Humankind is now facing a global crisis. Perhaps the biggest crisis of our generation. The decisions people and governments take in the next few weeks will probably shape the world for years to come. We must act quickly and decisively. When choosing between alternatives, we should ask ourselves not only how to overcome the immediate threat, but also what kind of world we will inhabit once the storm passes. Many short-term emergency measures will become a fixture of life. That is the nature of emergencies. They fast-forward historical processes. Decisions that in normal times could take years of deliberation are passed in a matter of hours. Immature and even dangerous technologies are pressed into service, because the risks of doing nothing are bigger. Entire countries serve as guinea-pigs in large-scale social experiments. What happens when everybody works from home and communicates only at a distance? What happens when entire schools and universities go online? In normal times, governments, businesses and educational boards would never agree to conduct such experiments. But these aren’t normal times. In this time of crisis, we face two particularly important choices. The first is between totalitarian surveillance and citizen empowerment. The second is between nationalist isolation and global solidarity. Under-the-skin surveillanceIn order to stop the epidemic, entire populations need to comply with certain guidelines. There are two main ways of achieving this. One method is for the government to monitor people, and punish those who break the rules. Today, for the first time in human history, technology makes it possible to monitor everyone all the time. In their battle against the coronavirus epidemic several governments have already deployed the new surveillance tools. The most notable case is China. By closely monitoring people’s smartphones, making use of hundreds of millions of face-recognising cameras, and obliging people to check and report their body temperature and medical condition, the Chinese authorities can not only quickly identify suspected coronavirus carriers, but also track their movements and identify anyone they came into contact with. A range of mobile apps warn citizens about their proximity to infected patients. You might argue that there is nothing new about all this. In recent years both governments and corporations have been using ever more sophisticated technologies to track, monitor and manipulate people. Yet if we are not careful, the epidemic might nevertheless mark an important watershed in the history of surveillance. Not only because it might normalize the deployment of mass surveillance tools in countries that have so far rejected them, but even more so because it signifies a dramatic transition from “over the skin” to “under the skin” surveillance. Hitherto, when your finger touched the screen of your smartphone and clicked on a link, the government wanted to know what exactly your finger was clicking on. But with coronavirus, the focus of interest shifts. Now the government wants to know the temperature of your finger and the blood-pressure under its skin. The emergency puddingSurveillance technology is developing at breakneck speed, and what seemed science-fiction 10 years ago is today old news. If corporations and governments start harvesting our biometric data en masse, they can get to know us far better than we know ourselves, and they can then not just predict our feelings but also manipulate our feelings and sell us anything they want — be it a product or a politician. Even when infections from coronavirus are down to zero, some data-hungry governments could argue they needed to keep the biometric surveillance systems in place because they fear a second wave of coronavirus, or because there is a new Ebola strain evolving in central Africa, or because . . . you get the idea. A big battle has been raging in recent years over our privacy. The coronavirus crisis could be the battle’s tipping point. For when people are given a choice between privacy and health, they will usually choose health. The soap policeCentralised monitoring and harsh punishments aren’t the only way to make people comply with beneficial guidelines. Consider, for example, washing your hands with soap. This has been one of the greatest advances ever in human hygiene. This simple action saves millions of lives every year. While we take it for granted, it was only in the 19th century that scientists discovered the importance of washing hands with soap. Previously, even doctors and nurses proceeded from one surgical operation to the next without washing their hands. Today billions of people daily wash their hands, not because they are afraid of the soap police, but rather because they understand the facts. But to achieve such a level of compliance and co-operation, you need trust. People need to trust science, to trust public authorities, and to trust the media. Over the past few years, irresponsible politicians have deliberately undermined trust in science, in public authorities and in the media. Now these same irresponsible politicians might be tempted to take the high road to authoritarianism, arguing that you just cannot trust the public to do the right thing. Instead of building a surveillance regime, it is not too late to rebuild people’s trust in science, in public authorities and in the media. We should definitely make use of new technologies too, but these technologies should empower citizens. The coronavirus epidemic is thus a major test of citizenship. In the days ahead, each one of us should choose to trust scientific data and healthcare experts over unfounded conspiracy theories and self-serving politicians. If we fail to make the right choice, we might find ourselves signing away our most precious freedoms, thinking that this is the only way to safeguard our health. We need a global planThe second important choice we confront is between nationalist isolation and global solidarity. Both the epidemic itself and the resulting economic crisis are global problems. They can be solved effectively only by global co-operation. First and foremost, in order to defeat the virus we need to share information globally. That’s the big advantage of humans over viruses. A coronavirus in China and a coronavirus in the US cannot swap tips about how to infect humans. But China can teach the US many valuable lessons about coronavirus and how to deal with it. What an Italian doctor discovers in Milan in the early morning might well save lives in Tehran by evening. When the UK government hesitates between several policies, it can get advice from the Koreans who have already