PHYSICALLY DISTANCED, DIGITALLY CONNECTED, SOCIALLY UNITED

©Lam Yik Fei (The New York Times)

Humankind is facing a global crisis. Perhaps the biggest crisis of our generation. To stop Coronavirus, we will need to radically change almost everything we do: how we work, exercise, socialize, shop, manage our health, educate our children, take care of our family. We all want things to go back to normal quickly. But what most of us have probably not yet realized is that things will not go back to normal after a few weeks, or even a few months, of staying at home. Some things never will. Facing such realities, it is tempting to press pause and question how we got here, but it feels prudent to retrace our moves in hopes of unearthing some explanation in the past. Hitherto, COVID-19 offers opportunity and reminds us of something we have lost long ago. This time gives us a chance to rebuild the broken parts of our world and create a life less hurried, but more conscious.

Since the Industrial Revolution, the pace of life has been driven by the speed of commerce and business. And the speed of business, in turn, has been driven by the speed of communication. In the 1830s, the fast, new communication device was the telegraph, which could relay information at about 3 bits a second. That speed rose to about 1,000 bits a second in the mid-1980s with the advent of the internet. Today, the rate is 1,000,000,000 bits a second. The resulting increase in productivity in the workplace, coupled with the time-equals-money equation, has led to our acute awareness of the commercial and goal-oriented uses of time.

The football coach of Germany’s national football team, Joachim Löw, has well defined our current situation. "The world has experienced a collective burnout," he said with a firm voice. The 60-year-old also said that he believes that the planet has stood up to and defend itself against society and our actions. People always think that they know best and that they can do everything. Yet, the pace that we followed in recent years had become unbeatable. Löw continued that the greed for power, profit, as well as better results and new records were in the foreground. Environmental disasters that have happened far away have barely touched us and diseases that did impact Europe have gone by unnoticed. “Now we have experienced something that affects the whole of humanity.”

BUSINESS IN THE AGE OF COVID-19

While the economy has been struggling from the immense impact of the coronavirus, it is business-as-usual at the biggest technology companies, even thriving. Amazon said it was hiring 100,000 warehouse workers to meet surging demand. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said traffic for video calling and messaging had exploded. Microsoft said the numbers using its software for online collaboration had climbed nearly 40 percent in a week. With people told to work from home and stay away from others, the pandemic has deepened reliance on services from the industry’s biggest technology companies while accelerating trends that were already benefiting them. Zoom has become a daily essential tool and Peloton has been turned your home into a fitness studio.

Aside from the rise in demand for billion dollar technology firms, nearly every other business and family have been impacted by the spread of COVID-19. Businesses have had to reset its budget for 2020 and make several short term adjustments. Firms were forced to initiate a number of measures to reduce cost as revenues have shrunk, including salary cuts, part-time work and reduce the overall staff count, to ensure the health of the business and extend the lifeline of the company in itself.

Publishing product news and sharing industry trends seem frivolous in a time when healthcare workers and first responders are sacrificing their own well-being to treat those who are sick. But the truth is that business objectives have been established in a time of calm are not all suddenly meaningless. Companies like Gear Patrol, Hodinkee, or Highsnobiety, have always been about delivering the latest news about design and product to people, generating money through editorially content on product recommendations, reviews and buying guides. This business model is called product journalism and the direct source of jobs and income for millions of people, which is why it is crucial to continue sharing new content, just like influencers keep sharing product recommendations on Instagram.

As businesses around the world grapple with the impact of the pandemic, many bars, cafes and restaurants have transitioned to a delivery and takeaway service only, as a way to remain open and keep their business stable. Trendy neighborhood hotspots from Amsterdam to Zurich, have adopted this model. You will have a seen a number of posts and initiatives around the support of small businesses. The hospitality industry sadly cannot work from home and your local needs your support more than ever, in order to keep providing you with your daily dose of caffeine and avocado toast (Follow the link to find your local café around the world: Click here). Remember that human connection is why we are here and it is the important relationships we create that steer us on the right path and accompany us through life. The idea of a coffee goes beyond caffeine and its instant energy boost. The point of a magazine is much more than just a paper filled with information. In an increasingly digital world, coffee has the ability to make people slow down, look around and reconnect with the environment, while the feeling of reading a physical newspaper is reengaging our senses and inspiring our mind. These small initiatives are critical to support the economy and help companies, so that people can retain their jobs and provide for their families, as well as offer you their services in the future.

