Here is a list of things we know about crises that have been observed in the past.
- The events of crisis reverse our collective life back to conditions in the past. We start having to live like our ancestors in various stressful, primitive, and diminished ways.
- What gets sacrificed are the higher level needs we love as our quality of life.
- The reported news, expressed by government officials and reported by mainstream media, if it starts out in denial, typically ends up stressing the bad, demanding that people observe rules, deny themselves, and subordinate how they live to the need for getting through the crisis, preventing deaths, etc.
- All this personal sacrifice leads some leaders to demand that a better society should emerge after the crisis. Others expect a return to the old normality just like it was before.
- What does not appear to happen is a permanent collapse; recovery usually happens fast, some of it expressed by exuberance of the survivors.
Why do sudden ‘events,’ however fast happening, violent and dangerous, rarely inflict long term damage? Do we have an explanation for this? Natural disasters and disease are not expressions of society. When these external tragedies pop up, they make society fail. But society comes back as soon as its steady, continuous processes restart; these pick up and revive individuals and quickly aggregate into generating processes within society.
After the worst of the crisis is over, people start rethinking about it more calmly. What do we personally, and social collectively, want to prioritized next? Is there a take away lesson to be learnt from the crisis? At such a moment in time, people will bring to mind their varied experiences. Many will have things to grieve, the crisis having forced some people to suffer loss and others to be denied things that couldn’t happen. During the crisis, the immediate stress raised antagonisms: those who wanted lockdown demanded everyone conform as a matter of continuing to breathe, as a issue of life and death; those who bore the loss of higher level need for relationships met in contravention of some these official rules. The details of which public policies were efficacious, by how much, and whether something entirely different can be done next time, will be debated as long as this particular crisis is discussed.
After a disaster, Rosling’s advice is helpful; we should keep two contrasting ideas in our minds at the same time. People didn’t all suffer the same way, but all real experiences should be recognized and validated. Multiple ways of looking at what went on will continue to be needed. At the same time, around us, we will see societies rebuilding themselves. Modern countries don’t depend on the political. Society is resilient; the pop-ups of crisis are event driven and disappear fast. As a crisis ends, our sociology, economy, and popular culture provide many routes back into sustainable and supportive life. This rapid revival reminds us how resilient and constructive our underlying shared progress really is. But because of what people suffered, the crisis must not be forgotten. Those losses sustained during the disaster will later be able to be discussed more sympathetically and constructively. In the end, I remain optimistic that a catastrophe can be overcome, first by the rapid reappearance of society, second, by a sustained reflection on what different kinds of people suffered.