Shutdown & Aftershocks
Today we find ourselves in the grip of an experience whose enormity and impact we cannot as yet fully comprehend. A tsunami of dread has engulfed the world. Multiple shockwaves reverberate through global society, casting a beam of light on the ingrained fault lines of our civilization. Stunned and traumatized, all that we know and thought permanent is shutting down. Truth has become transient. Claims and counterclaims only adding to a growing sense of insecurity.
Even in wartime, cinemas, pubs, department stores, and sporting arenas remained open. Life continued much as before. Not today. Cities are deserted – once-vibrant streets have become deserted caverns. Most enterprises have put up the shutters. Some will never recover. Large corporations are having to radically restructure their operations. As of today, April 27th, 2020, around 3,010,484 have been infected with COVID-19 and 207,205 people have died. The oil price plunged into negative territory for the first time. Gatherings of more than two people are banned in many countries, with almost 60 percent of the global population under house arrest in epidemiologically-mandated lockdowns.
From air travel to concerts and sporting events, the beating heart of civilization has come to an abrupt halt. Personal independence has been suspended as fear, that sentiment overriding all others, takes hold. For the first time in the modern era, nature is showing us how reliant we are on each other. The fragile brittleness of our society, particularly found in the connective tissues between structures we thought strong and independent, have been ruthlessly exposed by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Eerie, still, emptied of normality, even our most familiar comforting gestures – the shaking of hands, sharing a meal, and embracing loved ones - have soured into a cradle of deep anxieties. Patterns not previously evident have coagulated into a blood knot of entangled online relationships.
What we are witnessing has become much more than a medical emergency. Details regarding how the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged from the “wet” markets in Wuhan, why the local Municipal Council initially denied its existence, Donald Trump's suggestion that we should drink disinfectant, curfew violations, and the frenzied anti-Chinese propaganda coming out of the US in response, are all distractions in terms of the deeper news.
Zoonotic infections are commonplace, which is why a pandemic of this nature was always on the cards. They are a direct result of the harsh way we treat other species. But the true cause does not begin, nor does it end, there. The essence of this particular drama is rooted in a decades-old ideological crisis in which matters of power, knowledge, and a disdain for the truth, have wreaked havoc and endangered millions of people, as well as the planet itself.
This crisis cannot be detached from others besetting us: our willful destruction of life, the potential for nuclear war, the breakdown of natural ecosystems with its associated loss of biodiversity, food and water insecurity, chemical pollution of the Earth system, the advent of powerful unregulated technologies, a distracted public under the spell of a corrupt political class, the threat posed to the world by US aggression, the normalization of brutality... These emergencies, some barely acknowledged, are signs of a social pathology in which vast inequalities in wealth, income, and power are proliferating out of control. It simply took the magnitude of the present pandemic to expose their severity.
Nor can these crises be so easily divorced from our indoctrination into an insatiable desire for material goods that dominates our waking hours – replacing intrinsic motivation with a ravenous appetite for a stream of external indulgences, gadgets, and encounters. Nor indeed from the strategic opportunity such emergencies provide - a smokescreen, under cover of which massive scams enable the rich to become even wealthier as vast sums of money are transferred from ordinary working people to billionaires, banks, and corporations.
But that is bot the only epiphany. For in this moment, so eloquently described by the poet W. B. Yeats, the ceremony of innocence is drowned. This coronavirus outbreak is not purely a nuisance.
A Veil Lifted
In many ways, it is a poignant gift, for it allows us time to remove the blindfold of hubris. And if we can do that we then have a chance to reflect deeply on what matters at a human scale. In subsequent weeks and months, we will see that this is not an interlude but a different kind of encounter altogether. We have already entered what could amount to a bifurcation point in human evolution. The pandemic is directing our attention to a fecund moment in the space between the end of one era and the beginning of the next, where the possibility for a radical overhaul of society has become compelling.