THE ESSENTIALS OF LIFE

Innovation often arises in periods of adversity. In recent weeks, we have seen such welcome invention germinating in the horrendous crisis of the coronavirus. Consider, for example, the many new platforms for online teaching, virtual communication tool, or even the use of cheap bluetooth smart thermometers able to transmit a person’s fever and geolocation to a distant database. In bad times, innovation can occur in habits of mind as well as in new technologies. The frightening COVID-19 pandemic may be creating such a change now—by forcing many of us to slow down, to spend more time in personal reflection, away from the noise and heave of the world.

I came across Pas Normal Studios, an innovative cycling brand from Denmark, latest product release a couple of days go, which was focused around the idea of the essential experience. The brand questions what remains when we strip away the competitiveness of cycling? No power numbers. No strict training plans. No dietary restrictions. No “ideal body type". All that remains are the essentials. The desire to explore. The lighthearted competitions between friends. The sense of community. The pure sense of passion that lies at the heart of why people ride. While, the idea of essentialism was coined at experience of riding a bicycle around the streets or steeps mountain roads, I thought it also fits the idea of solitude that we are faced with today. What remains when we strip away life? With more quiet time, more privacy, more stillness, we have an opportunity to think about who we are, as individuals and as a society.

LIVING A LIFE OF HYPER-CONNECTIVITY

Habits of mind and lifestyle do not change easily. Without noticing, we slowly slip into the routines of our lives, like becoming so accustomed to living on a noisy street that we cannot remember our previous neighborhood and a time of silence. Some powerful force must strike to awaken us from our slumber. Now we have been struck. We have a chance to notice: We have been living too fast. We have sold our inner selves to the devil of speed, efficiency, money, hyper-connectivity, “progress.” As a result, we have created a hectic lifestyle in which not a minute is to be wasted. The precious 24 hours of each day are carved up, dissected, and reduced to 10-minute units of efficiency. We become agitated and angry in the waiting room of a doctor’s office if we have been standing by for 10 minutes. We grow impatient if our laser printers do not spit out at least five pages per second. We cannot sit quietly in a chair for 10 minutes. We must be connected at all times. We take our smartphones and laptops with us on vacation. We go through our email at restaurants, or our online bank accounts while walking in the park. We have become slaves to our “urgent” appointments and to-do lists and addiction to nonstop stimulation by the external world. Little by little, the noise and speed of the world have increased, so that we can hardly remember an era of slowness and quiet, when we could let our minds wander and think about what they wanted to think about, when we had time to consider where we were going and what we believed in.

But now we have been struck. With workplaces shut down, restaurants, movie theaters and department stores closed, the majority of us find themselves 24 hours per day inside our homes, alone with our thoughts. At home, time and space have opened up in our minds. Of course, this excludes the heroic workers in healthcare and in grocery stores that ensure that our systems are still running, as well as parents with young children or elderly relatives needing constant attention. However, even for those who continue their professional life working from home, schedules have become more flexible. Demands have retreated. Daily routines have been interrupted. People are suddenly faced with structuring free time. This terrible disaster has freed us from the prison of our time-driven lives. At least for a few months, we have the chance to slow down.

REDUCE THE SPEED OF LIFE

What might be regained with a less hurried life? First, as many people have noted, there is simply the needed replenishment of mind that comes from doing nothing in particular, from taking long mental walks without destination, from finding a few moments of quiet away from the noise of the world. The mind needs to rest. The mind needs periods of calm. Such a need has been recognized for thousands of years. It was described as early as 1500 B.C., in the meditation traditions of Hinduism. Later in Buddhism. With some degree of freedom from our time-driven lives also comes increased creativity. Psychologists have long known that creativity thrives on unstructured time, on play, on nondirected “divergent thinking.” In a 2007 clinical report for the American Academy of Pediatrics, the physician Kenneth R. Ginsburg wrote that “play allows children to use their creativity while developing their imagination, dexterity, and physical, cognitive, and emotional strength. Yet, many children are being raised in an increasingly hurried and pressured style that may limit the protective benefits they would gain from child-driven play.” With the forced slowing of life granted by the Coronavirus, we are in hope to see an explosion of new creative ideas and innovations around our world.

