Robin Sears writes that we are facing a challenging future:
Now we see the emergence of heroes and misfits. Beach partygoers versus nurses working 18-hour shifts. Most media are trying to celebrate the heroes more, while also castigating the selfish. The world’s most famous cellist, Yo-Yo Ma, has launched a campaign to bring art and music from ordinary citizens to the world. It has already produced thousands of uplifting moments (#songsofcomfort). Choir masters and artists are stepping up with similar projects offering respite from another bleak day.
Next will come a peak in recrimination and criticism of the speed, effectiveness, fairness and impact of government responses and the stupidity of some chiselling corporations. The unreachable embassy, the collapsing phone banks, those airlines and credit card companies treating their clients cruelly.
We've made a fairly good start. But we are really going to be tested:
Our health system is being tested as never before. Those who hold it together need to know how much we respect and honour them for their heroic struggles not to allow it to collapse.
But a bigger challenge lies just over the horizon: taking the steps to prevent a repeat pandemic.
Changing the way we live will be part of that. China has inflicted three medical crises on the world in less than two decades. The world has every right now to say, “Stop the bizarre and unacceptable practice of hunting, selling in open markets and eating toxic wild animals. Now.”
Greenhouse gas emissions have collapsed in the hardest-hit countries. Maybe we can find ways of avoiding the 2009 5 per cent bump up we hit on recovery. Corporations that replace carbon-based systems with green technology should receive more support than those who don’t.
It is much easier to declare bankruptcy than to fight back from it. It easier to build a wall than a bridge. But ongoing barriers to trade and community will only lengthen the social and economic pain. Some of the emergency measures now rolling out should be assessed in a few months for what worked and what should stay. Why not have a guarantee of sick pay for every worker? Why not have a form of EI for the millions of Canadians who are self-employed?
Lots of questions. We should take them seriously -- because the world has changed, and we can't go home again.
Image: 365 Days In Aspen
4 comments:
If nothing else the current situation should teach us that this speck in the universe we call earth is affected for good or bad by the actions of each of us and we must care for it and our neghbours as we do our family for we all sink or swim together. Stay safe and well Owen.
It struck me the other day that, once again, we have allowed "the economy" to defeat reason. It goes far beyond this current affliction. It has warped our modes of organization: economic, political, even social. The need for a progressive democratic restoration has only grown for the past two decades and we're now at a breaking point. Whether it is climate change in its multiple facets or overpopulation or exhaustion of the world's finite assets we've been blindly pursuing a path, an ideology, that has failed us.
We have to start thinking of better ways and that would take us back at least to the era pre-Thatcher/Reagan/Mulroney. You know my fondness for Roosevelt's 1910 'new nationalism' or 'square deal' speech. There is much wisdom in it especially as it addresses the necessary focus on the betterment of society, the ordinary, the public that must prevail over capital and excessive wealth. If commerce and capital do not benefit the public - as, for example, the emergence of a precariat indentured to Morneau's "gig economy" - they have to be reined in.
We have created a country where our biggest companies are all chartered banks. Moribund, stagnant, unaccountable. America has its giant healthcare insurers but it also has Apple and Microsoft, firms that develop and produce. For too long we have allowed this imbalance to continue unchallenged. Where has that brought us? Bombardier? KPMG/Isle of Man? SNC Lavalin? The Irving behemoth? As government remained faithful to its "hands off" promise to neoliberal commerce, the corporate sector responded by breaking implied promises with impunity and exploiting every advantage at the expense of the public interest. Then it evolved. It grew wings, becoming today's transnationals that owe no loyalty to any country, instead taking flight whenever that serves them to relocate wherever that suits them, unaccountable behind a wall of secrecy even governments cannot easily penetrate.
Governments are now scrambling to find money for stimulus programmes but they're skint, their treasuries empty. Yet we know there passes above our heads this sea of untaxed wealth and income that would again fill those treasuries.
Covid-19 demonstrates that the nation state is not a relic of the past as Trudeau suggested when he proclaimed Canada to be the "first post-national country." He has followed that delusion ever since. Yet, when pandemics hit, we fight it nation by nation, border by border. Social cohesion comes to the fore. Healthy, strong societies are more apt to put their shoulder into measures requiring restraint and sacrifice. Less cohesive societies are places where it's more "every man for himself."
There's no going back. Our response during and after this pandemic and in the face of future challenges will either leave us stronger or weaker and we can afford only one of those options.
We only have one planet to live on, Rural. Denial will destroy it and us. And we won't get a do-over. Stay self and stay healthy.
I agree, Mound. We are at a tipping point. We can make things better, or we can make them worse. But we can't return to what has been our playbook for fifty years.
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