On one hand, the pandemic has lifted a veil on our society to reveal the dysfunctionality and barbarity of our favoured economic system - with all its mean-spirited abuse, exclusion, austerity, and exploitation. On the other, we must now face up to an indisputable reality: humanity is a single organism - an integral part of the biosphere, not separate from it. As the elders from diverse societies have long avowed: We belong to the Earth. The Earth does not belong to us.
Of course, we have never truly believed that. The past few centuries, in particular, have been marked by unbridled selfishness, greed, and the doctrine of separation - from each other as well as from nature. During that time the social pact between individuals and the state, along with every other conception of social cohesion, has been relentlessly battered.
This dogma of separation, silent and invisible, only fully reveals itself in what we have come to refer to as the human condition. That expression hides a multitude of sins. It allows us to accept a number of erroneous assumptions with such certitude including, most pertinently, a belief that we are helpless in the light of certain inherent, pre-ordained factors. I cannot do much about that, we assert. It is human nature. Except, of course, it is nothing of the kind. It is our excuse for looking the other way and doing nothing.
One element of this dogma is the theory we made up as a way of explaining economics. It is a fiction. An illusion. Yet we allow it to intrude upon everything we think and do. It casually ranks citizens as customers, whose democratic right to choose freely is best utilized in the banal acts of buying and selling. In its reified form it has become a universal narrative that rewards merit and punishes any form of perceived weakness or inefficiency. This fiction has a name. We call it neoliberalism. And it is killing us.
Neoliberalism's obsession with commercial, rather than egalitarian values, its intolerance with matters of ethics and justice, and its spiteful credo of radical competitiveness, have combined to undermine critical thought and challenge the supremacy of well-informed analysis.
Thus, our current predicament is the culmination of an incipient condition we have nurtured. We brought it on ourselves. It is part of an era defined by collective apathy and a flight from any sense of moral duty. An era notable for its contempt of tenderness, love, and respect. An age of intolerance, the elevation of opinion over evidence, (as well as emotion over reason), the decline of civic culture, and an obsession with wealth and self-interest.
We cannot permit the doctrine of neoliberal capitalism, which speaks only in the warped dialect of commerce, rents, profits, and private wealth, to wage war on public perceptions any longer. We cannot permit inequity to be recast as a virtue. Nor can we tolerate the market remaining a template for structuring social relations. If we do that we are simply allowing isolation, loneliness, deprivation, and economic misery to persist.
Irrespective of whether we attempt to take sanctuary in used futures or embrace the bequest of COVID-19 to recast the human project on Earth, we must remain alert to the immediate and long-term consequences. Some of these are beneficial enough. They give us a brief glimpse of a world that vanished long ago. The Himalayas can be seen from India once again. Fish are swimming in the clear waters of the Venetian canals. The smog has lifted over Tokyo and Los Angeles. Families are taking daily walks together. And in city parks a deep silence has settled, allowing us to hear the sound of birdcalls and insects. As fractured supply chains are remodeled, and international travel takes a protracted dive, the current confusion will quite possibly morph into new forms of globalism where alternative kinds of transnational coordination and cooperation will evolve.
Zombie Rules
Other outcomes are not so favourable. As flustered customers rush local supermarkets in an effort to stockpile essentials, and investors search in vain for safe havens, massive fortunes are being made from the suffering of others. Meanwhile, governments toil around the clock to restore community confidence. In an era where the power of the state was being eroded and devolved to private companies, the inherent contradictions and arbitrary nature of so many public sector edicts and policies can be seen with far greater transparency. That, and the many lies that have been told, are unlikely to generate the kind of trust lawmakers so desperately need in order to retain their legitimacy with the electorate.
In the space of weeks, the social contract between the state and its citizens has morphed into a raft of emergency measures. The most myopic and urgent of these signal a profound loss of individual freedom that is untenable in the long-term. With political factionalism growing ever more intense, and public proclamations constantly in the spotlight, governments of all kinds are more inclined to impose constraining orders rather than liberating policies.
