Some people are convinced that nothing really changes. That progress is an empty word.
Others are convinced that progress is everything.
And each category has its ‘extremists’:
Some people are convinced that nothing should be allowed to change. Others are convinced that all change must be imposed, or at least approved, by them.
And the tug of war between these two categories actually hamper whatever progress happens naturally.
Mind you, both categories shoot themselves in the foot. Each of them shoots only the ‘specific’ foot but the result is equally crippling… Both end up being iron shackles for the rest of us.
A transformation so drastic that somebody needs to have been at both ends of the process in order to accept that what came out was the same thing as what went in.
The Universe has already went through Metamorphosis 0.1 and 1.0. The ‘Big Bang’ and the apparition of life.
We’re witnessing Metamorphosis 2.0. Awareness’ coming of age.
Individuals becoming aware not only of their own awareness but also of their place in the order of things. Communities becoming aware that each of their individuals are paramount. That ‘no one left behind’ is the only thing that keeps the community together. Individuals understanding that each of them is equally important yet none of them indispensable.
Individuals and communities alike opening their minds to the fact that none of them might exist without the other.
Life, in general, is a matter of calibrating the intercourse between the inside of the organism and the environment in which it tries to survive. Or thrive…
Social life, both in general and in particular, is a matter of calibrating social intercourse between the members of a society in such a manner that, statistically speaking, the individual members would find it easier to survive/thrive in the given physical environment. Simply because each surviving/thriving individual adds resilience to the social organism/network.
COVID-19 is nothing but yet another test. For now – for as long a so many of us are still in ‘surviving mode’, it doesn’t matter “how” or “why”. All that matter is ‘what’.
“What WE do about it!”
Distance ourselves from the others and allow the pandemic to cool down? Distance ourselves from the others and allow each of our individual minds to think for itself?
While keeping in mind that long term survival requires the physical presence of as many of us as possible? That our own long term well being requires us to cooperate towards that common goal? As Adam Smith taught us?
If you live on the Moon, or if enough time had passed since I’ve written this, click on the picture to read Jonathan Spyer’s excellent rendition of the facts which have driven me to post this.
Or you may proceed.
For me, there is a striking resemblance between what’s going on in Iran and what would happen in a hardcore libertarian society.
The mullahs are concerned only with spreading/enforcing their faith and consider everything else will take care of itself.
The extreme libertarians are concerned exclusively with upholding their understanding of liberty and consider that everything else would take care of itself. By itself.
And I’m convinced that everything will indeed take of itself! After all, life has continued after communism had failed. The communist leaders had been professedly concerned exclusively with enforcing their understanding of equality. And convinced that everything else would had taken care of itself. If only that equality could have been instated…
Yet I don’t think communism will be missed. By those who had experienced it hard enough to understand it…
Money, and its ‘derivatives’ – from ‘capital’ to ‘financial market’ and ‘stock exchange’, are the tools we used to get where we are now. Without them we would be still foraging in the woods.
Only something rather insidious has started to eat the whole scaffolding from inside. Same process has been happening with weapons. We invented them for hunting. Then used them for self protection. Against large beasts and fellow humans. Finally, after using them to conquer and defend our liberty, we used them to subjugate others. To impose our will upon some other people.
In other words, we used guns to shoot ourselves in the foot. Unwittingly. Both as hapless individuals and as a cultural species.
Money – and its derivatives, have suffered the same degradation. We used it, at first, to coordinate our efforts. The Stock Exchange had been an excellent way to coordinate otherwise disparate means. Very few of the corporations who have changed the world into what it is now – for good and for bad, wouldn’t have come to life without the money which fuel them. Nowadays, too many of those who trade on the Stock Market do it in a ‘barren’ manner.
They do not contribute anything but extract value. The inside traders being only the visible part of the iceberg. Which iceberg might tank the whole contemporary ‘arrangement’.
If we keep sleeping during our watch. And there’s no one else on deck…
Smarter people than me are already prepping for the aftermath. For the opportunities which will have ripened by then.
Which, let’s face it, is a wise thing to do. Most of us would have done it. Prepping for what we fear. And for what we covet.
Also wise would be for us to remember that everything we experience today – the good and the bad of it, together, is the consequence of how we have chosen to use the opportunities opened up by the previous crisis.
Meteorology has to do with physics. Something which doesn’t change as you learn more about it. Only the researcher’s understanding of what is going on goes deeper and deeper into the matter.
Economy has to do with both hard facts – how much coal/arable land is available at one moment, and psychological unknowns. What people will do if/when…. The hard facts might change – just as meteorological data does. But in a rather foreseeable manner. What people will do… is a lot harder to predict. Simply because people change their understanding of facts, based on what they learn.
Just as the meteorologists do. And while it is relatively easy to predict that meteorology will become more and more accurate – for the foreseeable future, at least, it is a lot harder to predict what the meteorologists will do as a consequence of their increased abilities.
We’re in the middle of a crises. Some people believe the crises has been only triggered by the virus. And that it has been mainly caused by ‘globalization’.
