Pandemics: separating wheat from chaff?

Sitting here on my farm in near isolation I’ve been thinking about just what impact the current pandemic will have on the world as we know it. There’s of course the public health and travel implications as well as political, geopolitical, and economic implications. Let’s not dwell on these, they’re either outside of my expertise or I’ll upset a few more of the snowflakes on here with my radical anti-statist views.

Let’s turn instead to something closer to home. Who’ll gain and who’ll lose as a result of the current pandemic we’re all experiencing? Rather than consider the implications at a country level or even sector level I wonder – should things continue in this vein for some years - how it’ll affect the determinants of success in life.

I presume that until now there’s always been a standard recipe for success in life. Some traits are overrepresented in achievers. Maybe:

- Rational intelligence as measured by IQ

- Social / emotional intelligence

- Self-motivation and ability to focus

- Delayed gratification

There’s also a good bit of luck involved too

This is of course a very ‘average’ view of things. There are plenty of exceptions. I imagine that some traits can work both positively and negatively. For instance, challenging the status quo is probably a recipe for difficulty in life rather than instant success (trust me here). Having said that, some of the most successful people were thoroughly unconventional. Thus, one might consider not just the mean effect but the variance (e.g. trait X might be a safe path to the mediocrity of senior management whilst trait Y might be a 99% chance of destitution, with a 1% chance of extraordinary success).

Now here’s what I find interesting. The world has changed in a number of known (and probably – as yet – unknown) ways. Traits that were perhaps beneficial (maybe sociability) could well become an Achilles heel. (I wonder here about the psychological impact of two months isolation on the most extroverted of people.) Whilst an ability to quietly work alone and undisturbed might just be a winning trait. There are probably others too; the ability to engage via a Zoom call would be useful. Height and good looks probably aren’t such an advantage as they were last year (will this see an end to our obsession with identity politics?) The plodder who never leaves his or her place of birth and marries their classmate might well achieve greater relative happiness (and perhaps success) than the worldly, digital nomad. The calm and stoic may win out over the ambitious. Those in a stable relationship may have the advantage. (How many divorces will there be over the coming year?)

Certainly, it’ll be interesting to see which of our current crop of ‘successes’ fall foul of the new demands. The CEO who cannot communicate beyond scripted performances, the celebrity deprived of the Daily Mail’s oxygen, the all-round good bloke who never recovered his spark after several weeks of TV and isolation.

Either way it’s going to be interesting to watch as the natural order of things is disturbed. For the little it’s worth, my pick is that we’ll see three things:

- Some dramatic falls from grace due more to industry / sector considerations

- More gradual realignment due to the new personality demands

- Greater movement at the top than the bottom (if you weren’t succeeding in the old regime, you’re probably not likely to succeed in the new one, but if you were a winner, there’s no promise you’ll remain so)