As we have seen in a number of countries, a crisis of this nature creates ideal circumstances for restricting civil liberties, free speech, and human rights, while intensifying the likelihood of emerging authoritarianism. This is not surprising. Authoritarian edicts, resulting in part from a perceived need for tighter control over events, are easier to enact in times of distress and are often erroneously assumed to be more aligned with the statutory task of governing the state. Obviously, this is especially the case within compliant societies. Nevertheless, the fear of death contained within a pandemic can generate chaos. And it is in the management of such chaos that petty tyrants, thriving on fear, often emerge.
Even in some democracies, under the guise of manufacturing normality, political opportunism is rife. Plutocratic power structures, intent on taking advantage of community vulnerability, are already rolling out their repressive agendas. Backroom deals are being concluded under cover of the pandemic. Wars and blockades prosecuted by major powers are being executed with even greater ruthlessness. Commercial companies are getting ready to take advantage of less wealthy competitors, while wily politicians will be looking to strip-mine more public assets for the benefit of private interests.
Yet out of this fog emerges the prospects for a much-needed recalibration of the social order. The erosion of trust in the public sector, along with our insane faith in zombie capitalism, are ironically both reaching their zenith at a time when it is believed only the state, in collaboration with other sectors of society, is equipped to manage and overcome a crisis on such a scale as COVID-19, and to deal with the aftershocks of unemployment, mental health issues, family violence, and social decline. But this, too, creates a liability not usually acknowledged.
Black & White
The greatest trap we face right now is the impulsive habit of applying a Cartesian theatre to complexity made palpable. We urgently need to transcend the market-state power duopoly and the many false binary choices between a free market economy and state intervention. An entirely new social dynamic is needed in which partner-states, markets, and commons-based economic activities, act in harmony and in service to society as a whole.
For this new non-predatory, regenerative, commons-enabled economy to have any meaning at all, it needs both a material and metaphysical world for its existence. And that world can only be built collectively with everyone’s involvement.
We must never forget that the current pandemic, together with most other diseases assailing our civilization, is a direct result of the world we have deliberately constructed and wantonly allowed to corrode the social order. For example, the definitive law of “supply and demand” has now warped to such an extent that the economic theory can only be fully appreciated by viewing this relationship through a more inclusive lens...
A growing population drives the demand for more and more stuff. Economic growth is now critical. As wealth is accumulated, discretionary spending focuses on novelty and luxuries. Marketers use the craving for originality and extravagance to shape addictive conditions in which corporations can only compete effectively by constantly upgrading their products. But now the escalating productive capacity needed can only be met with more energy and more resources. The new demands embolden our incursions into previously inaccessible parts of the world. The result is an intricate web of supply chains covering the globe, intensifying industrial exploitation of the land, and financial avarice on a massive scale. Meanwhile all the assurances of fulfillment and happiness seem further and further out of reach.
A World to Exploit
Ironically, the global financial system, conceited and lacking accountability, was the first such edifice to cave in - its failure revealing a vulnerability we all took for granted but chose to ignore: the continuous circulation of money in the world, powering innovation and enterprise, relies on the health and vitality of people. As well, markets overwhelmingly depend on trust. Trust is the currency used to create the future. And trust rests on the health of the system – of individuals and society.
Ignoring those simple truths allowed us to abandon healthcare – arguably the most vital of all life-critical institutions. The privatisation of healthcare, the austerity accompanying budgetary constraints, and the subsequent commercialisation of medical research, combined to turn what might have been a serious health problem into a global emergency. That single act of myopic negligence has resulted in a catastrophic upheaval; dislocated the lives of so many citizens, disrupted jobs, culled small businesses, upset social relationships, destroyed families, and brought socio-economic instability in its wake.
Were we too busy pursuing profits, exploiting land and labor whenever and wherever we had a chance, and conducting wars, to see clearly what was happening, or likely to happen? Could we not have foreseen these consequences?
