It is a courageous person who attempts to predict the future, although many do try. In spite of Francis Fukuyama’s provocative thesis that the collapse of the Soviet Union effectively signaled the end of history, the final two decades of the twentieth century, and the first two decades of this century, have been anything but routine.
Turning History's Page
The bipolar system of Cold War alliances disintegrated, several states fractured including the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, while new states like East Timor emerged. The "war on terror" became a catch cry for US-led global hegemony. The blooming of democracy in South Africa and Russia stalled yet again. Capitalism was embraced in Vietnam. Even China, though continuing its mercantilist approach to trade, acknowledged the pre-eminence of the market. Suprastate blocs grew in significance, particularly the European Union, but extrastate groups and institutions began to challenge the state’s geopolitical primacy. New extensions of state power, such as the doctrine of preemptive warfare invoked to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, weakened traditional arrangements of sovereignty. A new authoritarian impulse stretched around the world, while the globalization of capital, labour, and finance challenged the state as the prime actor in the international arena - albeit with only mixed success. Facebook revealed its true face - implicated in buying voter opinion with data from Cambridge Analytica. Russian hackers targeted US political campaigns. Large tech firms like Google and Twitter continued to curate echo chambers. And then there was COVID of course, along with the almost universally autocratic response by governments to that threat.
To any casual observer it must have appeared that the truly momentous arguments about how society should be organized had not in fact been resolved, and that history was far from having ended. Judgements of that kind are far too premature when the inadequacies of nation-states are revealed so palpably - especially the inability and reluctance to cooperate with each other in addressing the climate emergency with the necessary resolve.
Pure pragmatism demands that we pay particular attention to a range of issues threatening the complacency of anyone daring to presume we have arrived at a high point in the development of a civilized society. In particular, the paradoxical interaction between democracy, technology and our addiction to economic growth, could well signal even greater disruption in the coming decade than has been the case during the previous four.
Indulge, if you will, my personal prejudice for wanting to escape the gravitational appeal of the past. Come with me as we examine the human condition and trace other ways forward.
Let us challenge current orthodoxies by imagining a society qualitatively different from that inherent in simple extrapolations of the present. A future in which the market value of labour has faded, the total automation of routine work is complete, and machine intelligence matches that of humans. This is a world in which temporal organizations, impassive to physical borders or locale, surpass the ability of spatial institutions, like the nation-state, to adapt to markedly changed circumstances.
Let us speculate, too, that in this future the conventional links between income and work have finally been severed, that participative democracy is transforming the social contract between individual citizens and the state, and that decentralized apps have killed off even the largest knowledge monopolies. Let us be witness to these and other dynamics through the lens of an expanded now.
The Toxic Nature of Progress
Science and technology have added immensely to material prosperity, reinforcing the spread of capitalism and, as a consequence, the influence of global markets. Meanwhile, capitalism has lavishly repaid the favour - billions having been spent on information and communications networks, gene editing and other medical technologies, renewable energy, autonomous cars and trucks, many of them hydrogen-powered, and new forms of digital commerce.
Technology has also shaped the political agenda, ushering in a period of direct democracy and grassroots citizen juries. Everywhere, citizens have enhanced capabilities to communicate and interact with each other, intensifying their demands for improved choice, convenience, and control in accessing information and services provided by government.
Thomas Kuhn in his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, reminds us that every age, and indeed every society, has its prevailing paradigm - a shared framework of assumptions about how things work best. From time to time discoveries are made that do not fit prevailing models. At first these are ignored. But as evidence continues to accumulate, more and more people become convinced as to their relevance. Those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo resist by attempting to discredit the emerging wisdom. Gradually, however, a critical mass identifies with the new beliefs. From that point it moves into ascendancy as the new paradigm within that particular society. We have now arrived at a pivotal point between acceptance by a critical few, and resistance by the masses.
A significant attribute of the paradigm guiding the West over the past 300 years is the idea that humanity and its institutions are infinitely perfectible. Thus progressive industrialism, together with its corresponding doctrine of growth, competitiveness and economic development, has held sway within this particular episteme - a framework that has rarely been challenged.
Paradoxically, amidst the greatest material and technical progress ever achieved, capitalism’s most exultant advocates are also experiencing industrialism’s most severe limitations. Though the linear concept of progress is not intrinsically noxious, it appears to have become so in the context of Western cultural traditions - especially with regard to unbridled consumerism. The environment is polluted, massive social injustices tolerated, while the gap between the haves and the have nots steadily increases - all at a time when public confidence in the time-honored institutions of government, justice and the law, continues its alarming decline.
