Photo by Meagan Carsience on Unsplash: “City lights as photographed through experimental techniques, transformed from the usual bright spots into stacks of graceful, shimmering discs”

Week 7 of the lockdown and it’s a tale of two crises. From one part of the public sphere – or maybe the collective consciousness – we hear about a shock to the system and a slowing down.

Men and women snatched out of their busy daily routines on the hamster wheel, forced to spend more time indoors with their families. And with the thoughts in their heads.

Out of this realm comes profound stories of realisation: a revaluing of loved ones, a growing respect for nature. But there’s also deep, honest grappling with the self – one’s vulnerability and a new humility in the face of death.

There is a lot of grief for the world we seem to have lost (see here for a report from The Collective Psychology Project). Many are overwhelmed, but honouring the need for a process of healing: see here also, a conversation on collective trauma between Matthew Green and Tomas Hubl. At the same time, many are using this moment of quiet to actively dream of a new future possible for all of us (more of this in our Loomio groups).

From another part of the public sphere, we hear almost the opposite. The lockdown has been like an acceleration and amplification of all that was difficult before. Nurses and junior doctors, key workers, carers already under stress and often badly paid, have only seen their work-loads double and their conditions deteriorate.

The images of exhausted, often desperate and frightened NHS staff has been likened to soldiers on the field of battle – giving their lives for us.

Those living in small, overcrowded homes are suddenly more in danger of mental health problems and abuse. The elderly, particularly in care homes, are disproportionately stressed: their vulnerability has not been met with increased protection.

Like prisoners too, their cramped conditions become the cause of steep curves in infection and death – while the newly built Nightingale Hospital lies empty.

The precariat – self-employed and zero-hour contract workers – as well as small businesses find themselves without any means of income. Even major companies have collapsed in this short time of interrupted economic activity, making hundreds of thousands suddenly unemployed.

Stories from the global south, where poverty is regularly extreme, are often harrowing. Huge numbers of people sent from cities in lockdown, back to cramped village conditons that have little or no running water, or living quarters where it’s hard to keep distant from each other.

Having always been victimised by the global growth economy, the poorest are now being robbed of any safety they had, as if they are themselves disposable. No doubt, as industry tries to kick back in the months to come, they will be expected to have recovered quicker than anyone else to service the ambitious goals of industry re-booting

Is there any relationship between these two universes? Or are they a social paradox – two ways of experiencing the same period of time that cannot be commensurated? While charity or acts of kindness do an important job of ameliorating conditions, they don’t alter the wider system within which care is undervalued, or the weak are seen as less deserving.

Is it inevitable that the more privileged – many of us reading this - will continue to look at the conditions of the less privileged as something we can’t affect directly? As if it is not within our gift to change, so we don’t make it our focus?

Maybe the relationship between these two worlds at this time is more prosaic? Given that it is the economicallyprivileged (count yourself in or out here) who have caused the conditions for pandemicsto occur might this be a moment when we have time to come to terms with our own actions?

To observe the damage we have done to the living world – animals, the natural environment and even to those humans unlike ourselves? Recognising those who are suffering from the consequences of our actions—as well as those now on the front line, saving us in our hour of need—may be the opportunity of this moment.

Not simply to feel compassion for ‘those less fortunate’ – always important – but to grasp better how all of our fates are inter-dependent. Our own health depends on the health of everyone (see our blogthis weekon how we are “societies of societies”).

Or maybe privilege is a misleading word. What we are describing is also the process of moving between the individual perception of what is occurring during the pandemic and the broader societal perspective of what is also happening, outside of our bubble.

The first time we stood outside to clap for the invisible actors in the NHS was electric. The 6thtime many of us were beginning to distrust the act: are we now just accepting our role as cheerleaders? Keeping a socio-political system going that hasn’t shown any real change in priorities despite the crisis? Why for example, are we still putting money and the market– or national ego - before the safety of NHS staff, in the provision of good personal protective equipment (PPE)?

Only a future historical record will show us how much or little we are changing during this lock down. Those with ever less time or space to experience the quiet will be depending on those that have more, to turn their minds to better futures for all. But even those with immense privilege are finding it challenging to do more than elementary sense-making in the moment.

It’s hard to find a true response beyond the consensus that can be found within your own bubble, in the face of so many unprecedented phenomena:

· The sudden emptying of streets in cities all over the world

· The complete up-ending of daily routines at home.

· The spectacle of a global economy in free-fall

· The unexpected new virtual space opening up for human connection.

· The ‘miraculous’ images of nature reclaiming the atmosphere above Los Angeles, Beijing, Venice

· New global maps of incompetence but also competence in crisis – New Zealand, Taiwan, Namibia, Nepal– with gender implications

· The materialisation of community networks, populated by thousands of neighbours who want to help each other

· A new understanding of key workers as the soldiers on the frontline of our defence against threat

We are all living in a new story of Us. Yet there are few convincing stories of what happens next.

Igor Samolet - Herbaruim (from Der Greif)

In the midst of this strange liminal space, but from our determined perspective that ‘there is always an alternative’, is it possible to shape the future? Not as a blinkered pursuit of our utopias that are unlikely to materialise, or worse, increase the divide. Nor as a simple story of spend more money on the NHS (although this matters).

But as a deliberate – and therefore deliberative - transcending of these two polarities of ideal and real. Making sure that whatever we reach for next, is conceived out of the insights and dreams of both of these worlds?

That would mean building our new futures through inviting the dreams and deliberations of exactly those that currently don’t have the time, space or maybe ‘permission’ to dream. And maybe also inviting those that have to space to do so, to imagine how they would become part of the front line themselves. How do we all begin to participate directly in the care of our communities and planet?

Looking back over this and previous editorials, we can see a development in our collective ability to move through the crisis. Moving from an initial shock towards developing more response-ability for the future. Maybe this pattern is something we should acknowledge and expect in the future.

We’re proposing something similar to the 5 stages of grief model, which help us to understand, partly retrospectively, the overwhelming nature of loss. Could we begin to develop, even as we grieve, the stages of transformation? How each of us, experiences our own loss of power and gradually, through opening up to the bigger picture - whole system change - reclaims our place in it?

Below is a start on what these “eight stages of ‘opening up’ to transformation” might be:

1. The shock when a problem in a far-away country takes hold in a country near you. A global pandemic manifests as a lock down and we are suddenly powerless to make decisions about our own daily lives

2. The cognitive dissonance as the media tells two stories of change: the privileged slow down and the less privileged speed up. The former observes the suffering and heroism of the latter.

3. The dethroning of authority. Leaders in wealthy countries are unable to protect their own citizens and being publicly shamed. In addition, we are beginning to see a bigger picture in which business as usual is being identified as the cause of our vulnerability - which will only get worse in the years ahead (ref).

4. The amplification of yearning: only 9% of people want to go back to the way things were. Yet we lack the imagination, energy or agency to design better futures

5. New relationships beginning: we are none of us on our own in this dilemma.

6. An appetite for change. This may include an openness to the loss of some of our former pleasures in exchange for a new, exciting journey of transformation.

7. At the grass roots, the appearance of new tools and practices. Long-term pioneers meet the energy of the newly disillusioned, bringing their skills and tech. Global networks of similarly developing communities become more visible. Cosmo-localism as the natural effect of a 21C virtual space that connects I-We-World.

8. Old forms of power seeing the market (and the votes) in what is manifesting, and they shape-shift to serve that.

While some might see this as wishful thinking, international relations students might recognise it as a description of how soft power works. Not through force, but through attraction and influence.

To be part of this inquiry, join our co-creator groups and start participating!

Alternative Editorial: A New Pattern of Response