Bring On the Post-Corona Transformation
There will be a time when we grovel out of our bunkers and assess the deluge caused by the COVID-19 virus, and the world as we have known it will not be the same.
Those illusions we have developed through the years, many of them have vanished over the last few weeks. Here are some of the beliefs that I have seen being proven wrong recently.
- Efficiency is the end-all and be all. Over the years, our emphasis has been primarily on establishing efficiency at all costs. There are some things we can’t control, and that lesson was raised multiple times lately. Our efficient remedy doesn’t work. What do we do now?
- We can master nature. Some of us were taught at an early age that we are always the master of our own destiny and that the elements are there to be controlled. The big learning should be that we are part of nature, and those rhythms found within the environment are rules we are to adhere to.
- Those things we believe would always work have been proven to be very, very vulnerable. Within the Global North, many areas have reverted towards a complete shutdown in a way that is unprecedented.
The solution currently being implemented calls on a drastic curtailment of human interaction with the goal of slowing down the COVID-19 trajectory. This is all clearly dramatic and is tied to an agony most of us have never experienced before, but let’s look at the method more in detail. We are trying to align ourselves with nature’s loops. In believing we can master the situation with brute force, we make things worse. What we are really trying to find is a balance, and this is unprecedented.
Our milieu will not last forever, so why don’t we start planning for life, post-corona? Here, I would like to start with some of the pre-lessons learned.
- Only through a resiliency anchored at the community level are we able to envision a post-corona reality. I would hope that this strength we emitting can be utilized to solve some of the other problems we have that are as equally as urgent. We don’t see them that way because those things we are fighting for tied to the Sustainable Development Goals are currently not filling up our hospitals, destroying value in the stock markets and are forcing us to severely curtail our external social lives.
- The phrase social capital refers to the value we derive from a vibrant community where people do good things without knowing whether they will ever be repaid the favor because, when that day comes when you need help, you know you can rely on the strength of the entire community to come to your rescue. This is a strength we need not just now, but always.
- If COVID-19 is not a wakeup call for us to finally realize we are nature and have to dance at this tempo, then I don’t know when the penny will ever drop. Zero-sum is wrong. Everything needs to be in balance. More is not better. Better is better.
As Greta says, listen to the scientists. Here’s a great example from Max Rosner who shows the trajectory and how it can be countered.