Owen Polley: It is true that Covid probably will change our world for good and that should worry us

In June, the head of the World Economic Forum (WEF), Klaus Schwab, told world leaders to use the Covid-19 crisis to implement a “great reset” of capitalism, writes OWEN POLLEY.
The closed Victoria Square shopping complex in Belfast yesterday as the six week lockdown in Northern Ireland continues. Online shopping was already killing traditional shops slowly. Photo: Liam McBurney/PA WireThe closed Victoria Square shopping complex in Belfast yesterday as the six week lockdown in Northern Ireland continues. Online shopping was already killing traditional shops slowly. Photo: Liam McBurney/PA Wire
The closed Victoria Square shopping complex in Belfast yesterday as the six week lockdown in Northern Ireland continues. Online shopping was already killing traditional shops slowly. Photo: Liam McBurney/PA Wire

Conspiracy theorists believe that the WEF’s annual meeting, at Davos, is proof that a ‘new world order’ is plotting to create a global government.

You don’t have to believe Schwab has such wide-reaching ambitions, though, to find his words depressing and foreboding.

After all, Boris Johnson has said similar things.

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During his leader’s speech at the Conservative Party conference in the autumn, he claimed that, “after all we’ve been through, it isn’t enough just to go back to normal”.

He emphasised the coronavirus pandemic’s role in accelerating “changes in the world of work” like internet shopping and working from home.

The prime minister focussed on the potential for these changes to be positive, claiming they will help his government ‘level up’ economic inequalities and retrain people with new, relevant skills. But it was easy to interpret his insistence that we cannot return to normality as something more like a grim warning.

When governments across Europe first started imposing virus restrictions on their citizens, back in March, it was common to hear the view that these drastic measures would not last.

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Many of us assumed that law-makers, and the voters who elected them, could only tolerate the suspension of normal life for a short period.

It seemed impossible that the authorities would stop people’s social lives, work lives, sport, culture, tourism and commerce for long. Certainly not indefinitely.

As the months passed, though, the response to the pandemic seemed to reinforce and even complement some of the attitudes and trends that had already started to shape our society.

We could help our friends and family through this crisis best, not by visiting them or offering companionship, but by keeping our distance.

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We could defeat the disease by staying at home and watching Netflix, or perhaps by exercising in front of our television sets. And we could always use social media to broadcast our compliance with the ‘new normal’, as well as our disdain for those who struggled to accept its rules.

We had already read that younger generations preferred to stay in, pursuing entertainment and a social life through the internet, rather than going out to party and meet people.

Now, an introspective lifestyle of this kind didn’t imply atomisation or self-centredness. Instead, it became a symbol of virtue and social consciousness.

For people fortunate enough to be able to work from home, or those placed on furlough, lockdown often meant less immediate anxiety. They no longer faced lengthy, expensive commutes into their workplaces.

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Face to face meetings that seemed pointless or stressful could be conducted more painlessly through video-conferencing software.

There was less potential social anxiety too.

We didn’t have to decide whether or not to accept or extend invitations, because we weren’t invited to go anywhere and we weren’t allowed to host anyone in our homes.

It wasn’t possible to experience ‘fear of missing out’ as nobody else was doing anything either. The task of projecting who we are, what we like and what we do, could continue to become an online endeavour.

If we live, as writers suggest, in an age preoccupied with identity, we also seem more content to piece together our sense of self from prefabricated components; groups, subcultures, genders and ideologies, many of which enjoy their fullest expression on the internet.

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For younger people in particular, the interactions through which they shape and define themselves, take place increasingly on social media.

If the pandemic has accelerated changes in our society, though, is there anything wrong with that?

Online shopping was already killing traditional shops slowly and technology was rendering many jobs obsolete.

Should we not simply embrace staying indoors, learning code and ordering necessities from Amazon?

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Well, we may not have a choice, but have we really thought through what abandoning ‘normality’ for good will mean?

A growing number of people may prefer to binge watch television box-sets, rather than go to bars and restaurants, but are we really prepared for a world where most hospitality businesses have disappeared?

Apart from the economic consequences, particularly for people looking for casual and part-time work, we will still sometimes need places to meet up physically, for our own sanity (and to help perpetuate the species).

Do we really want to live in a world where travel has again become expensive and impractical?

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Go back a few generations, and most people’s horizons were much narrower. An intrepid few would see the world in all its beauty and diversity, while most of our predecessors were stuck in their own neighbourhoods.

The pandemic has given us a glimpse of how limiting that experience can be.

The ability to work online can be liberating, but those of us who were already freelancing from our homes before the virus know it can be isolating too. It also depends on technology that could be vulnerable to failure or cyber-attack.

If Covid destroys the physical services, industries and shops that we previously depended upon, what happens when things don’t work as they should? Are we prepared for our cities to become lifeless husks, while we stay online?

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Perhaps most importantly, how will limiting our personal interactions permanently affect us and the communities of which we are a part?

It might cause less anxiety to deal with the world mainly from behind a computer screen, but is it good for us? I’m a flagrant hypocrite, because my job usually comprises sitting in a study on my own, writing. But, perhaps it’s for that reason that I appreciate the value of challenging myself and doing things that I find awkward, nerve-wracking or uncomfortable.

Usually, those things involve going out into the world and spending time with people.

On a broader scale, it is face to face interactions that encourage understanding, nurture empathy and, ultimately, form the stuff from which communities, institutions and societies are made. The lack of them is what makes this pandemic so dehumanising.

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It’s true that the virus probably will change our world for good and that should worry us.

We should be very sceptical of the idea that we must simply abandon ‘normal’, when normal is bound up with many of the things we value most and which make life worth living.

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