Being Intentional in a Pandemic and After…

Photo by Jean-Pierre Brungs on Unsplash

Today is like a hurricane in a snowstorm. I can’t see what’s out there but I’m told something awful is coming. I need to see the other side of this.

What will we carry into the post-corona world that we will pass on for generations? I’ve learned how to DIY a face mask, create meals from what’s left in my pantry, use all types of technology, software, and apps to communicate and stay connected to the world, and understand the realm of epidemiology.

While in isolation, sheltering in place, and practicing physical distancing, I think about a time horizon that is beyond the second and third wave of the pandemic. When we come out of our hidey-holes and pop up to see the sunshine — what will we do with it?

Post-corona will be a potential do-over, a reset, a mulligan.

Today the administration is relaxing all the regulations in the name of the pandemic. Why is more pollution a better thing in a pandemic? Is a de-regulated world without protections what we want?

Hungary just granted their Prime Minister authoritarian powers and shut parliament. Not a good move in a pandemic when some leaders are jonesing to be despots. Is authoritarianism what we want in the next societal iteration?

On the other side of this pandemic, we will have choices to make. We can re-open our boxes of privilege and oppression and make it worse, or we can seek to be humane, caring, and inventive. Handmaid’s Tale or Nirvana. I’m sure we will fall somewhere in between, but where?

I saw two doctors in an online meme, in their scrubs, sitting at a piano, singing Imagine. It was a social media hit. I took it literally. Let’s imagine what a post-isolation world could be. Imagine a wildfire of humanity caring about each other — no sexual harassment to stroke egos, no blaming people that don’t look like the white hetero norm for all the ills of the world, no ICE/Border Patrol/Law Enforcement zealots to brutalize people. I mostly imagine people being nice to each other, sharing, caring, and being in love. And I imagine so many people saying this can’t happen, human nature is awful at its core, people will take advantage of this tragedy of the commons, and so forth.