faced a similar dilemma a month ago. But for this to happen, we need a spirit of global co-operation and trust. Countries should be willing to share information openly and humbly seek advice, and should be able to trust the data and the insights they receive. We also need a global effort to produce and distribute medical equipment, most notably testing kits and respiratory machines. Instead of every country trying to do it locally and hoarding whatever equipment it can get, a co-ordinated global effort could greatly accelerate production and make sure life-saving equipment is distributed more fairly. Just as countries nationalise key industries during a war, the human war against coronavirus may require us to “humanise” the crucial production lines. A rich country with few coronavirus cases should be willing to send precious equipment to a poorer country with many cases, trusting that if and when it subsequently needs help, other countries will come to its assistance. We might consider a similar global effort to pool medical personnel. Countries currently less affected could send medical staff to the worst-hit regions of the world, both in order to help them in their hour of need, and in order to gain valuable experience. If later on the focus of the epidemic shifts, help could start flowing in the opposite direction. Global co-operation is vitally needed on the economic front too. Given the global nature of the economy and of supply chains, if each government does its own thing in complete disregard of the others, the result will be chaos and a deepening crisis. We need a global plan of action, and we need it fast. Another requirement is reaching a global agreement on travel. Suspending all international travel for months will cause tremendous hardships, and hamper the war against coronavirus. Countries need to co-operate in order to allow at least a trickle of essential travellers to continue crossing borders: scientists, doctors, journalists, politicians, businesspeople. This can be done by reaching a global agreement on the pre-screening of travellers by their home country. Unfortunately, at present countries hardly do any of these things. A collective paralysis has gripped the international community. There seem to be no adults in the room. Humanity needs to make a choice. Will we travel down the route of disunity, or will we adopt the path of global solidarity? If we choose disunity, this will not only prolong the crisis, but will probably result in even worse catastrophes in the future. If we choose global solidarity, it will be a victory not only against the coronavirus, but against all future epidemics and crises that might assail humankind in the 21st century. Copyright © Yuval Noah Harari 2020
Adapted from the original written by Yuval Noah Harari. Read the complete article here. Yuval Noah Harari is historian, philosopher and the author of Sapiens, Homo Deus and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. Sachin Puthran is an artist-entrepreneur, as creative as he is with pencil and paper as he is adept at wielding the latest technology to cater to varied communication needs.
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While the virus has locked us all at home, the pandemic was not on the horizon when Charles Handy wrote his “21 Letters on Life and Its Challenges”. Yet his thoughts on intangibles like faith, enough and companionship are very relevant today as we pray for us and others, introspect about what matters, and cherish the time with family even as we miss our team. Faith Do you believe in God, or a god, or in anything else? Let no one tell you what to believe about things that are beyond our understanding. They can only be matters of faith and faith is not subject to reason. Indeed, faith begins where reason runs out. My own journey [took me] through faith to the experience of living in comfortable doubt. As Julian Barnes said, “I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him." It was nice in a way to think that there was this person watching over me, even if he was often disapproving. When my reason told me that this was a fanciful concoction, I felt very much alone in the world, left to my own devices, forced to work out for myself what was right and what was wrong. I would not be surprised if you did not also wonder from time to time whether there was not something more than our dull earthly existence, some sense of the numinous or the spiritual that brought out the best in us. That, to me, is what prayer is: asking myself if I am yet in the fullness of my being. Wendell Berry, the wonderful farmer poet from Kentucky, puts it well at the end of one of his poems: And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here. Laws define what you can and can’t do but don’t tell you what you should do. That is the sphere of ethics. A good society would be one in which there was a common understanding of what was right and proper in human relationships. Newer generations are beginning to set out their own guidelines, spread through social media, a development that can lead to relativism and a divergent society, with different groups asserting different values and priorities. If such a fluid society of mixed values emerges it becomes critical that each individual forms his or her own set of moral standards rather than going with the values of whatever gang or group attracts their loyalty. I started this letter with God. I ended it with You. I think they are the same. God is shorthand for the Goodness in You. Enough In 1930 John Maynard Keynes, the great economist, suggested that for his grandchildren the economic problem would be solved, by which he meant that there would be no more scarcity. Technological and productivity advances would create an economic utopia in which nobody would have to work more than fifteen hours a week; we would all, if everything was fairly distributed, have enough. That worried him because, he said, we have been expressly evolved by nature – with all our impulses and deepest instincts – for the purpose of solving the economic problem. If the economic problem is solved, mankind will be deprived of its traditional purpose. We won’t, in other words, know what to do with ourselves if we no longer have to work all the hours in the week to support ourselves. Keynes was right, but only in theory. As it is, the idea that enough is a good as a feast competes with the other slogan that you can never have enough of a good thing – and the latter often wins. Keynes’s forecast has not yet come true. More people are working more hours than ever before even though they already probably have enough to lead a reasonably