Perhaps those who accumulate wealth through exploitation, or slave labour, individuals and corporations in the business community who still pursue the demented ruthlessness of neoliberal economics, and governments who, lacking any moral compass, ingenuity, or foresight, are content to fall back, time and time again, on patching up the present, will finally grasp one irrefutable fact. In order to exploit the world, there needs to be a world to exploit.
To express the present predicament as a choice between sacrificing those most at risk (by virtue of their age, country of residence, financial situation, or pre-existing medical condition) and assuring the economic prosperity of the next generation, is inherently flawed. In a truly empathic society, neither of these would be a viable option. But that is precisely what we were initially offered in the interstices of conflicting assumptions underpinning how this outbreak should be handled. We are better than that. The time has come to think in ways that transcend such forced polarities, in order to create a world where these kinds of extreme choices are unacceptable.
Built by and managed by the state until recently, health, education, energy, food, water, public transport (as well as a free press able to hold government and corporate leaders to account) provide the essential infrastructure for a well-functioning society. Without them, there can be no viable economy. There can be no assurances for a better future. Even the security of the state is predicated on the health of its citizens.
When operating smoothly, these systems make trust in today stress-free and calls for a better future less urgent. Right now, they are almost totally dysfunctional. Yet still, we cannot bring ourselves to face one crucial fact: in order to be of any use in the future, these systems must be reinvented in alignment with the dynamics that are now transforming our world.
The Breath of (r)Evolution
The relationships between all of these structures are immensely fragile – mainly because we have allowed a theoretical construct called the market to determine matters of human well-being. The result is abundantly clear. The predatory facets of capitalism successive Western governments have permitted over recent times – intruding into state concerns, benefitting the rich, but creating harsh inequalities - cannot endure without inciting social unrest and the further deterioration of our most life-affirming structures - including the civilizing role played by artists, musicians, writers, scientists and philosophers.
The COVID-19 pandemic is going to cause unfathomable economic harm. But all of that will pale in comparison to the social damage arising from a sick economy: increased mental health issues, domestic violence, substance abuse, loneliness, suicide, deep cultural malaise, and cybercrime. We must also consider that this pandemic is just a dress rehearsal for what we can expect in the future, with more grievous viruses becoming likely, and when climate change makes some parts of the world almost uninhabitable.
The greatest lesson we can learn from this pandemic is not necessarily the simplest to grasp: We have allowed ourselves to become serfs, bonded to neoliberalist ideals in a quasi-feudal theatre of such vast proportions that we remain deaf, dumb and blind to the consequences.
We will not find any answers to our problems by returning to business-as-usual because those conditions were directly responsible for the situation in which we find ourselves today. More of the same will merely compound our ills, create greater tumult, and might even precipitate a bloody international uprising. So, what can be done?
The age in which we need only be concerned with fulfilling our own desires must come to an end. It is an imperative that the neoliberal sham be called out. The sheer magnitude of the present crisis also allows us to pause and reflect. In this interlude we can begin to reimagine the kind of society and the future world we want to create together.
As the pandemic recedes, commentators are suggesting we will have to choose between a world that attends to human needs or one in which an intensely competitive ethos remains the dominating organizing principle. I am frightened by the latter possibility though, once again, these are clearly bogus alternatives arising from a flawed logic.
Although we often speak of capitalism and democracy in the same breath, they are not the same thing. They do not even share similar goals. Democracy, and even much-maligned non-democratic systems in countries like China, exercise government for the health, wealth, and well-being of all citizens. By comparison, the end-game of capitalism benefits few. By manufacturing massive inequality and financial suffering for a growing majority, it institutes a brutal machinery of ruin in which humanity is one step closer to the edge of extinction.
Can we avoid backsliding into a society where egalitarian tenets are routinely undermined, either by being linked to the more rapacious forms of industrial capitalism in which we find ourselves, or being branded as some form of socialist nightmare? It is certainly feasible. But it will entail moving beyond a few cosmetic reforms to a more elemental restructuring of our civilization. And it will demand the kind of collective imagination that is in short supply.
