There's a topic that's become fashionable amongst intellectuals these days. How will Coronavirus change the world?
Wait. Allow me to be irritating for a moment. Will it — at all? Let me first say this isn't a matter of pessimism or optimism, or even realism. Just of thinking.
The reason I doubt Coronavirus will change the world is very simple. It involves you yourself, or at least the average person, and their attitudes, thoughts, beliefs, which are inherited from elites.
If I say to you, "the lesson of Coronavirus is social distancing!" you'll probably nod your head in vigorous agreement. If I add, "and crisis preparation!!" you'll keep on nodding. If I add the romantic nostrums American intellectuals are throwing into the mix, vague sentimentalism about social togetherness and heroism and crises bringing out our best — what do those even mean, really? — you might even get a little teary eyed. But when I begin to speak seriously, as an economist, as a person who's lived with one foot in the poor world and the other in the rich one, then…well, let me show you.
If I say to you, "Forget social distancing. It's treating the symptom, not the cause. The lesson of this pandemic? We need global systems, and we need them now. Healthcare for every life on the planet, decent food, sanitation, drinkable water. For every single person. And that's just to prevent pandemics. In short, a radically reimagined global economy, made of genuinely life-expanding institutions, based on new paradigms about — "
I'll pause, because you'll already be frowning — if your eyes haven't glazed over. Don't you have celebrity gossip to read? Wait — what are the Kardashians doing in lockdown?!! At best, maybe, you're shaking your head in disagreement (good, at least you're there). But these are not really things we can "disagree" on — they're just self-evident facts. I can foresee all of this, because having discussed already how Coronavirus exposes and reveals the need for global systems, a radically reimagined world economy, the response from the average Westerner has been…a kind of deafening silence…mixed with a baffled pause, combined…sometimes, with an outraged "What?!!"
Mom!! Umair's being mean to me again!! Make him stop!!! I sympathize. I am being kind of mean. But only to make a gentle and necessary point. So let's continue our imaginary conversation.
"All that", I'll say, "is just to stop pandemics. What about climate change and ecological collapse? For those, we need to build a whole new global economy. Yes, really. Not one where Amazon, Inc is worth a trillion dollars, while the Amazon itself is worth literally…nothing. Not one where Facebook and Google are worth trillions, while the planet's rivers and reefs and oceans and trees have literally no worth. But one where nature has incalculable value, so it's literally priceless, and therefore, no one can pillage it."
By this point, you might be shouting at me. Commie! Norko!! This socialist loves gulags, LOL!!
Nevertheless, I'll plow on. "Then there's mass extinction. We're killing off our very own food and resource chains, from the bottom up. The most vulnerable things are being killed off by an industrial-capitalist way of life. Insects, bees, birds, fish. What happens when the whole chain collapses, having had it's foundations eaten away? Those sudden collapses of everything from our food supply to our medical supplies to our water supplies are going to make Coronavirus look like a happy memory."
Auuurrggh!!! You shout. Someone make him stop!! We don't need to change that much. Do we? Is he right? A battle rages in your head, and you begin taking out its violence on me. After all, I started it.
Nonetheless, I'm foolish enough to continue. "So we need to invest massively — and I mean massively — in global systems. Healthcare, food, water, sanitation, retirement, medicine, for every life on the planet. Protection and nourishment for nature and the planet. Life itself for every sentient being.
Here's what that really means. The rich world is going to have to give a lot of money back. Back to whom? All the parties it's been exploiting for centuries. The poor world. The middling world. Nature, as in forests and oceans and rivers. Animals of every kind.
Let me give you an example. The only real way to save the Amazon is for the rich world is give very a large sum of money to create the institutions and resources to protect and nourish it. Indigenous tribes could staff them — an Amazon Protection Agency, an Amazon River Bank, and so on — as rangers, bankers, tour guides, and so forth. But without that money to create those resources and institutions, the Amazon will continue going up in flames. Because the poor world doesn't have the money — and it doesn't have the money because the rich world left it poor, having exploited and enslaved and colonized it, for resources like the Amazon's, for centuries.
Do you see the work we really have to do now? We have to reverse centuries — and I mean centuries — of colonialism, capitalism, supremacy, patriarchy. Around the world. And there is no way to do that without the rich world investing far, far more in the whole world, from which it's extracted all the capital and labor and resources, forever."
Ouch! Not you, me. My face stings, because at this point, you slap me. You can't take anymore. Things are already stressful enough. What the hell is this idiot, this moron, talking about? Why should you care about anyone but…but…yourself? Why is this pretentious bastard stressing you out even more? And why won't he shut up?
"Now zoom out that Amazon example," I continue. "That's just one 'asset' — and I hate to use financial language — to protect. What about the rest? What about the oceans? The great forests? The reefs? What about…the human race itself? It's health and sanity and happiness? How much is that worth? Right now, to capitalism, none of this stuff has any value whatsoever. Nature. The planet. The human race. All life. It's expansion and flourishing and elevation.
