The pandemic is very quickly teaching us what’s important: health, love, food, a safe and comfortable home, creativity and learning, connectedness, and being able to get out into nature. Shouldn’t those things be the pillars around which our societies are organised? The virus has also shown how it is possible to make drastic changes in an incredibly short space of time. Now we need to transform the structures of our societies so that changes which put the brakes on climate disaster don’t bring recessions, unemployment and poverty, but health, nourishment, time with our loved ones, safe and comfortable homes, opportunities to learn and be creative, and to be in nature.
This is not a pipe dream. Our interlinked economic, political and environmental crises are just as much crises of the imagination. Often when I suggest that we can do better than the status quo, the response I get is ‘yes things are really bad, but what’s the alternative – communist Russia?’ We have been convinced that as a species we are incapable of creating good societies. But the idea that humans by our nature are selfish and greedy, that we have insatiable needs, is a lie. Our needs are finite, satiable and unsubstitutable. The virus has taught us that. When given the opportunity, we want to help each other and contribute to the good of our communities. The virus has taught us that also.
We need transformation not just in our economies but across the whole of our societies – from the economy and our politics, to our family structures and media and communications systems – as all these social spheres are interlinked and all are fundamental to our well-being. And while we’re at it, we should think about the question of scale – how are we all connected in this world and on what scale should we be thinking about new ways of organising these systems?