Assisted by the more advanced digital technologies, we are now caught up in the genesis of a new ontological framework - a post-capitalist paradigm that will possibly lead to a fundamental re-appraisal of what we mean by the term progress - along with terms such as wealth and well-being. But where once, sectoral interests served only to fuel competition, aided and abetted by the favoured industrial-age ideology of individualism, today most mutual interest points to cooperation, a rekindled concern for community, and the forging of a truly civil society.
The Globalisation of Everything
A striking feature of the post-capitalist era has been the extent to which a few inchoate threads of the new paradigm have drawn much of humanity into a single ecosystem. Most parts of the globe are now interconnected, while information, the raw material of the knowledge economy, invades physical space and is impervious to national boundaries. Indeed, the impact of data, together with real-time communication technologies, and the acceleration of industrialization, have together created a genuinely global system of commercial, diplomatic and military relations among nation-states.
Likewise, the idea that the world has become a single corporeal space applies to the human impact on the planetary ecosystem, including many of the concepts by which human beings organize their communities, their communications, and their activities. Foremost among these are scientific method, the use of English as a lingua franca, individual liberty and the free market, for example.
The ensuing globalization of aspects of political organization and legitimacy, and particularly the idea of sovereignty and the nation-state, is also significant. Ideology aside, most Western democracies are encountering a shift away from the regulatory environment of protectionism, public ownership, welfarism and egalitarianism seen in the industrial paradigm. A more open, appreciative society - comprising deregulation, decentralization, open markets, privatization, collaboration and self-responsibility beckons.
Driven by innovation and digital technology, rather than by capital or labour as in the past, this revolution has already reconfigured the global economic system as well as its markets, services, products, social structures and processes.
The levels of complexity arising from the shift towards globalism was unprecedented, altering accepted patterns of human behaviour and commercial habits. These changes, in turn, created a need for more flexible organisational structures. As the Internet facilitated the efflorescence of a cultural nervous system across the world-system, entirely new forms of government and business enterprise were being spawned. In a world turned inside-out, speed, inventiveness, mutuality and adaptiveness have now become the crucial factors in almost all situations where sustainability and survival are paramount.
These developments herald the dawn of an eco-capitalist society fabricated around new forms of collaborative action, regenerative measures of socio-economic growth, and an harmonious balance between resource consumption, human habitation, and the needs of nature. At the same time, they raise substantial issues pertaining to the nature of management, the ethics of ownership and wealth creation, the adequacy of laws - and the rate at which these can adapt to changing environmental conditions - and the manner in which knowledge is created.
Liberating the Sovereign Individual
As we endure the transitional rites of passage from an industrial to an appreciative society, it is clear that extraordinary changes are still occurring within the organization and globalization of economic activities. The longer commercial pursuits and relationships refuse to be contained within traditional economic frameworks, the more the nation-state is at risk of becoming ineffectual.
Since World War II, many Western democracies suffered acute structural revenue deficiencies. In an effort to manage within their means, governments routinely cut costs by retrenching staff, outsourcing key services, and privatizing particular government functions. Public finances were slashed for the benefit of the market economy, while the completion and routine maintenance of public works was hampered. As a result, public jurisdiction over many aspects of our lives was unwisely relinquished through the gradual ceding of authority to private corporations.
Concurrently, private companies became increasingly reliant upon outsourcing, strategic alliances and acquisitions, together with aggressive tax planning and money management, (such as transfer pricing for example) to be able to compete in the global marketplace. In so doing they became political, as much as economic, entities.
This is not simply the case of an efficient public sector contracting out non-essential activities, which was the message most often conveyed to an ingenuous public. Rather, these practices symbolized a fundamental divergence between politics and economics. In certain respects it was similar to that which occurred when the Holy Roman Empire, unable to collect sufficient revenue to provide essential services, gave way to a feudal system where authority was in the hands of private landowners. Essentially, these moves signal a fundamental realignment of the relationship between business and government - a blurring of what are usually understood to be two quite separate domains, the private and the public.
