Thinking 2020
Written by Pablo González and Pedro Nonay trying to understand Covid 19’s consequences.
Entry 1 – covid 19
April 7, 2020
I begin to write these entries with the objective of clarifying my ideas, and to share them with friends who will give me constructive criticism and help me to better understand the situation.
I also aim for these entries to be of some help to my friends as they adjust to the situation.
Small disclaimer: these entries are not intended to be shared on social networks, as I believe they will not be understood by the general public. They are something made to help us think among friends.
I also apologize for the low literary quality of the entries. I have dedicated my time to focus on the content and I have not made the style review or the “communicational marketing” review, which would require an effort that I have avoided.
My idea is to write an entry every time I have something to tell (I don’t know when the next one will be, nor if I will have something interesting to tell).
That said, I begin:
Moment of decisions.
Whatever happens after the current pandemic, it is clear that the situation is exceptional, and that adaptive decisions must be taken.
In order to make decisions, it is essential to know what the future scenario is.
The bad news is that I am not at all clear on what that scenario is (I have my opinions, but I do not yet take them as “dogmas”).
The good news is that I do see different possible alternatives, and that allows us to look for the particular decisions for each alternative.
The perfect thing would be to find a decision that would be useful for any of the alternatives, but that depends on the individual (and his or her circumstances).
The common denominator is that, in addition to the well-known health crisis, we are facing the economic crisis, and the crisis of stability of the social and political system (I am not only talking about Spain, this is global, although it has different answers in each place).
Be that as it may, for a few million years the earth will continue to circle the sun. And, … perhaps the human species will continue to inhabit the earth. In fact, the risk that our species will not be here depends almost nothing on Covid 19, but on the other, slower but more lethal threat, the so-called “climate change”, which is actually something we humans can do a lot about, but which has moved to the heading of “important”, abandoning that of “urgent”.
Possible scenarios.
Although it may be a bit cruel to put it so bluntly, the scenarios we face individually are divided into two:
- May we die (even if the world goes on),
- Or that we survive (with or without suffering).
This leads us to a first decision: we must prepare a strategy both for not being here and for being here.
I make some first considerations in case it is our turn to die. Each one of us will have to make our own, but I will tell you mine, in case it is useful to you:
- Of course, the first thing to do is to make a will. I have an old one. It is also good to rethink it for those who have already made it (the circumstances are new).
- But that alone is not enough. The truth is that each one of us has a lot of information in our heads about what we do on a day-to-day basis. And the will doesn’t say any of that. We have to write some notes for whoever has to “take the reins” after our absence. Those of you who have had to do that in the past will understand it well, because to many people it may seem elementary, but they have not had to go through the situation, and they do not know that it is not easy.
In those notes we can explain the status of each issue, and how to find the information in our files. I have done this (I have even made it a point to review them weekly, in case I want to update them).
Of course, these are not notes to be delivered today to the recipient, but to be delivered quickly in case of need. We already know that this disease is not immediate (like a heart attack), which gives us time to decide to send a message with the notes to whomever we have decided, if the time comes. Of course, what is not good is to wait for that moment to start writing them, because we may not have enough time, nor a clear head.
- The other decision, in case it is our turn to “fall”, is more “spiritual”: we must try to enjoy our time here (I am writing this in the garden of my house, with a whiskey). We should not be angry with the world, nor live overwhelmed. The important thing is to have a clear conscience (I did what I could, and I enjoyed my family). But, neither should we hide our heads, like the ostrich, nor deny reality: this is very serious, and something must be done.
- There is one last consideration at this point. We may be fortunate not to “fall,” but we will also be fortunate to have seen the possibility close at hand. That will and those notes, we may not have considered them before. If we have them now, they will also be valid for a “fall” later for other reasons.
As for the option to survive, the alternatives differ in what the world will be like afterwards. It can be:
- A world more or less the same as the one before this pandemic (I do not see it at all likely, but it is an option).
- A situation of “new social contract”. The truth is that the social contract, as Rousseau said, is something essential (and changing with the times). Today we find ourselves at a time when social inequalities (in the West) and new opportunities (in China and other places that used to be poor, but today are not so poor) mean that the old social contract is “on pins and needles”. There are several alternatives for the future, which will be different in each place (I have said place instead of country, because I believe that the very concept of country can become outdated).
The alternatives I see are:
- A “neo-communist” society (in the style of our Pablo Iglesias). By “neo” I mean that it will not be, at all, an old-style communism, but something adapted to the times. I imagine it similar to the current communism of China (not Venezuela). Or something hybrid between ancient capitalism and communism, but capable of good communication with China (that would be the case of today’s Russia).
- A “neo-capitalist” society. It would be the case of a world adapted to the new situation (health and economic crisis), and to the hardships of many people, but maintaining the concepts of private property and individual freedom. Perhaps the best example of this can be found in Roosevelt’s New Deal after the crisis of 1929 in the USA.
- Something radically new, which I am not able to imagine at the moment. In this I say that, although the concept could be logical and good, nothing happens without the “pressure of the masses”, and it does not seem that the masses today are about to support something unknown to their leaders.
- A “neo-communist” society (in the style of our Pablo Iglesias). By “neo” I mean that it will not be, at all, an old-style communism, but something adapted to the times. I imagine it similar to the current communism of China (not Venezuela). Or something hybrid between ancient capitalism and communism, but capable of good communication with China (that would be the case of today’s Russia).
Root cause of the changes.
Although Covid 19 is the trigger for all the changes, it is not the root cause (and never mind the debate about whether it was staged or coincidental).
In my opinion, the Internet is that cause. Someone may say that the internet is almost ancient, but it is not true. What is important is when a large part of humanity uses a technology, not when it was invented. I know that Vinton Cerf started to develop DARPA in 1976, and that was the beginning of the Internet. I also know that we all owe a lot to him, although he did not decide to create his own famous company or make the invention profitable, as others did in Facebook or Google, with much less merit in developing novelties.
The fact is that the Internet has been used by half of humanity since a very short time (the other half still does not use it).
And, it is a fact that the Internet has completely changed the way we do almost everything.
Before:
- you had to be a “bookworm” to find information. Today it’s child’s play on Google (although you have to learn to differentiate good information from bad).
- It was unthinkable the nowadays so fashionable “teleworking”.
- You could only communicate with the one you already knew in the physical world.
- … And so many other things.
In short, the so much studied “industrial revolution” (the train, the car, …,) referred to advances in the “world of the movement of things“. Internet is progress in “the world of the transmission of ideas“.
In all of history, there have only been three advances in the world of transmission of ideas before the Internet, which are: 1) learning to speak (when we stopped being monkeys to start being “sapiens”); 2) learning to write (when what we call civilization began); and 3) the printing press, which made knowledge accessible to those who were not librarian monks (Leonardo Da Vinci would not have been possible without the printing press, because he was not a monk, and he would not have had access to books).
The three breakthroughs I just cited completely changed the world. And I believe we are in the midst of another such change.
The good thing is that change can be for the better. The bad thing is that it can be for the worse. It all depends on our response (that of humanity as a whole, and of each one of us).
To be continued. … I will talk about decisions in each of the scenarios.