Author: Corneliu Bodea

Text written for www.republica.ro

I believe that enough is written about the pandemic, the influences it has on the way we live and the changes it brings to the way we are used to working. On the other hand, I feel that with age and with (I hope) the gain in wisdom, I find fewer and fewer relevant things to say and I rely more and more on silence. I say this because although I have read a lot of interesting things about the ongoing crisis, I am witnessing an avalanche of conferences and positions that are more and more full of platitudes. It is normal for this to happen when in the short term a topic is so much rolled.

If I look at my daily activity and monitor my daily thoughts, I find that about 30% refer to things related to the health-economic crisis situation, the rest being the same problems that I left confused before its appearance. It is a dynamic situation and probably little by little the contribution of this situation to my concerns will decrease to insignificant values. I think that this could mean the return to normal…

While I was taking my daily walk on the way to the office, listening as usual to podcasts, I stopped about 20 meters from the pedestrian crossing to be able to hear correctly, running away from the extraordinary noise made by the hundreds of cars and motorcycles (probably pre-war, after the sound of the engine…). My thoughts ran to the period of the state of emergency and to the silence and peace that reigned along Aviatorilor Boulevard. Now of course it hid a sad and dangerous cause, that silence, as well as the peace of the office, the time I had to think, the desert on the streets… an unfortunate cause that I didn’t necessarily need to understand that we can do things for our peace. Now the pandemic has come and thrown us all into an unreal and dystopian or utopian world some would say, although the terms are antonyms. It came and showed us something. There is value in what it shows us, it is quality, it is substance. From this perspective, I don’t want a return to normal.

I recently listened to Toby Ord saying that he hears too many people saying that the situation generated by this health catastrophe is unprecedented, he considers that in reality the silence we have had in terms of humanitarian crises (pandemics, wars, etc.) in the last hundred years is unprecedented. It is true that technological evolution has fully contributed to this situation, just as it is true that technology has also brought a lot of aggression to nature, life and its sustainability. What would it be like to be able to detect and put aside everything that is harmful in our computerized and motorized society and to keep what is honorable and physically and mentally healthy? Probably not easy, and the health and economic crisis we are going through I think could give us a well-deserved incentive .

In this context, we talk too often about material inequality, about the guaranteed minimum income, things that are difficult to argue philosophically or at least economically and at the same time we neglect the subject of our aggressions towards nature, the peace of mind, we do not bring into discussion the multiple ways in which we add stress to life that seems shorter and shorter in terms of sensation, even if arithmetic contradicts us.

I continue my journey almost daily to the office and I can’t stop wondering why there is no limit to noise pollution, why we don’t have civilized and electric public transport, why we don’t discourage internal combustion engines, why we don’t support meritocracy, why we repeat mistakes and are arrogant and sometimes mythical. This way I already arrive at the office exhausted, but full of motivation and I allow myself to skip a meeting.

A book by the renowned philosopher and scientist mentioned above shows us that the anthropogenic risks to humanity are tens of thousands of times higher compared to the risks of disasters with purely natural causes. That saying would work: “where there is a lot of mind, there is also stupidity, mommy”… Sad but true, we put ourselves at risk and we don’t seem to realize it. And it’s so simple to see the perfect world… Close your eyes and imagine the place you would like to be, what the people to accompany you should be, what to do there, what to hear, how to smell and you have already described a world. All that remains is to contribute to its construction. In the hope that no one has imagined a place where ancient motorcycle engines howl, we can say that together we would design a similar world: clean, fair, full of respect, love and hope for all. So why do we throw misery, why do we cause ourselves stress and incite ourselves to violence, why do we hate and cheat in our own and petty interest? All these evils come from us and the technology we develop brings with it their exacerbation.

I put aside with my hand, like a curtain of beads, all the evils brought with the technological development of the approximately 10,000 generations of homo sapiens, whom I greet with respect and keep with me the good things, which give health and sustainability to life, respect the differences between people and leave them as they are, bypassing orthodox neo-liberalism and leaving arrogance aside. No, I don’t want us to go back to normal!