This is week 20 of 20 weeks of me posting specifically about the CoVID-19 crisis. It started out with my feelings about living through the crisis, not as one who was profoundly affected but as one of the passengers. What was most memorable really had nothing to do with the virus and I’m fairly sure had little or nothing to do with the lockdown. It was the persistent sunshine that became a prominent thread until the weather broke. Though almost certainly coincidental — the last few years have given us more sunshine in May than August — the persistent sunshine ran through conversations much like the blindness in Day of the Triffids. However it was no coincidence that air and water quality improved as industry shut down and travel was minimised.
As people locked down and cut physical ties during the weeks long drought, with very rare and brief showers, acted as a canon, providing a constant that helped people maintain focus. It also meant that the hour we were allowed out for physical and mental exercise was indeed a pleasant highlight and not just a concession. Apparently I’m not the only one who fully utilised the opportunity while it was a concession but became more complacent when the restrictions were lifted. It does appear that we like boundaries and tend to fill the available space when its restrictions are presented to us.
Many of us also became more inventive and creative and not only where it was necessary. I learned new songs, not because I was bored — I was fully occupied — but because I was more focused and took the trouble of working out the chords and finger styles. I believe my writing has much improved, also because my thoughts were funneled through a CoVid filter. Writing every day was something I probably wouldn’t have committed to otherwise. Politics has also been turbulent which, again, is coincidental but, nonetheless, pertinent. I quickly ran out of new ways to describe days of sunshine and physical isolation but the politics behind and beside the CoVID crisis gave me more than enough material.
When CoVID hit, my life was in crisis — or at least my mind was in turmoil. I looked back in my life with horror and forward in fear. The crisis threatened to bring down upon me what appeared to be a house of cards. There seemed little to lose but 1 to 0 & 1000 to 0 are both 100%. If anything, this time has proved a lifeline for me and though the future looks bleak in many respects I’m more hopeful personally than I was in 2019. I may well be proved wrong but with the rise of the right, climate crisis and economic instability looking to impact everyone of us significantly, its important that we each find some personal agency as the institutions that once supported us become more and more hostile.
NOWISM
An existential threat to our future
From my minimal research I’ve seen ‘nowism’ defined as being preoccupied by the present and its generally seen as living in the present rather than preparing for the future. Many associate it with Millenials and Gen Z and is often graphically illustrated by showing a group of teenagers attentive to their phones rather than to each other. Of course what isn’t portrayed is that younger people are much more able to multitask than those who post these memes. But more importantly they have grown up with this technology and with their opportunities following each other over the edge of their horizon its hardly surprising that they should look no further than an arms length. But this really is a parody of the truth.
If there were a generation that looked no further than their noses it would be the boomers, though that too is a generalisation and possibly a little harsh. With all the hope for a better future, most of the drivers of post war prosperity were incredibly myopic. The US eventually became the world’s only superpower built on the petro-dollar and the military industrial complex. The drive to make life better for everyone worked to a small degree but that was little more than a byproduct of making life much easier and luxurious for the 1%. The throwaway lifestyle lived by Millenials and Gen Z’s was not sought by them and, given the choice, most would happily reject it. The YOLO or carpe diem attitude expressed in the Hippie movement and in many films from the 60’s and 70’s, was very much related to the threat of nuclear war (again largely down to the hawkish USA).
My definition of nowism has more to do with the general public’s incredibly short attention span which means their only reference is to what is in the news now (or decades ago). In an attempt to make life go back to what it was before the pandemic, if that were possible, politicians and the media will most likely only refer to the last 6 months in their analysis. The shelving of elective surgery, deaths put down to CoVID-19 and the state of the economy won’t take into consideration a decade of austerity, the running down of the NHS, the 2012 Health act, the referendum or the overarching story of political maladministration since the beginning of the century.
Learning from history is a noble concept but there’s little evidence we ever do. Not only does history often come to us through the lens of those who have little to teach us, its application often relies on the integrity of those who have most to gain from nothing changing. While younger people don’t have the perspective that comes from living through something similar a generation ago, their fresh eyes can see absurdities taken as read by someone older.
If the Black Lives Matter protests can teach us anything its that those who are most resistant to change can easily co-opt an historical injustice to make them look progressive so that as the emblems of the evils of colonialism and imperialism stack up they can as easily be manipulated to advance evil as good. We must insist that this crisis didn’t begin in January 2020, it the culmination of a Brief History of the 21st Century.