COVID-19, and the ensuing crisis, has clearly shown a host of flaws and cracks in the old common. The following are the most important ones.
To begin with, our culture is lacking in diversity and inclusion. Many minority groups are underrepresented, viewed unfairly, or even discriminated toward. Women, people of migrant origin, disabled people, and people of certain sexual orientations are also affected. A pandemic is often seen since a great "equalizer," since everyone could become ill. In fact, however, the burden of a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic is not evenly distributed and falls mostly on the poorer classes. It works in a very selective manner.
Despite the government's support for businesses and staff, groups of migrant workers were vulnerable to high risks of COVID-19 infections due to unsafe working conditions and a shortage of opportunities to avoid working or work from home. This was shockingly obvious in the beef industry and slaughterhouses in the Netherlands and Germany, for example. Following the lifting of many of the lockdown restrictions in Spain, the Ségria area near Barcelona, which has 200,000 residents, was forced to close again due to a new outbreak in sectors with many migrant workers.
Second, our culture continues to be generational in nature. For the first time in history, a sociological transition is underway, which began before the Corona crisis and in which new generations do not have better futures than their parents or grandparents. This is true for job security, debt, insurance, the right to purchase or rent a home, and, as a result, the effect all of this has on the formation of partnerships and families. COVID-19 struck the elderly the hardest, without a doubt. The limitations on going out and being together, the lockdown of their schools and jobs, and the economic changes all had a significant impact on young people's welfare, morbidity, and isolation. Young jobs on short contracts are seeing a surge in unemployment, as they are the first to be laid off. As a result, a "corona generation," "Generation C," or a group of "Coronials" could emerge. During one of the crisis press conferences, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte urged the youth to speak up.
Finally, when it comes to universal unity, our modern culture is lacking.
According to the UNHCR, almost 70.8 million people were internally displaced worldwide by the end of 2018 due to persecution, war, abuse, or human rights abuses, a new peak. According to the most updated statistics on global poverty, 690 million people go to bed hungry every night.
Migrants are at the hands of Western states, which are ambiguous, disorganized, and self-centered.
Refugees are sometimes used as political props. Many countries and regions are unable to combat the spread of the coronavirus due to a lack of resources and infrastructure, especially among certain populations, such as refugees. Simultaneously, Western nations are unable to find an agreement on assistance mechanisms and rules, and others are attempting to stockpile medicinal supplies, including potential drugs and vaccines.
Finally, the old common is, to a large extent, human-centered, lacking the planet's larger ecological environment, of which we humans are a member. Humankind has entered the modern revolution after Thomas Newcomen's commercial invention of the first prototypes of the steam engine that could transfer continuous power to a machine in 1712. Much has been accomplished in the following man-dominated Anthropocene, but much has also been lost, discarded, and irreversibly harmed. The concepts of "externalities" and "ecological fingerprints" of human activity and the environmental infrastructure we have built are relatively new and still in their infancy.
This is why, considering all of the information that has been created, the old popular is incredibly fragile. COVID-19 tends to be a zoonotic disease that begins in animals and then spreads to humans under certain conditions. A virus, according to various virologists, restores an ecosystem.
In other words, the COVID-19 crisis is a "systemic" crisis underpinned by a capitalist, neo-classical economic system in which, according to economist Mazzucato, "anything that fetches a price is of worth," while "anything that has value used to fetch a price" in classical economics.
Many of these flaws stem from two seemingly opposing desires or beliefs, which can be defined as global vs. local and group vs. individual problems, respectively. Indeed, Krastev recently argued that the COVID-19 pandemic is distinct from previous global catastrophes due to the unprecedented degree of globalization that has been achieved by the year 2020, as well as the unprecedented level of political influence that many nations, including China, have placed on their people. Furthermore, according to Krastev, the crises amplify a number of paradoxes, including the looming inter-generational conflicts, the dilemmas states face in deciding whether to stimulate the economy or contain the spread of the virus in order to protect people's health, and the national government's tendency to control its citizens versus the fundamental right to privacy.
Krastev organizes his observations into the seven lessons below, all of which are focused on a European perspective.
1. The return of "large governments": people want the government to mobilize a national defense against the pandemic.
2. The importance of boundaries is growing: the nation state's position in securing national interests is becoming more significant.
3. A growing faith in scientific expertise: while their own lives are on the line, people are more willing to trust scientists and listen to evidence.
4. The capacity for big data authoritarianism: to combat the crisis, governments can use information media to quickly and easily regulate people's mobility and actions.
5. The message that politicians must spread: in order to contain the pandemic, people must radically change their lifestyles, because advice to "be cool" and "get on with life" is incorrect.
6. The significant effect on intergenerational dynamics, when older members of society are far more vulnerable to COVID-19 and feel endangered by millennials' apparent inability to change their lifestyles.
7. At this stage, policymakers would be forced to choose between halting the pandemic's progression at the expense of the economy's destruction or tolerating a greater human cost in order to save the economy.
You may also want to read more about COVID-19 here.
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