comfortable life. Why do we do it? Is it to buy more stuff, or to show how important we are? Or because our colleagues are getting more than us? Whatever the reason we do seem to have an insatiable appetite for more: more things, more money, more entertainment, more everything. Part of the reason, however, must surely be that we love work: not necessarily the actual work itself but everything that goes with it. Work gives many of us our identity. We are what we do. It provides the glue of society, brings people together, shapes our day and gives us a reason to get up in the morning. Our hunter ancestors did not have that urge. Research on the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert showed that the idea that our prehistoric ancestors had a hard life of unremitting toil was not true. They only worked when they had to, did not store food, had few wants, which were easily satisfied. They only had to take up their spears and go hunting when more was food was needed. As a result, they worked only fifteen hours a week. There would have been no point in working more. Some have called them ‘the first affluent society’. The missing ingredient, however, was money. Had the Bushmen had money or other means of exchange their lives might have been less leisured. Perhaps the love of money really was the root of all evil. My wife and I, however, were not collectors. Each year, during my working career, we would calculate how many money-making contracts to speak or teach or write I needed to undertake in order to make sure that we would have enough; enough, that is, to enable us to live relatively comfortable lives. We soon realised that the lower we set the bar for enough the more freedom we had to do all the other things. Blessed are the poor, you could say, provided always that you are poor by choice and not necessity. Along with many others, I have found that the work I do for free is much more satisfying that the work I do or did for money to support my family. By work for free I include not only work for charities or good causes, but also the work I do at home: cooking, entertaining, caring for children – including you – fixing things that go wrong. I love cooking but after a day at the chopping board I know that it is work as well as pleasure. The idea of enough is not confined to money and work. It works in every part of life. Food and drink, most obviously, where enough is literally as good as a feast. There is also the temptation to concentrate on some subject or activity to the exclusion of anything else. That runs the risk of what economists call opportunity cost, when you miss out on the opportunity of developing an alternative interest or activity. One year, when I was totally absorbed in my work, my wife told me that I had become the most boring man she knew. By ignoring the rule of enough I had narrowed my life and might have ruined my marriage. Companionship I hope that you will be lucky enough to go through life saying “we” more often than “I”. Companionship is so important, to have someone with whom you can share your hopes and uncertainties. It does not have to be a life partner. It can be your family, a work group or a whole organisation, even a movement. What people don’t tell you, however, is that to enjoy the undoubted benefits of “we” in any relationship, be it a partnership, a close friendship or a work group, you have to first invest in it. There can be no free ride in a true togetherness. To get you first have to give, and you can only give if you care, and, ideally, care more for the other than yourself. The poet Philip Larkin put it well: We should be careful Of each other, we should be kind While there is still time. Kindness is the glue of friendship. You can argue with a friend, disagree with their political or religious views, as long as you do it kindly, respecting their right to disagree with you. The “we” carries over into the workplace, even when it isn’t an actual place. When I did a study of entrepreneurs they all agreed that they could not have done it on their own, even if they were the ones who had the original idea. I have already argued that small is best but for small to work the groups have to be teams. Teams are groups with a shared purpose in which each member has their own individual contribution to make. They are a looser form of friendship but function best when there is a real commitment to a shared purpose and a respect for each other’s contribution. Individuals are chosen for their individual contribution but have to work closely together or the whole does not work. No one is too good not to need to learn. Small groups, changing leadership, a common focus and a clear objective: it is a recipe for excellence. Note, too, the role of the outside coach and the regular briefing sessions. No one is so good that they have no need of an outside perspective, nor should any activity go without regular reviews. It is a comradeship based on trust and shared interests. If you find yourself in such a group you will be fortunate. Perhaps you only know how special someone or something is when you have lost it. So, it is with friendship. Never take it for granted. Cherish those special friends. You will miss them if they go. All text in this post is adapted from the book "21 Letters on Life and Its Challenges" written by Charles Handy. Copyright © Charles Handy 2019. Published by Hutchinson, a part of Penguin Random House. Charles Handy has written this book for his four grandchildren. In the Introduction to the book, he writes:
"You are living in a very different world to the one I knew, but I suspect that the issues you come up against will not be that dissimilar. It is hard to learn from other people’s experiences, but my reflections may make you at least pause and think before you act, or, sometimes, think again after you have acted. These letters, you might say, contain all the stuff that I wished I had known when I was your age, before I went out into the world and had to make my own future, my own contract with life.” Charles Handy CBE (born 1932) is an independent Irish writer, broadcaster, teacher and philosopher specialising in organisational behaviour and management. He has been an oil executive, an economist, a professor at the London Business School, the Warden of St. George’s House in Windsor Castle and the chairman of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce. He has been rated among the Thinkers 50, a private list of the most influential living management thinkers. |
Vijayakumar Kotteri
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November 2021
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