The embarrassing dysfunction of rich countries during the pandemic should force us to take stock of what…
The embarrassing dysfunction of rich countries during the pandemic should force us to take stock of what we’ve become. But it probably won’t. Sir Richard Barrons, former Commander Joint Forces Command in the UK, is a good place to start. A re-share, with a twist. /1 https://t.co/D5UKTdcHfb
That ‘social offer to ourselves’. One of the few times in history that individual preference has been placed at the centre of society. Lifestyles, rather than lives. For most of history, the brutal reality of maintaining a society in the face of existential threats like…/2
…famine, pandemics, flood, fire and war has necessitated a collective focus. If people didn’t band together, they died. A simple calculus. But as Barrons points out, after WW2 we entered over half a century of mostly uninterrupted peace and prosperity. And that’s when…/3
…we decided to make that social offer to ourselves, to ‘free’ individuals to pursue individual rather than collective goals, more than ever before. Living off the fat of the prosperity and peace that generations had cultivated, stored in institutions, and also off the…/4
…collective sacrifice of the two world wars, which sated much of the historical bloodlust of war for so many decades afterwards. At the same time, I’ve Tweeted multiple times about how society in the 20th century began to model itself as a giant high school. /5 https://t.co/l1OFfr1BUB
That’s where we learn our social models. How to relate to one another, how to conceive of and perceive the world. The gradual creeping adolescence of all life, at all ages. The flattening of the ‘circle of life’, a perpetual lifestyle present. The big wars were maybe the last…/6
…gasp of that old collective world, with collective burdens. At least for 50-70 years. It freed up the even more rapid spread of high school society, as adolescent life is obsessed with individual freedom, with forging your individual identity. And so we arrive at Covid. /7
The pandemic collided with this rampant adolescent world, and we’re living in the debris right now. For an adolescent society, with its libertarian philosophy and politics, a pandemic becomes what everything else already is - a platform for individual expression. /8
Individual grievance (remember the flurry of demonstrations on a diversity of topics at the beginning of the pandemic). Individual ‘freedom’ restrained by public health orders. Etc. Rich countries behaving like adolescents who’ve been grounded. Because that’s what those…/9
…nations actually are. High schools. Societies have been on a gap year for 70 years. Except there’s no grown up life waiting on the other side, so the gap year never ends. Endless, obsessive recreational travel. Planes have been a dominant marker of the return to so-called…/10
…’normal’ life. Nobody commits to planning our way out of this pandemic, because that’s so grown-up and a drag. Live with Covid. Chill out. I personally don’t think there’s a way back for our countries. Once institutions are destroyed you can’t just put them back. /11
They emerge, over generations, you can’t just make them appear. When people look on in horror at the shambles of Covid worldwide, remember trying to get most teenagers to do their homework or their house jobs.
That’s what you’re seeing. /12