The COVID 19 Catalyst: How the Virus Will Change the Way Human Beings Live, Work and Nurture Future Generations
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Commentary Published: 19 Jun, 2020 SF Journal of Medicine and Research The COVID 19 Catalyst: How the Virus Will Change the Way Human Beings Live, Work and Nurture Future Generations Harvey P* College of Medicine and Public Health, Finders University, Adelaide, Australia Commentary Jeremy Rifkin has optimistically anticipated a world and social structure in which humans might move beyond the hitherto competitive, hard edged approach to capital and economy to a more collaborative and cooperative society that no longer relies on the driving energy of raw capitalism as we have come to know it. He calls his new world a ‘collaborative commons’ in which humans re-think the way they live and work together to improve life for all and create a more sustainable, long-term vision for society, but is he being too idealistic? His is not a new idea to be sure, as many thinkers and innovators over time have advocated more equitable approaches to life and living, but it may be an idea for our time. Some societies have managed to create classless and collaborative living environments for their people and vastly less polarised societies than we have today. Many attempts to re-engineer societies to ensure a more equitable distribution of opportunity and wealth have proliferated across the world; Plato’s Syracuse, Indigenous Australia, Christianity in Rome, Socialism in Europe and Maoism in China, for example, so we have precedents for such change. The question for the twenty first Century is, however, more about what mechanisms might be needed to bring about more equitable outcomes for human being at a time when the opposite trend is emerging. If, as we have seen, more equal societies are happier and healthier places to be, how might we create these societies against the odds and against the additional threat of the new COVID 19 virus? Recent events world-wide in relation to the explosion of the COVID 19 virus present a rare opportunity for us to rethink and re-design our social and economic structures without the need for a Marxist, Maoist, Cuban or Sudanese revolutions. The virus, some suggest, will lead to a transformed society and it could do so for the better, leading to the emergence of new, sustainable OPEN ACCESS economies, new approaches to healthcare, teaching and nurturing our young people. It could be a catalyst for creating the Collaboratively Commons or, alternatively, it may serve to widen our * Correspondence: current social divisions and inequities and validate the status quo. Peter Harvey, College of Medicine and Public Health, Finders University, Background Adelaide, Australia. Writers, social commentators and visionaries have been arguing for some time now for the E-mail: [email protected] need to build a more compassionate, supportive and collaborative society vis a vis our recently Received Date: 11 Jun 2020 evolved highly competitive and exclusive market driven community in which we currently dwell Accepted Date: 15 Jun 2020 [1-5]. Public health fellows have also argued convincingly that a competitive economy polarising Published Date: 19 Jun 2020 major winners and losers is not conducive to the creation of a healthy society while personal health Citation: Harvey P. The COVID 19 and wellbeing continues to be adversely determined economically and socially even though we have Catalyst: How the Virus Will Change the power to correct this model if we so choose [6-11]. In fact, more equal societies almost always the Way Human Beings Live, Work and do better [12,13], yet in South Australia, for example, it is sobering to note that disparity in wealth Nurture Future Generations. SF J Med and opportunity has widened between 1960 and the present day [14, P 581]. Other writers point to Res. 2020; 1(1): 1004. the increasing disparity between those who control our economies and those who are controlled by them as characterised by Luce as the ‘left behinds’ [15] or by Harari as those who will be superseded Copyright © 2020 Harvey P. This is an by our modern technological advances [16]. open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution Strategies to deal with the threat posed by the COVID 19 virus are good examples of large scale License, which permits unrestricted public health interventions designed to keep communities and whole countries safe and if these use, distribution, and reproduction in approaches and other compensatory strategies persist over time, they may bring about change not any medium, provided the original work only in the way we look at preventative healthcare, but how our entire economy functions. New initiatives, like the National Cabinet established to coordinate COVID 19 efforts across Australia, is properly cited. ScienceForecast Publications LLC., | https://scienceforecastoa.com/ 2020 | Volume 1 | Edition 1 | Article 1004 1 Harvey P SF Journal of Medicine and Research may become permanent fixtures into the future as we learn to live, dropped