Perspective' is the word of this time. We hunger for it, but we don't get it. After all, nobody knows when we will defeat this virus, let alone what the world will look like. Our lives went on pause. That's not funny. But let's not lose sight of the bigger picture, because while our private lives are largely on hold, the collective consciousness of everything seems to have moved.
Yes, indeed, these are not all positive things. There is fear, depression, anger, protest, polarization and conspiracy thinking, inequality and poverty are also increasing worldwide. But among the many negative signs, there are also hopeful, deeper seismic changes in our societies.
I will discuss three of them.
Signal 1: we learn to think sociologically again
The past decades were the era of psychology. Through popular culture, self-help books and the dominant adage 'be yourself' we learned to look at ourselves collectively through an individual lens. Politicians hammered on our autonomy, self-reliance and 'own strength', society was in fact a 'sum of individuals'. The uneasiness about this pervasive hyper-individualism increased more and more in recent years. At the same time, there were also pleas for the revaluation of the sociological imagination. In other words: the capacity to see connections between the lives of individuals and the historical-social context in which they live.
Covid-19 confronts us with the fact that 'no man is an island'. While things are getting quieter around me, the people with whom I share this country are very much present. They restrict me, or I restrict them - they are attached to me with wires. If students keep partying, I won't be able to give a Christmas dinner. When migrant workers are forced to be holed up together, I have to keep working at home. And vice versa: if I invite too many people into my house, someone else will be in the emergency room. In the end you come to the conclusion that corona has taken away from us the 'privilege of ignoring each other'. And that is oppressive, but at the same time a welcome development in a society that has largely lost the ability to think as a society.
Signal 2: The state is making a comeback
In line with the revival of the sociological imagination, there also seems to be a major ideological shift in thinking about the role of the state in solving major problems, such as corona and the climate crisis. The idea that the market will sort everything out has lost its power of persuasion. At the annual meeting of the IMF, the traditional guardian of economic orthodoxy, an ideological turn was defended: the state must (again) take the lead in the fight against the corona and climate crisis. As a regulator, but also as an investor. Government intervention was always a dirty word at the IMF, but that seems no longer the case.
This shift had been underway for some time. After the financial crisis of 2008, the criticism about the dominant neo-liberal policy of austerity, deregulation and privatization already swelled. There was also a slow revival of 'Keynesianism', an economic theory in which the state is given a much greater role in (financially) driving economic development. Economist Mariana Mazzucato has been talking for years about the 'entrepreneurial state': a government that actively promotes innovation in the business world, and sets grand goals or moonshots to tackle problems such as climate change, aging and poverty. Mazzucato convincingly shows in her work that this has led to all kinds of important developments in the past. Think of the internet, the development of medicines, biotechnology, and algorithms. Without large-scale government investment these would never have existed.
Signal 3: the climate is still high on the global agenda
The fear among many climate activists was that the pandemic would undo the increased climate concerns of the past two years, but this does not seem to be the case. A recent Pew Research Center survey, conducted between June and August this year, found that an average of 70 percent of respondents in 14 countries described climate change as a major threat to their country, while 69 percent expressed the same concern about the spread of infectious diseases.
Meanwhile, something interesting is happening on the world stage: a growing group of large economies is refining its climate targets. It started last month with China, the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, which surprised everyone with its announcement to be climate-neutral by 2060. The EU, Britain and South Korea already took the lead last year with the promise to aim for net zero emissions by 2050. Recently, the third largest economy in the world, Japan, also joined in. If Biden wins the presidential election in America, this superpower is also expected to join the club.
Words are not deeds yet. Nevertheless, the geopolitical significance of these intentions should not be underestimated. "The great powers have taken big steps to fight global warming. Now attention turns to the rest of the world", wrote British historian Adam Tooze in Foreign Policy. Then this year's UN climate summit in Glasgow, postponed until 2021, could just turn out to be much more favorable. Together, these countries are responsible for about 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Their plans put a lot of pressure on countries like Brazil, India, Russia and Australia to make similar promises in Glasgow next year.
Don't get me wrong: 2020 is not a good year. But hopefully it will be a pivotal year. We have known for some time that change is necessary. The growing inequality, a dysfunctional housing market, financial insecurity, the lack of community spirit, the precarious state of the public sector, and last but not least, the rapid deterioration of our living environment: it was all there, but we continued to muddle along. Change is difficult, habits stubborn. Corona put it all on edge.
We are looking for perspective. We want to know when we will be able to live normally again. But the point is: nobody knows when we can. Maybe that's why we should try to focus our longing for perspective on something different, much bigger: a better, fairer and more sustainable world that could emerge from this misery. "The pandemic is a portal", wrote the Indian writer Arundhati Roy earlier this year. "We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it."