An unintended consequence of this realignment resulted in public power being exercised by private entities. The devolution of public functions to private organizations was evident in fields such as education and training, dissemination of government information, prison and hospital management, aged care and childcare facilities, unemployment, and in the co-ordination of other services. And, while government still retains control over the minting of coins and paper currency, these forms of money are already overshadowed by privately-issued credit and debit cards, together with new media of exchange such as digital cash and cryptocurrencies, offered and invariably controlled by financial services firms and multinational corporations.
In principle, of course, there is nothing to prevent private entities taking political responsibility for ensuring freedom, justice and security. However, as even basic government functions come to be exercised by private parties, so a shift in sovereign power and legitimacy is bound to occur.
The Retreat of the Nation-State
As private companies begin to discharge authority in their own name (rather than in the name of a law that transcends their power), and individual citizens increasingly accept responsibility for their own welfare and security, so government’s own power and authority is compromised. This, in turn, dramatically reduces its capacity to resolve endemic structural problems, such as long-term unemployment, the erosion of the revenue base, inequitable distribution of wealth and income, and regional disparities.
Such issues are, in themselves, harbingers of the nation-state’s growing inability to manage effectively in fundamentally altered economic and political environments. Within this context, perceived deterioration in living standards, however slight, merely contributes to a further weakening of public confidence and trust in government.
In time, the legitimacy once held by the state could be undermined by its impotence in coping with mounting distress of large segments of the population. Unless, of course, it can find new, sustainable solutions to the structural issues confronting society. National governments may not entirely disappear, but because they will not have the capacity needed to maintain public order, nor to prosecute breaches of the law by large, multinational corporations, it is likely their influence will be drastically curtailed.
Stepping Into a Digital Future
In the short term it is likely that government functions will continue to decrease in number. As power diffuses away from the nation-state to commercial entities and global networks, many of the traditional functions of the state will devolve into the ambit of self-governing communities of interest. Ultimately, many governance issues will be tackled locally, with people able to see clearly the tangible results of their contribution.
Those services retained by the state will be profoundly influenced by the global economy and geopolitical dynamics. The way public servants work will change. The dilemmas governments face will change. The complexion of risk will change. Even the character of governance, and therefore what is meant by public service, will change. Let us look briefly at each of these.
The Ways Public Servants Work
New technologies make infrastructure maintenance increasingly costly. Environmental decay necessitates increasingly greater restorative measures, while the growing average age of the population demands that more resources be allocated to senior citizens through pensions and health care. As a result of these and similar issues, conservative-leaning politicians may believe they have little choice but to cut spending in areas where no powerful interest groups prevent them. Traditionally, this has been in cultural facilities, social security, and public services.
By the year 2040 almost all information about physical objects - including people, buildings, artifacts, organizations and processes - will be in cyberspace. This tectonic shift in technical capability is inevitable and desirable. Not only will it provide the foundation for astonishing new ways to amuse, advise and educate people, subsequent systems of communication and exchange will streamline commerce and government, offering unparalleled levels of personal service and information.
Excluding for a moment the possibility of a new social contract, in which the customary nexus between work and income is broken, and where voluntary and charitable work, together with other forms of cultural expression, are encouraged once again, the cultural costs will be high. For when technologies shift, it is inevitable that knowledge monopolies soon crumble.
Such has been the case this century, for example, with assembly-line workers, clerks, teachers and emergency services personnel. Numbers are declining, and re-skilling programs have been implemented across all production-based, blue-collar industries. A similar predicament has currently befallen white-collar managers, accountants, lawyers and bureaucrats. Even politicians may not be exempt as automation cuts deeply into the execution of mundane tasks.
In this regard the reasons for a shrinking public sector seem to be crystal-clear: given the task-sharing capabilities of computers, work is increasingly sorted in ways that exploit the essential differences between humans and machines. While our propensity for perceptual processing, such as evaluation and interpretation of data, for example, is highly evolved, we generally find data collection and symbolic problem-solving can be more precisely executed digitally. By the end of this decade there will be no question as to the efficiencies gained from full automation.
So many tasks that were once undertaken by humans can now be entrusted to machines, while processes still requiring judgement and insight are being re-engineered to augment human effectiveness. The perceptual processing of systemic issues invariably requires the possession of high level cognitive and interpretative skills. Unfortunately these are in short supply. So the numbers of public servants will continue to decrease as routine processing work is carried out in real-time by computers.