We still have an opportunity to envisage a world in which the future does not just imitate the present, or yearn for a nostalgic return to an earlier era. This must surely be a society that brings the struggles for justice, emancipation, and social equality into the foreground of our design criteria. A world in which war ends because it makes no sense - other than the profits reaped by the arms industry. A world that imagines and acts on the utopian promise of an equitable, just, diverse, and compassionate civilization. A world in which we inherently grasp how interconnected we are. A world in which all life is held to be sacred.
The Victor, the Victim, and the Voyager
Looking back, this pandemic is a one in a hundred-year event. But looking forward it will be the first of many similar outbreaks we can expect from the escalating transmission of animal pathogens to humans. It is an event of such immensity that we will struggle to grasp the wider implications for months or years to come. Its scale, morbidity, and speed of infection, along with the rate at which so much we took for granted has been swept away, are all astonishing.
But this is what happens when an ancient world of deadly plagues suddenly erupts into a modern world of robotics, international nomads, machine intelligence, and digital media.
The alternatives facing us are many and diverse. We should not expect everyone to follow the same path. But three options, in particular, are latent with possibility. Will we celebrate our victory prematurely by blundering back into yesterday's world and recycling a misused future? Be forever content to play the role of the injured party and assume we can manage whatever is in store? Or will we cast aside the fear of failure, voyaging into new territories of the mind like the adventurers of old discovered new lands?
Today we teeter on the edge of indecision. Some of us are itching to end the inconvenience and all the fuss in order to get back to work. We want to re-establish old habits and routines as quickly as possible so that we can enjoy the material prosperity we have been promised for so long. But experts are now whispering that it might be both impractical and unwise to reinstate that world. Where does that leave us?
Some of us have grasped that we have been unknowingly trapped in a prison of our own invention and that there is so much more to life than we could have imagined just days and weeks ago. But where do we go from there? Is a universal basic income more likely now? Will employers bow to the desire to work from home? Will economic growth remain in the vanguard of human activity? If so, where are the new structures allowing us to opt-out of the rat race to pursue local production, together with less hectic, more reciprocal lifestyles?
A few of us want to throw caution to the wind and find entirely new ways to work and play in a world of abundant resources, social equity, and universal justice. Yet we are branded heretics, naïve dreamers, and unpatriotic revolutionaries. Who will listen to our voices now?
I invite you to play with these themes. For it is only when we reflect deeply on the meaning we hope to find in our personal lives, only when we can find supreme satisfaction in our social and functional interactions, and only when we fully comprehend all the opportunities available to us, that we can truly claim to be living, sensate, human beings in love with life itself.
The Victor: You attempt to recapture the world of yesterday, in terms of what you assumed to be your right - indeed your destiny - in the belief that you have overcome the worst nature can throw at you. You remain convinced that humans are exceptional and superior to other forms of life. The problems facing humanity can be resolved using the tools we have already invented. An unquenchable desire to return to normalcy, and to business-as-usual, will drive your quest.
The Victim: You accept that further disruptions and calamities of all kinds are likely to become more intense and far more frequent over the coming decades. Each time you will justify your surprise and lack of preparation as an inevitable consequence of being human. We could not have seen that coming. Besides, there is nothing we can do about it. That crie-de-coeur will ring constantly in your ears as you resign yourself to playing a bit part in a production of tragic proportions, directed by those with supreme wealth.
The Voyager: You consciously set out to build on, and nurture, what you have learned about yourself and others during these past few weeks. You have glimpsed a future in which the absolute joy of living outweighs the sacrifices you made for monetary reward. You intend to live in humility, within the limits set by the planet, allowing a shared regenerative awareness and a renewed purpose to guide you into pursuing very different goals than in the past. You will become an inspiration to others. But that, let me caution you, is never the easiest option.
Elements in each of these stories have some appeal. I can imagine one scenario being the context for the other two. But which do you find the most convincing? If we are forced into hitting the reset button on our civilization, which story offers you hope and the expectation of fulfillment that your children express every day through their words and play? If it is for them, which path will you choose?
