I’m fascinated by us, as a culture. Nothing is more invisible to you, than your own culture. It just seems…
I’m fascinated by us, as a culture. Nothing is more invisible to you, than your own culture. It just seems like the natural order of things.
Here’s why I think our culture doesn’t understand Covid. And throw in climate change too. /1
There are two critical things that we are, as a society. (Speaking as a rich Western country.)
1) Post colonialists (where we are the colonisers), and
2) post-war.
War being both WW1 and WW2. /2
Because we’re colonisers, our history is immersion in material abundance, and cheap imported labour.
We have no experience ourselves of being colonised. Our lives are coloniser’s lives, even though the most visible and explicit violence was well before our birth. /3
We’re used to having most of what we need, and most importantly of there being an alignment between our individual needs and collective action, to meet those needs.
It strikes us as outrageous when an individual need is not being met. Even bewildering. /4
But needs not being met, and no alignment between individual need and collective action, is life for most of the people who have ever lived in history, and who live today.
It’s the overwhelming historical norm. The default experience of most humanity. /5
That shock many of us feel now, of obvious things like pandemics not being addressed, is us re-joining the human race.
It’s appalling, but then it always was. I’m sure the rest of humanity would affirm. And those within our own societies who have always been marginalised. /6
Our coloniser’s escape from that life is now over. And then at the same time, what made our coloniser life so peaceful and prosperous and easy, was that post-war period.
When we had to re-build broken societies. That re-building made us focus on collective need. /7
Because we were re-building a collective thing. That’s what linked our individual need, with collective action. That’s when we got used to that always being a linkage.
Except now it isn’t. Now ‘personal responsibility’ is the mechanism. Like the rest of humanity, forever. /8
We’re coming back to the pack. It’s that coming back that I think isn’t widely understood. We’re astonished that the direct line of sight between what we individually need, and the collective satisfaction of those needs, is now gone.
It seems like that’s some baddie at work. /9
But it isn’t. It’s the end of colonialism, and the end of that post-war collective focus. It’s us returning to the rest of humanity.
And no doubt, that’s a much less fun place to be, than being the looked-after colonisers. /10
I see on social media platforms every day the anger and outrage and disbelief, that collective things aren’t being done, and individual needs are ignored.
To me it really matters that we understand this in historical, cultural and social ways. The history above. /11
It’s a brand new culture we’ll have to learn. Unless catastrophe strikes, which is increasingly likely (we’re living with a pandemic, ffs). That might restore at least the collective focus.
Asia will probably run the next empires, not us.
/end