once again wrap our arms around each other in the knowledge that together, we can, as Winston Churchill once said, “brace ourselves … [and be able once again] to say, This was [our] finest hour.”

A despairing F. Scott Fitzgerald, quarantined in 1920 as a result of the Spanish flu, was able to write to a friend, “I weep for the damned eventualities this future brings. … And yet, … I focus on a single strain of light, calling me forth to believe in a better tomorrow.”

Even more inspiring is a poem by Lynn Ungar, a San Francisco poet, called Pandemic, circulating online, in which she writes, “Know that you are connected in ways that are terrifying and beautiful. Know that our lives are in one another’s hands. Reach out your hearts. Reach out your words. Reach out the tendrils of compassion that move, invisibly, where we cannot touch. Promise this world your love – for better for for worse, in sickness and health, so long as we all shall live.”

Amen.

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Elayne Clift writes from Saxtons River. Vt. www.elayne-clift.com

In 411 BC, a comedy by Aristophanes rocked Greece. Lysistrata was a play about one woman’s mission to end the Peloponnesian War by persuading other women to withhold sex from their husbands and lovers until they had negotiated a peaceful settlement.

More than two millennia later, on October 24, 1975, 90 percent of women in Iceland went on strike for a day in the name of economic and social justice. They refused to go to work, to cook or to take care of children. It called to a halt every sector of the country.

On April 25, 2004 the national Mall in Washington, DC witnessed the March for Women's Lives which drew over 800,000 people. Organized by the Feminist Majority, NARAL Pro-Choice America, NOW and Planned Parenthood Federation of America among others multi-generational attendees focused on reproductive rights alongside entertainers, politicians and icons of the feminist movement. The press had a field day.

Each of those events represents a strategy for social change that helped shape history. I’m wondering where such strategies are now among women’s organizations.

Following the recent Black Lives Matter marches that were so effective in garnering media attention and which helped push President Obama to call for renewed efforts to enact new gun-related regulations, I began to wonder why there isn’t a more visible, strategic presence among women’s organizations given the growing attacks on women’s reproductive rights at both national and state levels.

While I recall the power of the many marches I participated in during the 1980s in which issues such as abortion, women’s privacy and their human rights were captured through sheer numbers, compelling personal testimonies, and a responsive media, I’m not necessarily making a case for such mass protests as the best strategy. I understand that from police protection to publicity to Porta-potties, such events involve extraordinary organizational skills and plenty of personnel. They are also hugely expensive. I also know that many of the marches of my day had less than the desired impact on legislation.

I get as well that social media and the Internet have changed the way organizations do things in major ways. But beyond asking people to sign petitions and donate money what is their impact in the absence of human-face, big numbers activism? What exactly is the social media strategy? And what is being done to augment it? (I ask these questions while acknowledging Planned Parenthood’s impressive use of social media under the leadership of Cecile Richards.)

So I decided to put these questions to more than half a dozen key women’s organizations – including the very ones that had organized the 2004 March for Women’s Lives. It breaks my heart to report that with one exception none of them even bothered to answer my repeated calls and emails, even though I’m a bona fide journalist with a certain amount of name recognition among these groups. (Perhaps, like the National Organization for Women they’re too busy promoting “pink Viagra”). The one organization that responded after much prodding was Naral Pro-Choice America; they sent me a bit of canned PR stating that they were “committed to amplifying the voices of Americans who believe that women should be in charge of their own healthcare choices.” The piece mentioned “in-person rallies” and “online petitions” and “getting Google and Yahoo to remove their false advertising.” It said they had challenged TED Talks “to change their policy from one that excludes abortion talks to one that embraces them.”

Excuse me? That’s it?

One woman I did talk to was Donna Dees-Thomases, who organized the highly successful Million Mom March in 2000 calling for an end to gun violence. The march, which boasted 750,000 people in Washington, DC and 250,000 others marching in satellite rallies in over 70 American cities on Mothers Day that year, led to a highly successful grassroots movement in which chapters were established around the country. Now united with Handgun Control, Inc. and the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence and known as the Brady Center, their chapters continue to advocate for gun violence prevention legislation primarily at the local and state levels, resulting in many legislative successes. That’s strategy at work.

“Women are organizers,” Dees-Thomases told me, explaining the successes the Brady Center has had. “They’re out in front and they’re making an impact.” At the same time, she thinks too many women in leadership may have become “institutionalized thinkers.” They don’t realize, she explains, that, for example, simply organizing and assisting a few women to visit their state legislators, to testify, to write letters can have a big impact. In other words, it seems to me, they no longer think strategically, or put effort into that kind of activism.

They don’t even bother talking to feminist journalists anymore, it seems, and that gives me pause (especially when I pull out my checkbook.) It also leaves me wondering where the women’s movement goes from here. I guess I won’t be waiting for a callback on that.