to 100,000. Over the same period, Wall Street’s profits had learn and manage our lives and economies more efficiently due to the soared. Up to 70 percent of all equity trades are now executed by recent changes in the game [17]. Our broad public health approach algorithms’ [15,p 54]. to the COVID 19 crisis may well become a model for other major Almost as Harari predicts, the rapid changes brought about social and political changes that have been sought for generations; by recent technological developments, along with the advent of changes to the way we work and earn our livelihoods, how we allocate the virus, will see many people displaced from traditional jobs and our social and political capital across communities and individuals an increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of those who and how we value overall wellbeing in our societies [18]. Further, control the means of production flowing from modern capital and its fallout from the effects of the virus may be the ‘straw that breaks the attendant technological innovations. camel’s back’ in relation to the challenges facing Xi Zinping today in China including combating high level corruption, balancing state A Catalyst for Social and Economic Change owned enterprise with private enterprise, moderating the Marxist- Out of the blue, it seems, like many other essentially inexplicable Leninist ideology superficially underpinning the country, opening up evolutionary leaps in earth’s past [1,34,35], a new and prescient factor their legal and economic systems to encourage external investment, is emerging that may steer us collectively to a more humanistic vision cleaning up the environment and ensuring continuing improvements of how we might live as a world community in the future. Faced with for his less well-off people. The virus, along with what Over hold terms a global pandemic that threatens the lives of millions of people along the ‘ten paradoxes’ [19, p 248] of modern China’s ‘crisis of success’, with having the potential to disrupt our lives from international threatens to be a turning point in the meteoric rise of Chinese life and markets to the way we interact and work, reactions to this world- power at home and in the wider global context. wide threat appear to be making people think differently about their There is no lack of recent and informed commentary describing lives and prospects, at least in the short term. There are signs that the impact of the way we live today on our emerging economies, the humans might be considering each other in more compassionates environment and our very existential survival [2,20-22]. Economic ways in view of our common, ubiquitous plight, the recent illogical outcomes continue to proliferate under the current regimen that aggressiveness around the acquisition of toilet paper and other so- paradoxically sees China, Russia and the US all competing in the called essential supermarket items not withstanding. same capitalist world forum, despite their vastly different ideological ‘Susan Wolf suggests that recognition of our shared fate might positions and core belief structures. At the same time we are elevate the care for others to newfound heights, but even so, she witnessing the unprecedented destruction of our eco-systems and concurs that our vision of a future populated by humans is essential our essential environment while a new generation of young people to the value we ascribe to our undertakings’ [36,37, p 320]. remains poised in anticipation of much needed structural change to our lives and work practices [23-26]. Similarly, community Whilst such a hopeful vision in which humans confront life leaders argue for long-overdue changes to our economies, our social threatening yet common experiences may be emerging, history structures [27] and our energy and production systems in order to suggests that even in the Garden of Eden or in the naturalistic preserve earth’s delicate environmental balance, but up until recently splendour of Australian Aboriginal life, conflict and the disruption of nothing appears to have registered at corporate or governmental level human society remains an ongoing phenomenon [38-40]. sufficient to drive the processes needed to ensure that we build more While we wait to see just how ‘human’ and empathetic this sustainable and environmentally friendly systems for the twenty first current crisis might make us over time, there are other factors poised century [15,28-31]. to force lasting change upon our societies, economies and lifestyles. In his recent book, Edward Luce describes the optimism for change For example, the shut-down of normal daily business life has meant derived from the bringing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989, but at the that those who are able to do so are working from home, on-line, same time he questions what might be termed the Fukuyama Fallacy many of whom may never go back to normal office-based work in a [32,33]; anticipating the end of history and the world wide uptake of fulltime way; perhaps only visiting the office occasionally as need be.