The Dilemmas Faced by Government
As the dynamic interplay of digital technologies, capitalism and democracy unleashes uniquely perplexing incongruities on society, so the nature and resonance of strategic issues will shift. Unlikely cultural, political and commercial relationships will be conceived within an economy nourished more by innovation than by capital. Strategic issues now become more global and more complex. Instead of discrete problems requiring permanent solutions, governments and business alike face abstruse dilemmas requiring a range of continuously adaptive strategies.
One such dilemma still tormenting senior government officials, for example, is the manner in which multinationals, through a fairly elaborate arrangement of cross-border trading between subsidiaries, are able to optimize their overall liability by systematic exploitation of differences between national taxation systems. Since major corporations account for a large share of gross domestic product, chronic tax-revenue shortages are inevitable. Clearly, such deficits severely limit the ability of the nation-state to pay for public services.
The complex nature of many contemporary issues is particularly easy to illustrate - as is the futility of any non-systemic policy response - in situations where community displeasure and angst is aggravated by media pressure.
For example, because dealing in opioids is a criminal offense, and drug addiction is currently considered to be a perilous social problem, the police force is repeatedly rebuked to allocate additional resources to fighting this problem. Targeting the amount of available heroin and fentanyl, the police attempt to curtail use of the drugs by arresting known dealers. As dealers are taken out of circulation, supplies of the drugs dry up. Scarcity, however, now fuels price rises. This leads to an increase in the amount of crime and prostitution perpetrated by those with a habit to support. Clearly, in this particular example, effecting a rational change in one part of the system inadvertently causes a gradual deterioration to the whole system.
Similar, unintended consequences, can be detected in any number of government initiatives, from the funding of state emergency organizations to the privatization of public utilities and the provision of welfare services. It is a problem familiar to advocates of systemic development. Intolerant of ambiguity, and preferring prudent, linear thinking over creative boldness, people responsible for public policy repeatedly miscalculate or misinterpret the systemic implications of their analysis.
Effective systemic leverage is often found in measures which, on the surface at least, appear to be counterintuitive. Sometimes they defy reasoned analysis. They may also carry an element of risk and, in cases where this risk is considered to be unacceptably high, systemic responses will often be eschewed in favor of more logical or conventional solutions - independent of whether such strategies actually benefit the whole system.
Compounding the already intricate nature of many systemic issues is the emergence of the global knowledge economy with its own code and its own opportunities - primarily the use of knowledge and information, rather than material resources, property or capital, as the primary source of wealth creation. Within the knowledge economy everything is interconnected. Value comes from the abundance and proliferation of distributed relationships and ideas, rather than from their scarcity. Wealth flows not from optimization but from innovation. Success, in any form, requires supreme agility and structural adaptiveness.
As any civilized democracy must maintain and advance its capacity to make decisions that work for the common good, rather than sectoral interests, the main concern for governments in the West now becomes how to retain social cohesion and coherence, in the process of developing social capital, once effective control over the movement of economic capital is gone.
The Reconciliation of Risk
While acknowledging the fact that it is easy to miss completely, or otherwise fail to capitalize on strategic opportunities - particularly when ingrained inclinations have urged caution in the past - many governments plan their activities solely around an assessment and management of risk in a very linear sense. By ignoring the risks inherent within systems, and consequences that can often range over space and time, the nation-state exposes itself to the greatest risks of all. Namely, the failure to address emergence, along with neglecting opportunities inherent within the changing socio-economic, demographic, technological and geopolitical contexts. Instead, they concentrate on tinkering with what has become irrelevant, by constantly patching up the present, in an attempt to avert their own demise.
In the industrial age, the public sector was primarily concerned with controlling political and economic risk - translated literally into risk avoidance or, if a Pandora's box of issues had been let loose, risk management. The imperatives have changed now. Generally, risk now occurs at a point where the system is most fragile. It becomes most severe in circumstances where the underlying dynamics, or driving forces, are either a critical amplifier of particular patterns, or are worrying to the degree that the advent of unpredictable (or emergent) issues increases. As a result, the "dimensions of critical concern" now include social cohesion, political coherence and influence, community morality, economic resources, technical capacity, and environmental quality - along with underlying beliefs responsible for shaping these constraints.
Risk can occur along any number of fault-lines where these parameters intersect. The strategic context has become volatile, ambiguous, uncertain and unpredictable. No longer is it able to be contained within the confines of detached disciplines - like politics or economics - or within government agencies like Treasury and Finance. On the contrary, risk now spills over into any number of bewildering, volatile entanglements, where crucial relationships, nudged constantly by dynamic co-evolutionary shifts, are what really matters. In other words, risk is now genuinely systemic and strategic.
