COVID-19: Why We Should Not Hope to Get "Back to Normal"

Throughout this worldwide pause, everyone is wondering one thing:

"When are we getting back to normal?"

Well, there is nothing normal about where we came from. And we should make sure we won't return to this paradigm once we have managed to control the outbreak.

Humanity Hasn't yet Outgrown Its Collective Adolescence

One thing drives every individual or collective, large or small human expression: our intrinsic programming to constantly utilize evolution to achieve survivability. This will never change; this is Life: an entity/program that constantly tries to secure survival.

How is that achieved?

Unfortunately we are not similar to other species on our planet. We do not satisfy this intrinsic motivation just by eating, resting and mating.

From day one of human existence, we have been expressing that through creative growth—growing communities, businesses, countries. We were being fruitful and multiplying. Until a few decades ago, there were hardly any by-products of this process. The closed system called earth was just too big for our activities to stuff it.

That's not true anymore. Our products and by-products directly impact the only closed system we have for now. Going back to normal will only bring us more "misfortune" in the form of increasing entropy and further destabilization of our ecosystem and societies.

Forget Unconditional Growth

Growth won't and shouldn't stop being the main expression of human activity.

However, it cannot remain rampant. We cannot think and act on a "New World" basis anymore. It is against our existential interests.

Viral, unregulated growth doesn't just threaten our natural ecosystem, which is the core of all human experience, but our societies as well.

Just like a teenager sooner or later learns that freedom resembles a responsibility more than a right, humanity comes to realize that viral growth does to a society what a virus does to an organism.

As Ray Dalio put it;

I believe that all good things taken to an extreme become self-destructive and everything must evolve or die, and that these principles now apply to capitalism.

While the pursuit of profit is usually an effective motivator and resource allocator for creating productivity and for providing those who are productive with buying power, it is now producing a self-reinforcing feedback loop that widens the income/wealth/opportunity gap to the point that capitalism and the American Dream are in jeopardy.

"Imponderables" like COVID-19 are both a direct result of viral growth and a great opportunity to reassess our collective positioning in the cosmos.

Welcome Mindful Growth

Growth is fueled by our intrinsic motivation to cover our existential needs and increase survivability. The way we go about this is based on our culture, which, in turn, is based on our past experiences in the form of climate factors and geopolitics.

Our culture then creates the lesser but daily needs that the world business machine fuels and tries to fulfill.

So, the only factor we can directly and consciously affect is our culture. How can we cultivate a new culture toward mindful, safe, orderly, targeted growth?

To achieve both sustainable and ethical growth, we need both top-down and bottom-up approaches.

Why a Top-Down Approach?

We need a top-down approach to enforce environmental and ethical sustainability in the way business is conducted.

On a high level, governments, funds and organizations must act now to catalyze a global shift towards "mindful growth." This can be achieved by;

• Generous, unprecedented research funding to create solutions to current dead-ends.
• Funding and financial motives for SMEs to become sustainable. During this paradigm shift, whole industries will have to be motivated to transform in a way that will mean abandoning direct activities to keep covering the same needs through sustainable means.
• Shifting education toward inspiring people to integrate sustainability into their day-to-day calculations.
• Regulations that are strictly enforced by technical and managerial controls to guarantee sustainable conduct of business.

All industries are in need of significant transformation.

As Bill Gates has stated;

Making electricity is responsible for only 25% of all greenhouse gas emissions each year. So even if we could generate all the electricity we need without emitting a single molecule of greenhouse gases (which we’re a long way from doing), we would cut total emissions by just a quarter.

Bottom-Up Approach: What Can You Do?

COVID-19 reveals aspects of our daily lives that are based more on tradition than efficiency and common sense.

As a stakeholder in your family, job, business and any other interpersonal activity through which you express your intrinsic motivation, you can identify opportunities to replace established, inefficient, meaningless, potentially harmful habits with simple, practical ones.

Remote Working: What Are We Waiting For?

The 159% increase in remote working over the past 12 years should speak for itself.

For a great deal of jobs, especially in the service-dominated Western world, work can be done from any place with good internet connectivity.

Many of us flock to large, foul-smelling cities, spend two hours every day stuck in traffic or packed on a train, reach the office already tired just to join an office culture that, for most businesses out there, is not productive or inspiring, eventually leading to low engagement.

Why can't you do your work better and faster from an inspiring environment that you choose?

Management is afraid to help you go remote because:

• They don't trust you. And by that I mean they don't trust the culture they have inspired within the organization. Managers out there, remember that a culture will dominate the workspace anyway. It will depend on your presence or absence.
• They haven't thought of it. Tradition is comfy and the unknown is scary. It is difficult to see how doing anything other than what has been done for the last hundreds of years will be beneficial.
• They are afraid that by going remote, coworkers will stop bonding with each other. However, in my experience, bonding doesn't take place in an environment where you are decorous, focused and usually stressed. It happens through beer, wine and good food.
• They are not organized enough for it. Although very simple, it still takes some skill, knowledge and the right tools to go remote, while staying organized and aligned with your coworkers.

Thankfully COVID-19 has proven that well-organized remote working is way more efficient than best practices of the first Industrial Revolution.

Cities are now overrated. Use the internet as your tool to be well and productive.

What About Our Eating Habits?

I come from a family based in rural Greece. My grandfather owned goats, sheep and chickens. Of course, fishing and hunting were part of the Greek culture for eons.

My mother tells me that back then, she'd eat chicken once per week or per two weeks and larger animals maybe once per month and mostly during Christmas or Easter.

Today, grown men throw tantrums at the idea of not consuming meat daily.

Surprisingly, we see that for some reason, a certain type of man seems to connect their manhood to the amount of meat they consume. This might be related to a defense mechanism to the realization that our society is gaining distance from our perceivably manlier hunter-gatherer ancestors.

In the meantime, cow farts are among the largest CO2 sources. I won't even bother talking about the effects of meat over-consumption on our health and well-being, especially regarding the way meat is produced nowadays.

Undoubtedly, our relationship with meat is at least unhealthy.

Meat and fire kept us going through tough times; it allowed us to spread throughout the planet and it kept us warm during harsh winters. But the data now tell us it's time to move on.

Today, you can start making small changes to distance yourself and your family from daily over-consumption of meat. It's a habit but it's not normal.

Profit Does Not Mix Well With Health

COVID-19 taught us that we can have fanatically for-profit health systems if we are willing to risk refrigerated trucks as temporary graveyards in our neighborhoods.

This is what happens when you underfund public hospitals while making a two-week hospitalization expensive enough to keep you in debt for the rest of your life.

It is hopeful to think that an unconditionally for-profit system will auto-regulate itself. However, in reality this can't happen in times when it is most needed.

Free public health for all should be a non-negotiable right for any society that respects itself. Think of that next time you're going to vote, and don't just settle for a high enough health care expenditure program. Make sure spending is not wasted on brands.

Conclusion

I am not here to tell you that you did a great job.

Amidst this crisis, it is highly likely you are currently worrying about your job, your business and your loved ones. This cannot be the result of a healthy ecosystem.

Change is never comfy. Change is Life.