The COVID experience has been one of revealing and exacerbating latent tendencies and trends. For the most part, what we have is the same as before, only more and faster. Both good and bad, though hardly an equal mix of the two. Only the most hardened of optimists would be able to look at the experience of the last year and feel positive about the world’s scorecard. To take one prominent example, vaccines of remarkable efficacy have been developed at record speeds, a testament to our scientific and technology capacity. And then… vaccine hesitancy, foreseeable logistical problems, short-sighted nationalism and other obvious problems about how we interact and live together have all worked to drag down this remarkable progress. This is a repeat of a tendency that has become increasingly pronounced over the last 150 years, in which technological advancements have far outstripped our political and moral capacities.
In different ways, and on varying scales, COVID has reminded us of the ties that bind. With increases in the speed and density of communication, another indicator of our technological prowess, people are more aware of what is happening in different parts of the world. The pandemic has been a global experience, it is hard to think of a place that has not been impacted in some way, and we have also been more aware of what it has meant for people elsewhere. Instant messages, social media, Zoom and the rest may fall well short of the interactions that come with physical presence, but they do give us some sense of what it is like for other people in other places.
Once consequence of this increased communication and information available is that it has generated a kind of weak and gestural cosmopolitan sympathy. There is growing comprehension of harms far away, which are duly acknowledge, but with each new event comes compassion fatigue, as bad news is always followed by more bad news, and an assumption that these problems are ultimately a concern for others somewhere else. On this, it is hard not to be struck with the mixture of disinterest and resignation in the response to COVID now burning unchecked throughout India. Collectively we are aware this is terrible for them, but also terrible for us, and yet, and yet.. this passive recognition of our intertwined fates remains superficial and fleeting, soon fading from our mind as the news feed refreshes. Once the fire is closer to home, attention will sharpen perhaps, but until then, it remains dull and diluted.
Another dimension of globalisation on display during the pandemic has been the intricate complexity of the global order we are collectively part of. So many parts tied together, bound by so many strings and cords we normally fail to see. That is, until they start to strain and snap, or in this case, burn away. We rely on the goods we want being readily available at prices we are used to. We do not think about how they are made, where they come from. When we want them, they are there. That is all. Until. Until they are not. Then we start to wonder… And so, we discover these incremental shifts which, at some point, stop being incremental. Instead, all these little changes start to add up to a more secular transformation occurring. What that might be, where and how it might be happening, most of us will likely only discover in retrospect. In the meantime, the fire keeps burning, the strings and cords fray and burn.
This not seeing or comprehending is somewhat understandable. We are connected to almost everything else, it seems, but rarely in ways that allow us to directly determine what happens. Even if we saw this complexity more clearly, it is unlikely we would have much more control over it. And so, COVID is happening, but it is largely happening to us. For most, this has not been an empowering experience, it has rather pointed to our limited capacity to control some of the most basic features of our existence. Lives, businesses, jobs, futures all lost, damaged and destroyed by an event that hardly could have been adequately prepared for. Fortuna’s hand has been heavy, felt much more immediately than during so-called normal times.
Combined this generates a very uneven and frustrated kind of cosmopolitanism, one based more on shared fates than common sympathies. People become more conscious of the ties that bind, the connections and harms that span and join the world, while simultaneously feeling less capable of shaping their engagement, with outcomes being dictated to them. When these incompatibilities collide, with are left feeling more keenly the impossibility of the situation we find ourselves in. Effects but no causes. Outcomes but no agents. Harms but no fault. Consequences but no responsibility. We are left with everything and nothing, together in a death dance.
Looking back to the flames, there is a Japanese expression - taigan no kaji - that translates approximately as ‘the fire across the river’. The idea it conveys is that even though a danger or problem can be seen, nothing is done as it is far enough away that it can be ignored or avoided: the people on this side of the river are safe. Or to be more precise, safe for now. Meanwhile, the sky grows dark as ash fills the air.