The nature of strategic risk today encompasses more and more functions essential to our daily lives. Many of the new technologies, for instance, comprise vast communications networks that interconnect even larger numbers of systems. These lead to an increase in the complexity, and potential degradation, of social interactions, and the sheer number of links between people. In this manner the ever-increasing complexity of multiple linked systems creates the potential for large-scale disruptions to our everyday lives, while disasters such as unusual combinations of loads causing electrical power failures, or the chance severance of ground-based telephone cables bringing down air traffic control systems, become less of a rarity.
The natural tendency of governments and public sector institutions has been to tackle each known problem by formulating new rules and regulations in an effort to deal with exceptions and to control abuses. Unfortunately, as can be seen in taxation legislation and laws relating to environmental degradation, such well-intentioned efforts merely proliferate, adding layers of complication and thus complexity to our lives. Over time, and particularly with the discovery of new technological capabilities, most rules and regulations become imprecise or obsolete. This results in unstable or unpredictable systems in which catastrophes are triggered at fairly low levels.
Arguably, the greatest risks to human civilization, and possibly even the survival of our species, are (i) the threats consumerism and overpopulation pose to Earth's ecosystems; (ii) a system of socio-economic stratification that impels a widening gap between those with wealth and those with nothing; and (iii) seminal belief systems like humans are different from other animals that then give rise to unsustainable activities from a burgeoning population.
Bearing in mind that the catastrophe threshold is markedly lower today than in industrial times, detecting events before they hit this threshold becomes essential.
Within the environment of volatility, ambiguity, and uncertainty embodying contemporary life, a more systemic approach to strategic risk, understanding the constraints within any system, and navigating emergent conditions, is vital. Without this, any accompanying assertions that what we are witnessing are unique events and cannot reoccur are simply dangerous rhetoric.
Given that such assurances are commonplace, however, perhaps we should question more vigorously whether our governments are even equipped to ameliorate the vague, incongruous regulations now governing society that interact in so many unanticipated ways. How should we reconfigure our social institutions and systems now that entirely new citizen-centered, society-transforming technologies exist? Is it practicable, for example, to move from a representative to more direct, participative styles, of democracy? And, if so, is this expedient given levels of apathy and mistrust of the political process that are now palpable in many Western nations?
The Character of Governance
Today, we are more conscious that the economy is not a machine needing to be continuously fine-tuned in order to achieve optimal efficiency. Rather, it resembles an organic ecosystem in a permanent state of evolution - tangled, chaotic, codependent, with an ever-expanding edge. And, like any ecosystem where there is incessant disruption as new species displace old, and as organisms and environments transform each other, the global economy will be constantly disrupted by various factors.
In this volatile economic environment, where notions of mass give way to molecularization, where economies of flow often matter more than economies of scale, where innovation and instantaneous communication is vital, and where the protracted financing of the welfare state has become a burden, it is inevitable that the paradigm of governance will be transformed.
In a networked world, traditional approaches to government control through regulation simply do not work as well as they once did. Sooner rather than later, global alliances and networked individuals will make even protectionist policies impossible to administer.
If nation-state governance is to remain viable, two things will have to occur. First, the obsolete command and control model, pioneered by industrial-age enterprises, but adopted with such gusto by Western governments, will need to yield to more liquid and adaptive web structures. Second, the one-size-fits-all policies of the twentieth century, which have habitually promoted the vast war technologies of imperial power over social and environmental issues, and were most recently rolled out in the midst of a global pandemic, will need to be relinquished. This final point is worth further analysis as it illustrates what I mean in terms of long-term viability.
Some Unintended Consequences
Closing down most of public and social life - including important parts of the economy - as an intentional government stratagem, was unthinkable before February 2020. While the nature of the Chinese culture lends itself to public compliance, the imposition of far-reaching lockdowns, curfews, social distancing and mask wearing could not possibly happen in the West. Citizens would simply refuse to conform. Or so we thought. But then Italy, followed by the rest of the world, did exactly that.
This digression from the norm in the arena of public policy is a colossal and risky global social experiment. To forcefully quarantine healthy populations is unprecedented. Perplexed by the science, we have been making up the rule-book as we go along. Although a majority will agree that it was the right thing to do, this does not guarantee history will necessarily concur.