I beg to differ. In part.
The crises was indeed triggered by the virus. But the fact that we are so fragile isn’t the consequence of globalization. Only by what we have done in the given circumstances.
It wasn’t globalization itself which had made us fragile. Globalization only extended the opportunity field we had at our disposal. It was our way of developing those opportunities which had made us fragile. We had chosen ‘financial efficiency’ over ‘resilience’. We had chosen to increase profit instead of making it ‘more and more sure’ that we’ll be able to survive. In a sense, we have been acting as if we’d lost touch with reality. With the hard reality….
There is nothing to suggest that we knew what we were doing. Then. But we won’t have any excuses left once that we will have reached the other side.
I’m sure you’ve already learned everything worth knowing about how to flatten the curve…
My post is about something else. About the need to think with our own heads. Individually. Each on their own.
More damages are caused by the manner in which we have chosen to react than by the pathogen itself.
‘Then what should we do?’
I don’t know. And I just told you to stop taking cues, blindly.
There is something I do know. Nobody can get out of something like this on its own. Alone. And another thing. If we get out of it as a herd, we’ll very soon end up in another trap.
‘Damned if you do, damned if you don’t… I really can’t figure out what you want to say….’
OK. We, humans, are social animals. We not only raise our young – all mammals do that, we raise them in a social context. We live in groups and we raise our children to belong there.
Living in a social context has consequences. From being prone to infestation to having adopted specific behaviors. Humberto Maturana is actually convinced that our very conscience – ‘our ability to observe ourselves while observing‘, a paraphrase, is a product of us leading our lives in close community.
One of these specific behaviors is the herd instinct. Whenever in a dire strait, the members of a group pay a lot more attention to the rest of the group than in the ‘peaceful moments’. This has two bright sides and one huge drawback.
All members of a group paying close attention to the others makes it easier for those who need it to get attention. And help. All members of a group paying close attention to the others makes it easier for the group to follow when one of them finds a way out. All members of a group paying too close attention to the others makes it very likely that the entire group will dash out at the first opportunity. Without checking first where they’re going to land. Nor whether there are any other opportunities.
Another specific behavior is ‘opportunism’. Some of us have figured out that by keeping their chill in a crises they are more likely to identify whatever opportunities might exist in that moment. And the deeper the crises, the bigger the opportunities.
Theoretically, these two should work like a charm. The opportunists keep their chill, look around, identify the best way out and the rest of the herd follows them to safety. A win-win situation.
Yeah… but!
Wouldn’t it be a way lot better whether all (or, at least, ‘more’) of us would keep their chill? Wouldn’t we be able to identify even more ways out? It would take a lot more time? We’d need to discuss things over, to negotiate… we’d have to exert a lot of discretion… True enough. Hence we’d need to evaluate two things. First, how urgent the dangerous situation is and, then, whether a better alternative would be worth searching.
And something else. In a ‘follow me blindly’ situation there’s no going back. The consequences for a hasty choice might be tremendous.
We might end up with more people being hurt by our blunder-some reaction than by the cause which had spooked us.
Yet another specific behavior is responsibility. Living in a social context means that, sooner rather than later, individuals are censored for their actions. By the rest of the community or, sometimes, by the stark reality. Unfortunately, sometimes entire communities are censored, by the stark reality, for not behaving responsibly. For not imposing responsibility upon their members.
For not taking enough time before choosing between flight and fight.
Let me put things into perspective. How many of you have chosen to continue smoking despite having been warned? How many of you have emptied the shelves despite being told there’s enough for everybody? Or that there will be soon enough? How many of you do not smoke in the presence of your children? Because you know it will hurt them? How many of you have taken active measures to protect the elderly? For the very same reason…
As for the economy being the main casualty of the present scourge… I’m afraid ‘the economy’, as we know it, has been dying for quite a while now. That’s why it is so susceptible to SARS CoV-2.
The Ancient Greeks had come up with the concept of ‘oeconomia’ as the art of making the ends meet. Adam Smith had described the free market as the place/environment where competing agents made it so that people – solvent demand, could satisfy their needs. Nowadays, too many of us understand/accept ‘economy’ as the art of getting rich. ‘Free’ in ‘free market’ is understood as ‘free’ to do anything you want. Because very few are asked to answer for the long term consequences of their actions.
The economy, as the manner in which we cooperate towards fulfilling our needs, has fallen prey to our gluttony. And to our nearsightedness. Greed is not good. And SARS CoV-2 is only an eye opener, not the cause for the current implosion.
This used to be the motto of the French Legion Etrangere. A bunch of guys who had no other way out of their predicaments than to enroll into a notoriously hard mercenary army. But one which offered its recruits a clean slate. So marche ou creve – move ‘forward’ or ‘out of the way’, it was.
Fast forward to our day. “Le bonheur c’est pas le but mais le moyen”. “Happiness is not the goal but the mean” (of knowing you’re on the right track).
nicichiarasa 