The pandemic has illuminated an ugly truth: the systems we have built can’t address fundamental threats to our existence. It appears that a civilization sitting on the edge of a precipice — gazing at biological extinctions, authoritarian technologies, economic inequalities, eroding soils and climate change — can only marshal the inertia of a couch potato watching Netflix.
The U.S. writer David Wallace-Wells has identified the malady: “a widespread cultural conviction that keeping your cool and trusting the political and social status quo is preferable to a radical response, any radical response — in all ways, at all times, and in the face of all kinds of threats.”
So what can we do to preserve the good and beautiful things of this world?
How do we move away from an artificial realm where engineered scenarios are posited on screens to one that respects meaningful work and frugal living in real places?