In any complex system, multiple factors must be taken into account in order to grasp what is actually going on. Discrete snapshots of the data hardly ever reveal the truth regarding the final aftermath. Indeed, we will not know if the lockdowns were justified for some time. Constructing an answer to that question on the basis of a single metric, like current infections or daily death rates, for example, while largely ignoring other metrics likely to cause trade-offs and effects that are often far removed geographically and in time, only perpetuates a misunderstanding of how complex systems, like pandemics, really work.
Governments are not used to thinking in systems. Why would they? The way most education is structured - in compartmentalized subjects - encourages reduction, analysis and specialization rather than expansion, synthesis, and simplification at a level of systemic patterning.
Compared to most nations, the reaction of the Swedish health authorities to the pandemic was distinctive and potentially insightful. Assuming it unrealistic to eradicate the virus, they applied a portfolio of measures aimed at reducing the number of people who would become ill or die due to Covid-19. At the same time these policies would allow society to function reasonably well and without too much collateral damage over a longer period of time. Young children still attended school. Shops and restaurants were kept open. The wearing of face masks was up to the individual. Public spaces remained open. It is too early to say whether this approach, placing the emphasis on mutual trust and the individual obligation of citizens to be sensible, will work. But avoiding coercive methods, such as forcing people into solitary confinement, is far more systemically enlightened than most responses elsewhere.
Navigating through the uncertainty of a pandemic requires cross-disciplinary partnerships as well as a deep comprehension of how systems work. The virologists and epidemiologists that dominated the public discourse initially contributed important expertise, of that there is little doubt. But their knowledge alone is insufficient for dealing with the complex problems arising from pandemic conditions. We need anthropologists, economists, statisticians, psychologists, artists and philosophers in the mix in order to craft a complete narrative of the situation.
It is still unclear how effective many of the lockdown policies actually will be in the longer term. While some of the more draconian lockdown measures, especially stay-home orders, could well slow down the spread of the virus over time, especially once lockdowns are lifted, the mutations and proliferation of the disease, even allowing for widespread vaccination, seem unavoidable at this stage.
Attempting to alleviate the many adverse impacts of a pandemic means operating in a context that is exceedingly complex - the world economy and our interconnected, peripatetic, way of life. Complex systems behave according to the logic of emergence: patterns arise and evolve spontaneously. They cannot be calculated and will resist any attempt to control them. They are simply the outcomes of unceasing interactions among numerous individuals, all responding to multiple pressures and shifting opportunities that no one can truly fathom. In this environment any attempt to impose order is bound to fail. Allowing patterns to emerge, however, mapping the dynamics, and simulating possible courses of action prior to deciding on the most potent acupuncture points, is more likely to be successful. But we seem incapable of doing that.
It is becoming increasingly evident that many people are going to die as an indirect result of the pandemic, and especially as a consequence of lockdown measures. Humans are wired to need the touch of another person. The need for touch and social interaction is subliminal - existing below the horizon of consciousness - but that does not negate the need. While no accurate data are available, we know that domestic violence and suicide rates have increased in many countries, mostly among those who were already emotionally insecure, who may have suffered extreme loneliness during the lockdown, or who are in despair because of their loss of income.
Disrupted treatments for diseases like cancer may well result in escalated deaths from non-virus causes. Furthermore, the on-and-off lockdowns in Europe are playing havoc with people as far away as Africa. According to the UN, ten thousand additional children could die from starvation each month owing to the negative side-effects the lockdowns in Western economies are having on trade and tourism. The WHO recently warned that the disruptions to anti-malaria programs, too, will see malaria mortality exceed direct COVID-19 mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa.
It is generally accepted that health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Yet many countries are sacrificing this axiom by closing beaches, fitness centres, parks and other areas where people congregate socially.
We already know that long periods of stress and anxiety can damage human immune systems. Herd immunity could also be impaired, or delayed, by a lack of access to sunlight and fresh air. Many might not have succumbed to Covid-19 had their immune system not been weakened, or had the media not encouraged officials to constantly instill fear and panic within the community. The harmful impacts on mental and physical wellbeing are likely to linger - though many of the consequences will only become clear in the ensuing years. I would not be at all surprised if any benefits arising from the oppressive social restrictions imposed in some jurisdictions are fewer and less significant than the damage done by the virus itself.
