At the beginning of the year I set out twenty ambitions for myself. Little did I or anyone else know how different 2020 would be. Gone are the lofty travel plans – and yet the world in lockdown isn’t any less wonderful and rewarding. One of my ambitions was to walk ten kilometers per day, something which I have done religiously even when in quarantine – thank goodness for the treadmill and Netflix! – and since I started a little before New Years I have now done so for a hundred days, which means I have walked more than a million steps. Not bad!
The thing is, if one sets out to do something that sounds impossible (such as walking a million meters), it is a wise person that does it incrementally, literally one step at a time. But in times of crisis such as now, that kind of thinking isn’t sufficient. Instead, a million steps are taken all at once, in one great leap.
Some of those measures taken now will be the wrong ones, but I hope that the corona virus will prove a turning point for our societies, where the sum of measures taken to combat the plague, and their long-term consequences, will improve the way we live: less consumption in general, and specifically of meat, more appreciation for often over-looked professions, a fairer distribution of wealth, and more solidarity.
The virus made the leap from animals to humans due to extensive animal husbandry, the same phenomenon that causes rainforests to be leveled for farmland and the same phenomenon that has altered the Australian landscape sufficiently already to make it susceptible to ever larger fires. I’m convinced that on a planet with eight billion people we cannot afford to be carnivorous – the meat industry is killing us thrice over by causing coronary diseases in the individual, ruining the environment for everyone, and now by making us victims of diseases against which we have no natural defenses.
Its heartwarming to see wildlife making a comeback during this crisis, and pollution levels dropping. We know this is exactly what is needed for the climate and to avoid further mass extinction, and yet the governments of the world are all pumping out money to get the machine working again as soon as possible. I understand we might “need” this in the short term, but this might be our only real chance to create a different approach to “the economy”. Not all economic activity is necessary or good – much like the crisis is showing us all on an individual level who our real friends are when we are isolated, I think now is the time to let market forces show the economy what is really needed in our society. Hands up anyone who has a new-found (or perhaps more correctly, a re-discovered) respect for nurses, police, supermarket staff, garbage collectors and other groups of professionals that we tend to overlook, yet have a fundamental role to play in our lives?
Connected with this is of course the inherent social injustice of a small percentage of the world population hoarding most of its wealth. A society in which a company can simultaneously ask for a government bailout AND award shareholders billions is a society that isn’t just, and therefore isn’t doing what it is supposed to.
The Swedish word for society, samhälle, literally means ”that which holds (us) together”. What holds us together is that we humans cannot survive on our own. If we do not show solidarity with one another we are doomed as a civilization, even as a species. Showing solidarity means that no one individual should be allowed to enrich themselves to the point of being wealthier than entire countries. Showing solidarity means not letting one country attempt to buy up essential medicine from another, but nor does it mean letting the latter country sit on its resources if they are more needed elsewhere. In fact, the notion of national states itself is something that hampers us in this regard.* Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if this potentially cataclysmic crisis proves to be the impetus that enables us to bring about changes to our societies so that they truly become that which holds together – not only people, but the world as a whole?
*It would seem that I have – quite accidentally – come to argue in favour of global (not international, nota bene) socialism. Who’d have thunk?
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