Today marks 71 days since my Covid-19 state of mind post and 56 days since Singapore entered its ‘Circuit Breaker’ lockdown phase, to be exited at midnight on 2nd June. From tomorrow onwards, Singapore reopens in three phases — far from relief, however, I feel a sense of foreboding that I simply cannot shake off.
It’s not just to do with the pandemic, of course. The past three months carried the weight of three lifetimes, many of us will acknowledge that now, but not many are willing to acknowledge that it wasn’t a ‘one-off’, that things would quickly return to ‘normal’, that things will be ok. I hate being a Cassandra, but things are most assuredly not ok. It’s fine if you need to self-soothe, or if you feel the mental burden is too much that you need to check out for a bit, but delusion is rarely helpful when the world is literally on fire.
If you’re privileged enough to be reading this on a computer or mobile device, you might be spared the worst ravages of the pandemic, but statistically speaking you’re quite likely to get infected at some stage, whether or not a vaccine is ready. Sheltering in place is no longer sufficient for safety when other people, clamouring psychologically for a sense of normalcy with little comprehension of risk-reward or the will to exercise it, storm past all reasonable measures of containment.
There is sufficient evidence to learn credence to the theory that this virus is here to stay and will never truly be eliminated. Humanity will have to learn to co-exist and accept the effects of natural selection, of balancing the desire for self-indulgent pleasures with the paranoia of protecting one’s family.
You might be forgiven for thinking that the pandemic would pull humanity together to reassess our common values and priorities, to finally force us to accept that working together might be better than guarding fiefdoms, but so far the evidence points to the contrary. The US and UK are not having much to do with the idea of contributing to a global patent database. The US has cut funding to the WHO, which for all its flaws, represented a post-WWII vision for international cooperation. Pharmaceutical companies are scrambling over themselves to be the first to patent this or that vaccine, but what is 100% certain is that not 100% of humanity will gain access to a vaccine, free or paid or somewhere in between. Yes, lives literally have a price. I urge you to think about that for a few seconds. Our liberal adherence to the notion of universal human rights does not hold water. I don’t think it ever did.
My default mood of melancholic contempt + despair has morphed into anger + despair. I welcome that. Contempt, whilst temporarily satisfying, is a lot less productive than righteous anger. I am an extremely poor example of a Christian, but one thing I feel I can and should channel is the spirit of Jesus in His Cleansing of the Temple. Dens of thieves were as real then as they are now, all enabled by entrenched systems that put a glossy spin on profiteering at the expense of those who are clearly not smart enough, or driven enough, or brutal enough to ‘succeed’. America is literally burning at the moment, swathes of its population finally having had enough, and other swathes jumping in opportunistically, even if only to trot away calmly with a cheesecake and wineglasses. Power abhors a vacuum. A tone-deaf, delusional China fancies itself capable of stepping into that vacuum. International institutions do not seem particularly keen on balancing powers. If that doesn’t scare you witless, I’m not sure what will.
This pandemic is humanity’s growing-up moment. We live in an age of risible contrasts. We are the most advanced we’ve ever been in mathematics, science and technology, epitomised in Silicon Valley and MIT and Grenoble and Oxbridge contrasted with the millions still in need of clean water, sanitation, stable energy sources and basic public health. There are established systems of governance that, however flawed, provide an alternative to violence and bloodshed to achieve aims, and currently unworthy men who have found their way to the top of it.
I know there are good people around the world who are feeling equally distressed and helpless at the scale of what we’re facing, and perhaps wondering if in some way we are all culpable and complicit. I don’t have any answers, and throwing out scenarios exhaust me at this point, but what I do know is that if we’re to grow up to be a reasonably well-adjusted adult and to guide future generations to grow up to be that as well, in a planet that is still habitable, we need to get our act together, organise across shared values, and work together to achieve coherent goals. Understanding the fundamentals of complex systems, in particular coherence and emergence and fractality and narrative, can go a long way towards coalescing these necessary conversations.
To end on a less melancholic note, I’d like to highlight that at no stage of our evolution have we had such an educated populace with access to information — both boon and bane, the ability to decentralise and organise and disband with alacrity, and to as easily hold people to account as to cancel what doesn’t agree with our worldview. Mutual aid systems are as old as humanity; don’t let corporatist shills convince you otherwise.
Dum spiro, spero. I hope you do too.