Moral Dilemmas
Humans live symbiotically with literally hundreds of thousands of viruses and bacteria. We need them. But once a zoonotic infection like SARS-Cov-2 had swept around the world, it was always improbable that we would ever be able to control or eliminate it entirely. There were no simple or painless choices available, and certainly no exit strategies that would shorten the time it took to find a satisfactory treatment. Once the mass quarantine die was cast, all other options faded.
Looking ahead, should pandemics like COVID-19 reoccur which is highly likely, the more we try to understand any emergent patterns in the complexity, the easier it will be for governments to detect which courses of action are most appropriate, less injurious, and most likely to work. We can then try to support or disrupt patterns in ways that play to our advantage instead of using trial and error.
One possibility that this pandemic offered right from the start was to put more resources into protecting those who were most at risk from the virus - especially the elderly and people with pre-existing respiratory conditions, for example. While a targeted strategy of this nature would have presented some challenges, it could have been an opportunity to reduce the collateral social and economic damage while reducing the number of deaths overall.
By focusing on an overly-simplistic, unidimensional, morality of saving lives at any cost, through strategies like avoiding contact with others and limiting social interactions, we have evaded the posing of questions that go to the core of what makes us human. Are we prepared to sacrifice freedom for longevity, for example? How much of what makes life joyful are we willing to forgo? Humans are profoundly social animals. Yet it is our gregarious nature that has been a problem over the course of this pandemic. Instead of treating our fellow humans with understanding and respect, we have been told to see others as a potential threat. We have no idea what this might do to our sense of empathy and compassion in the longer-term.
If the current mood continues, it is possible that the new normality of enforced social distancing will become permanent. Previous experience shows that government powers appropriated in times of crisis, such as during the so-called "war against terror" over the past 20 years, are hardly ever retracted. There is always the worst-case scenario of a new virus or a new terror threat to justify the proposal that any protective measures should remain in place.
A more holistic moral code could attempt to find a balance between the wellbeing of society as a whole and the avoidance of harm done to individuals. This means navigating through a whole range of values and trade-offs. Humanity will survive Covid-19, but ecological emergencies, and especially global heating - in addition to the threat of a nuclear Armageddon - pose far greater challenges ahead.
If we want to avoid the biggest ecological disasters and the possible collapse of our civilization, we will have to make important changes to the way we live and the way we run our economies. This will also mean enacting collective decisions that limit the personal freedom of individuals for the sake of the public good as well as the wellbeing (and survival) of society.
After the experiences of 2020 the future role of government is likely to be less linked to the interests of the commercial economy and the maintenance of a nanny state on which more and more people are dependent, than a revitalization of community - above all at local levels. All being well this will help to restore civic life and allow for greater levels of public engagement and participation.
Rekindling Social Capital
Thanks largely to a plethora of technological discoveries made during the 20th century, we are now in possession of some extremely perceptive theories about the structure of reality. If we really want to understand the world in which we live, it must be through these new lenses and explanations, rather than through misconceptions, received opinions, propaganda, or social media's echo chambers that simply reinforce confirmation bias. Our best hypotheses are not only less distorted than what we once thought to be true, they make far more sense than common sense. Accepting and applying these theories, however, requires us to discard many popularly held beliefs, acceding instead to explanations so counterintuitive that they can, at first, seem utterly absurd.
Although most of these theories appear to relate primarily to the structure of the universe, to human destiny, indeed, to the construction of human consciousness itself, the domain of social activity, too, is implicated in ways that may ultimately see the evolution of entirely dissimilar types and patterns of work, learning, leisure, play, governance and commerce.
Yet nowhere do these theories seem more incompatible with current practice, nowhere more disturbing to acknowledge, than in those very same areas of human enterprise. The reasons stare us emphatically in the face: by accepting the relevance of these new ideas, we challenge many of the basic assumptions we have held about life and work - its means and its ends. And by accepting their validity we invalidate many of the principles upon which our institutions of government, business and learning were predicated.
The fact that the discovery of this body of new scientific theory happens to coincide with a far greater global awareness of human limitations - the fragility of our environment, the egocentric and self-absorbed nature of our deeds, the finite nature of our resources - coupled with a slow but mounting discernment that unrestrained economic growth may not necessarily equate to progress or the advancement of the human condition, does not make its manifestation any less scary.
No finer example of the profoundly unsettling nature of the new science exists than the theory underpinning the basis of human interaction. From cradle to grave we are constantly reminded that human beings are naturally competitive. This belief is central to everything we are taught. But it has given rise to a system for the organizing of human affairs that is basically adversarial. The media sustains this creed and most industry policy is based upon it. Yet modern biology no longer supports this jaundiced view, tentatively concluding that humans have instincts to be both compassionate and cooperative, rather than uncaring and self-absorbed.
