Lately a kind of shapeless narrative drift pervades everything I do. This is particularly true of work, but also of my hobbies and interests. Things seem to have changed a bit since early 2020, back at the start of the Covid pandemic. I'm not talking about the major changes though. Everyone wrestled with the existential in their own way during that period. Some opted for denial while others chose escapism. A select few even elected for a transformative kind of confrontation - a sort of stoic death meditation in which one could conjure feelings of their individual mortality and contemplate oblivion. And sure, there were massive lifestyle changes, economic pressures, the re-contextualization of one's place in the world alongside a magnified sense of what responsibility one has, if any, to those around them. But what I mean is the more in terms of the subtle things: those things we might not have noticed.
I don't claim to have compiled an exhaustive list of what these items are for me, but one of the primary lingering threads is one of purposelessness. The pandemic seemed to have heightened our awareness of how interconnected everything is; how the erosion of animal habitats in Eastern China might have global implications. For many of us, the isolation drew us inward. Not necessarily to a place of reflective enlightenment, but perhaps instead towards our deepest held fears, doubts, worries...suspicions. A pervasive distrust flooded our discourse. The colossal degree of uncertainty created an unsettling ambiguity that found an outlet in staunch skepticism: of science, medicine, governments, the WHO. Every day more information, more contradiction, more backtracking, new protocols, changes to existing ones, inconsistent application of recommendations from country to country, from person to person, everyone trying to make the best decision with the data they had. After viewing countless movies depicting possible post-apocalyptic worlds, we got a small taste of what living through one might actually look like.
Not to catastrophize. All things considered, this pandemic was pretty tame. There were no bloodthirsty zombies, no large-scale alien invasions, no suicide-inducing plants, no asteroids or tsunamis, society didn't completely collapse, and most of the world's population made it through largely unscathed. For many people, the pandemic stopped there. It's over! We did it!
But, did we?
Imagine for a second if you were contacted by an intergalactic committee to judge a fledgling civilization on another world. You are told that their planet is to undergo a global emergency. The intergalactic committee provides you with a scorecard to assess the performance of these beings in terms of how well they handle the crisis. You're asked to watch the situation unfold and take notes as you evaluate their response. The scorecard looks something like this:
Answer the following questions, checking the box if yes:
[] Did the civilization accurately identify the cause of the problem?
[] Did one segment of the population attempt to exploit the other in this time of need?
[] Was global solidarity achieved?
[] Were the majority of the planet's inhabitants willing to make small sacrifices for the greater good?
[] Was one group inappropriately vilified, shamed or blamed?
[] Did divisive political rhetoric emerge, undermining the population's ability to work together?
[] Did the governments of this world prioritize their citizens over their economies?
[] Was the time it took to resolve the crisis prompt enough?
[] Were the majority of preventable deaths avoided?
[] Did the civilization take deliberate actions to try and prevent the event from recurring?
[] Has the world changed in a meaningful way in the aftermath of this emergency?
Judge how we did for yourself. In my estimation, I think we did pretty poorly on this practice run. It gives me great pause for future episodes.
I think one of the things that stands out most for me is the general lack of causal insight many people have regarding the role human activity plays in these scenarios. I mean, right now, as a species, we're confronted every day with shocking news of the accelerating environmental collapse all around us. As it stands right now, we're careening toward a more than 1.5 degree increase in global temperatures - a temperature that used to be our upper limit. More realistically, we're probably looking at a 3 degree increase. This spells disaster not just for our ability to live on this planet, but for the animals and plants that we depend on to sustain us. We're seeing unprecedented levels of extinction. We know our actions are hastening the destruction of our world and yet our governments aren't protecting us. They've bought and sold our future. Fossil fuel industries are seeing record profits and investing in further expansion. It's maddening to think about. We're quite literally watching melting icecaps sink into the sea while the Amazon burns.
Our sensibilities seem to be similarly melting. Spilling out slowly in all directions, drifting, seeping, losing all shape and structure and form until only a gooey petroleum-based puddle remains, stretched out and waiting to evaporate, or catch fire.
They're finding microplastics in arctic ice now. And in rain and snow. In the planet's oceans. They're in our beauty products and our food and inside mothers' placentas. Some scientists now believe micro plastics might be a contributor to certain types of cancer, immunological disorders, inflammatory diseases. In a way it seems fitting that a civilization so intent on consuming oil, coal and natural gas would eventually be poisoned by them.
I'd somehow never made the connection before that plastic comes from crude oil and natural gas. Go figure.
The conspiratorial part of me wants to believe that just as tobacco companies knew the health risks associated with cigarettes, and just like oil companies knew the environmental consequences of burning fossil fuels, so too were the health risks for plastics known and understood. I wonder how long until it's revealed that certain neurological / mood disorders are caused by microplastics crossing the blood-brain-barrier. Perhaps that's to blame for our planetary psychosis.