I don't mean that in an abstract way, but in a very real one. Amazon, Inc is worth a trillion dollars, give or take. But the ongoing survival of the human race is literally worth nothing to capitalism. Nothing but profit has any worth whatsoever to it. That's all that's capitalized on stock markets or denominated in bonds.
But capitalism is the system of the world, as Wallerstein might have said. America fought a hidden world war to globalize it — attacking nations from Chile to Iran to Iraq to Vietnam. It was successful. Today, we're all paying the price of that success. Capitalism has literally eaten through the planet, nature, and life on it. Now it's beginning to eat away at the human race itself — it's health, happiness, longevity. That is what Coronavirus really is.
Why did Coronavirus happen? It's predecessors, SARS and MERS? Because poor people in poor countries eat unsafe things they shouldn't in unsanitary conditions, and then have no healthcare. Bang! A dude in Wuhan eats a bat, and a few months later, the whole world is locked down. Why is he poor in the first place, while some white dude with inherited privilege earns millions for doing nothing of value whatsoever, like "running a hedge fund"? Centuries of colonialism and supremacy are why. Why doesn't he have decent healthcare and food? Capitalism is why. History is in that sense the truest cause of this pandemic. Centuries of capitalism and supremacy and exploitation and abuse are it's genesis. The poor dude eating the bat was just an inevitable spark waiting to catch fire.
But how many Westerners will ever understand that point? What reason is there for them to? The key word is ever, by the way. China already does. Most of Asia does. But the West doesn't. It doesn't understand any of the above at all yet. Will it? Can it?
Your head is pounding. You're feeling dizzy. Slightly nauseous. You're tummy's churning and your hands are balled into tight fists. Rage is making your face rush with red. You wish you had a gun, or at least a roll of duct tape. Anything to shut me up. Why won't he stop making me feel bad??!!!!
"The thing about today," I continue, pushing my luck, "is that our problems are now different. They can't be solved with more of history's same: more capitalism, more supremacy, more abuse, more exploitation, more violence by a tiny portion of humankind to everyone and everything else.
Our problems are global. They exist at a species level. That dude in Wuhan didn't have healthcare and decent food — and the bat didn't have protection or rights — and the whole world crashed down around us. Bang! Every single one of our problems is like that. There's no local solution to climate change. To ecological collapse. To mass extinction. To skyrocketing inequality. To stagnant economies. To societies being divided into ultra rich and new poor To fascists and authoritarians blaming it all on the nearest powerless minority. Pandemics are just an example of that.
Changing the world means…changing the world. That might sound like a cliche. I assure you it's not. The average white American liberal is concerned with a thing, maybe, if they're really caring and intelligent, like healthcare for some of their society. But even that's not nearly big enough. Without actually changing the world, the world doesn't change. Westerners attempt to change their broken societies, without really grasping the fact that they need to put the world first.
That means: without building global systems, nothing much will change. Every single existential threat of now, from pandemic to climate change to inequality to fascism, will simply rage on and continue. But you yourself probably think building global systems is either foolish, idealistic, unnecessary, or dangerous. You yourself are the thing stopping the world from changing — as much as you imagine you want to change the world. That's true of almost every Western intellectual I can think of, and it's true of most people, too.
Our first task this century is therefore building a global consciousness. Teaching the world, especially the rich West, to care about the world. Why does that hedge funder live a better life than that poor Chinese dude, by sheer privilege of birth, because of a long history of violence and exploitation by one's side against the other? Equality, freedom, justice, truth, selfhood — these notions have no meaning whatsoever at the global level yet in human history.
What is 'the world', anyways, have you ever wondered? It means: nature, in all its bounty. Every sentient being, from an insect to you and me. It means democracy and civilization, too. "The world" is a very, very big thing, but our consciousness is tiny and small. Our first real task this century is expanding our consciousness of it, to hold and see much, much more of it than wer're currently capable of doing. Centuries of violence by the most predatory against everyone and everything else have left us all severely emotionally and cognitively and relationally stunted — unable to even really see "the world" at all.
All that is how we begin to reverse centuries of abuse and exploitation, which we now symbolize and encode as great systems of capitalism and supremacy and patriarchy. Otherwise, we — "
Bang!! Wham!! What was that?! My vision goes blank. Something whizzes by my head. One side of my head goes numb and wet. I hear roars and then cheers. Ah, I get it. You've messaged some friends, and together, you're stoning me.
Ahh, how nice, Sweet relief. I never have to write a word again. I can go back to the music studio and make blissful disco all day long, every day.
Blame you? Hardly. I sympathize with you. Who wants to hear a message like that? Creating the future means reversing the past? Changing the world means really changing…the world? Sorry, dude!! I have to go WeFace, SexApp, FriendBook, OrderMyStuff. Life is stressful enough! Things are so much better, so much easier, so much more comfortable, when I don't have to really think about anything at all. When I have someone to exploit, just as I'm exploited, too, in one great ladder of violence. "And so the world doesn't change…", I almost think, and you do too. But then the thought vanishes. Wait, what are the Kardashians doing in lockdown, you wonder, dopamine rushing through your cortex, right before thinking, in relief…
I'm so glad someone made that pretentious guy finally shut up.
Umair Haque
March 2020
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment