2020: The Great Dilemma

Is it safe?

Well, no. Not 100%. Nothing ever is, but the world has been feeling less and less safe for twenty years now. There was 9/11 and the subsequent (and misnamed) global war on terror; the great crash of 2008; the disasters of Trump and Brexit in 2016; and now the pandemic of 2020.  That’s a whole generation of young adults who have been born into, and grown up with, a sense of insecurity fuelled by the not-so-smart world of social media. Trolls were once mythical bone crushing creatures that lived under bridges; now they are sinister psychological demons that live in the dark corners of the web. Authoritarianism was supposedly defeated with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the crushing of Saddam and the Arab spring, but all these things have turned sour. the Alt Right isn’t a keyboard shortcut but a genuine force of evil across the globe. And job security was never really a thing but now job insecurity is in your face and in all your empty pockets as well. 

I’ve just finished reading Anne Applebaum’s “Twilight of Democracy: The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends”. During the last twenty years she has observed (as a political insider in America, London and Poland) the swing from upbeat liberalism to resurgent authoritarianism. Her view is that things are cyclical but the threat now is greater because of the deliberate attempts by the far right to undermine the very institutions of American democracy - she pretty much argues that Gilead is a real possibility and that it might happen because the masses have sunk into nihilism. One of her key reference points is Julian Brenda, an early 20th century writer whom she notes

 “had seen the excesses of two different kinds of extremist politics. Still, he thought the struggle was worth continuing. Not because there was a nirvana to be obtained and not because there was a perfect society to be built, but because apathy was so deadening, so mind numbing, so soul destroying.”

So: to go back to work or not to go back to work? That is the question. Is it nobler to risk an infected hot desk or to suffer the emotional swings and roundabouts of home based working? Everyone will have an individual answer. But part of that answer will be getting the balance right between being somewhere safe and somewhere “out there.” A researcher on Radio 4 this morning drew comparisons between social attitudes in the blitz and during Covid-19. The British love to hunker down when the going gets tough, and there really is no place like home. But there is a danger that the British Alt Right will (just as in Gilead) euthanise democracy whilst we are all at home watching TV.

So I suppose what I am arguing, in a long winded way, is that we live in dangerous times; not just because of the pandemic but because we won’t want to go back to work, won’t want to embrace the real world, and will choose nihilism over optimism. Like our friend in the picture we might all end up with a glazed-over expression and let a minority run the world...