Pandora’s box of our sense of ethics opened by public hygiene
Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals’ sense of ethics was becoming visible through their behavior in public places, such as their awareness of physical distancing, how they touch things, and the degree to which they accept telework. Even in close relationships, a gap between each other’s sense of ethics becomes apparent. Therefore, people need to always perceive and adjust to the other person’s style, leading to a new stress factor.
Administrative agencies predict the next influenza outbreak and new infectious disease epidemics based on the data of the people’s behavior recording app. Its detailed information is provided to the public every day along with forecasts of abnormal weather. While people feel uncomfortable with their life under a comprehensive monitoring where infection prediction, behavior monitoring, and result reporting is repeated, they gradually become accustomed to the policy of “Let’s all prevent infection together” indicated by the administrative agency. As a result, they come to behave in ways in line with best practices. However, these best practices are not set forth as clear rules; rather, they are unwritten standards of behavior that are gradually imprinted on our minds and that guide our actions when we are faced with certain situations.
Providing personal information such as daily activity logs and vital data is recognized and generalized as “public benefit”, which finally comes back as our own benefit. At the same time, people come to choose the publicly useful “recommended behavior” indicated by individual’s behavior recording apps and receive various preferential treatments from administrative agencies. Each individual’s “sense of ethics” is gradually categorized according to the selected behavior, such as “taking tests for infectious disease once a week”. Since people are widely impacted by the information provided by the public, the number of groups of people who share a similar sense of ethics increases, causing conflicts among the respective groups. In response to these social divides, there is a growing movement of people breaking away from best practices and out of their categories.
In a city, the degree of crowding at each facility and shop is visualized in an easy-to-understand manner. Shops are creating a new system that is easy for people to use on a daily basis. Specifically, shops are introducing reservation systems and clearly indicating their policies and code of ethics. The shops, which have become able to grasp the customer trends in advance, gradually shift from the conventional positioning of “we are chosen by customers” to the positioning of “we choose customers”. The relationship between the shops and the customers is changed to an equal relationship or a relationship in which the shops have an advantage over customers. On the other hand, instead of being forced to suffer inconvenience according to the rules of shops, customers come to expect something extra from their shopping experience. The shops pursue further improvements in their services, such as developing ingenuity by using the space for physical distancing.
Each facility and shop that has come to share reservation information within each region to equalize crowding establishes an integrated “style” (sense of ethics) such as “LOHAS” (healthy and sustainable lifestyle) and attract new customers in cooperation among shops. Customers who need specific services, such as online one-on-one customer service or food prepared in accordance with certain religious practices, are emerging, and some people are starting to choose shops based on store policies, seeing such policies as a reflection of their own personal values. The behavior of each small group based on each “style” becomes active, and while interacting with the surrounding groups, a new unique living area begins to be formed.