Alan Lightman, a writer and physicist, who teaches at MIT, writes that there is something more to be regained, something more subtle, more delicate. “That is the restoration of our inner selves. By inner self, I mean that part of me that imagines, that dreams, that explores, that is constantly questioning who I am and what is important to me. My inner self is my true freedom. My inner self roots me to me, and to the ground beneath me. The sunlight and soil that nourish my inner self are solitude and personal reflection. When I listen to my inner self, I hear the breathing of my spirit. Those breaths are so tiny and delicate, I need stillness to hear them, I need slowness to hear them. I need vast silent spaces in my mind. I need privacy. Without the breathing and the voice of my inner self, I am a prisoner of the frenzied world around me. I am a prisoner of my job, my money, the clothes in my closet. What am I? I need slowness and quiet to ponder that question.” We will have the chance do that pondering for several months. But such self-reflection, such tending to the inner self, is not a onetime event. It should be an ongoing part of a life lived deliberately, to use Henry David Thoreau’s language. And that deliberate living requires an enduring change of lifestyle and habits.

PLANTING THE SEEDS FOR THE FUTURE TREE OF LIFE

The decisions people and governments take in the next few weeks will probably shape the world for years to come. They will shape not just our healthcare systems but also our economy, politics and culture. We must act quickly and decisively, but we should also take into account the long-term consequences of our actions. 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 of us that are fortunate enough to have workplace flexibility can do something impact, as social distancing does not have to mean distancing ourselves from our shared humanity.

While it is easy for us to retreat back into our own hives, the chaos is unfolding across countries like Brazil, India or South Africa, where social distancing is going to be physically and economically impossible. Knowing the realities on the ground, we must act to support the WHO and the affected countries’ ministries of health. In India 74 million people, which is one sixth of the urban population, are living cheek by jowl in the country's slums. Slums and informal settlements are also part of the physical infrastructures of many African cities. How are people in shared accommodation expected to self-isolate? All of them were overcrowded and lacked services even before the threat of a global health crisis emerged. Think of Alexandra in Johannesburg, where over 700,000 people are estimated to live in less than 5 square kilometers, Mbare in Harare with some 800,000 people, Kibera in Nairobi with at least 250,000, and Makoko in Lagos with over 300,000 whose homes are built on stilts in a lagoon.

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 are not normal times, and the future is going to look different. 

Today a different global calamity has made scarcity the necessary condition of humanity’s survival. Cafes along the Navigli in Milan remain shut. Times Square is a ghost town, as are the City of London and the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Emptiness proliferates like the virus. Beset by viruses and other natural disasters, cities around the world have time and again devised new infrastructure and rewritten zoning regulations to ensure more light and air, and produced public spaces, buildings and other sites. Michael Kimmelman, an architecture critic of The New York Times, writes in his post (Read the post and view the photo series: Click here) that the present emptiness of our cities “can conjure up dystopia, not progress, but, promisingly, it also suggests that, we have not yet lost the capacity to come together for the common good. These images are haunted and haunting, like stills from movies about plagues and the apocalypse, but in some ways they are hopeful. They remind us that beauty requires human interaction. Beauty entails something else. It is something we bestow. It will be the moment we return.”

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. 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 long run. If we choose global solidarity, it will be a victory not only against COVID-19, but potentially against all future epidemics and crises that might challenge humankind in the 21st century. At some point, the coronavirus will pass, or at least recede into the haze of other viruses and ailments. There will be suffering, loss of life and enormous economic devastation. That tragedy cannot be overstated and it will take time to rebuild our economic system. But perhaps the slower lifestyle in these months to come will help put the pieces back together of that life that we have along the way speeding down the Autobahn at 250 km/h. Perhaps a decrease in speed and social distance will allow us to pursue a more contemplative, deliberate and conscious way of living, re-uniting us as a global society and re-connecting us as human beings, and slowly filling our beloved cities with life again.