How will our normality be in the future? How long do we still have to wait? Will anything change forever?
In Italy, politicians and doctors have been repeating the same mantra for weeks “stay at home for a few weeks, after it we shall be able to go back to normal again”. Is this a promise or a hope? Will these extreme social distancing measures work? But what about the future?
China showed the world that, after six weeks lockdown, everyday life is already, slowly but steadily, coming back.
Life won’t be the same though. We are in the middle of a “viral swarm” (Ilaria Capua) which is finally hitting us after several alerts in the past few years. We haven’t prepared both our health systems to detect and fight pandemics and our daily (work and private) life to sustain these social distancing measures. We ourselves are the offenders, we have sinned of pride, considering all this impossible.
We were used to free movement of people, goods and capitals, this was our definition of freedom. Now we have clear that what is happening on these days is likely to happen again in the near future, it will only be a matter of time and climate.
ECONOMY
We shall change our routine as workers and consumers. Barriers will be raised between continents and countries, depending on their social isolation needs, lowering our ability to travel and to make goods travel. We shall need a smarter, more flexible and much shorter production chain. Large production industries will have to be fragmented in smaller ones in different countries, just like the actual shortage of medical masks has shown.
The whole concept of our economies of scale will be different, based more on the medium term productivity during the pandemic crises than on simple cost cuts. After globalisation, we may call this period as autarkic globalisation. We will need much more flexibility, both for working time and job conversions. Survival of enterprises will be based on the ease of shifting from a “normal” period to a pandemic one, changing way of working and, mostly, goods that can be produced.
We have to make our economy less human, to make it less weak.
EUROPE AND ITALY
The first days of emergency showed the poorness of coordination between Europe, Italy, Spain and Germany. More than ever a stronger, federal Europe is required, with a single policy on healthcare, defence and economy.
To stabilise the economical situation during and after the lockdown, we shall need an expansive policy, with European investments in infrastructures, medical equipments for pandemic crises and to shorten the production chain of goods usually sold in our continent.
To boost our export market, mainly towards third world countries, we shall need a European Sovereign Fund, to invest in strategic sectors (healthcare, infrastructures, IT and agriculture) outside Europe and offer financing solutions to clients of European companies all around the world.
WE
Our individualistic society is proved hard by our collectivity emergency. Our own (Western) need for privacy and freedom is colliding with other people’s right to survival. We shall have to adapt our life more to community requirements than to our personal wishes, allowing state forces to overlook our movements, acquaintances and daily routine. Our whole life will be accessible and published online, just like what happened in Singapore a few days ago.
Click here to see what happened in Singapore.
What now could look like a lack of freedom, will soon be accepted and, most important, asked by the vast majority of people. Our democracy values will be outdated as we won’t need them. Our future will be made of communities, not of individuals.
Some years ago we celebrated the birth of the internet of things. We didn’t know that, some time later, we would have become part of it, things ourselves.
We won’t have to wait long as we won’t come back to normality.