From Nanny State to Appreciative Society
The secret of this good side to humanity, the better angels of our nature, is that compared with most other animals we are uniquely ill-equipped for self-sufficiency. Like ants or bees we find it impossible to live outside of a communal society. So dependent have we become on divisions of labour, for example, that nobody today can conceivably feed, clothe and shelter themselves entirely through their own efforts. Many people regret this and yearn to rediscover the virtues of a simpler age of self-sufficiency. But there never was such an age for us.
From time immemorial, human beings have been obsessed with exchange, pacts, contracts, bargains, fairness and reciprocity - concepts virtually unknown to other species. Nor does such a theory of cooperation necessarily contradict the prevailing paradigm in both economics and biology: that people act predominantly out of enlightened self-interest. Nothing has more to do with self-interest than survival, of course. Yet that has become a contentious issue today.
This raises profound questions regarding the ways we have traditionally designed and put to use our social, economic and political capital. And it totally screws up any selfish, conditioned responses we may have had to the ultimate purpose behind work, enterprise, wealth creation, public service and government.
If we examine the relationships between biological concepts of human nature and ideas drawn from social ecology, systems dynamics, and the science of self-organized criticality, a strangely evocative pattern of connectedness emerges - a strange attractor demanding an ecological, rather than an economic, approach to the organization of human affairs - assuming that survival and advancement of humanity is the supreme game we are all intuitively playing.
To begin with, especially given the power increasingly exercised by multinational corporations compared with the nation-state, this ecological paradigm is likely to have the most influence on business and trade. In the 20th century most corporations conceded that a successful business model was good for about 40 years. At that stage, companies that have tied themselves to a specific model usually atrophy and die. At the beginning of the 21st century it was considered to be around 18 years. Today it is closer to 10 years. Only enterprises capable of adopting new business models, creating new waves of development, or adapting to dynamic complexity, will continue to grow and prosper over the longer term.
The same appears to be true for societies, albeit with extended timeframes - a proposition that has potentially significant repercussions. It means, for example, that it would be foolish of us to detach the purpose and functioning of enterprise, public service and community development from the dynamic necessity for global society to evolve. It means, too, that we should be ready to jettison social strategies that insist upon dividing humanity, that are incapable of stabilizing environmental degradation, and are unable to eradicate social injustice.
And this explains why we need to find an appreciative civilizational model capable of creating a regenerative culture of renewal within our society in order to overcome the highly toxic and unsustainable Western strategy, increasingly copied with such enthusiasm by other societies, of unfettered materialism and rampant economic development - a strategy that, even today, stimulates most government policy and business activity in the West.
If we want to develop a new spirit of appreciation within society, avoiding the pitfalls inherent within the barely concealed elected paternalism of the old welfare state, nation-states must learn to reconfigure their purpose and capabilities. At the very least a new social contract will need to be crafted where the greatest concerns are understood to be:
the achievement of social cohesion through appreciative expressions of personal and collective responsibility - to oneself, to others, and to nature
intelligent, rapid, collaborative regulation to ensure capital markets do not engulf all other aspects of life, including the nurturing of a more ethical and civilized society
educating the community to be more critical and informed about what is going on, and legislating to ensure that disinformation is exposed and appropriately dealt with
establishing (where necessary) planetary authorities to steward the interests of the human family as a whole, while safeguarding individual rights and freedoms
making life possible, though not necessarily easier, for all citizens to be able to live their lives the way they want to live them, by spreading the wealth created by markets more equitably.
As the cyber-economy turns the familiar world inside-out, so do the old dichotomized political ideologies of the past become increasingly inappropriate. The conventional dualism of left and right no longer serve any useful purpose in a world where new alignments are forming. Sound economic management is essential, but not as an end in itself. Whereas education, health, tax and welfare policies have often excluded many citizens from full participation in the life of their nation, it is increasingly incumbent upon governments to develop trust, interdependence, and confidence if they are to retain any vestige of relevance in the future.
Ultimately, of course, the nation-state may simply self-destruct under a self-imposed burden of its own making. Unless history really is seasonal, in which case the collapse of the civic order may well herald renewal: a phoenix rising from the ashes of an outworn civilization.