Pages

Sunday, April 12, 2020

Beyond Community: Thinking About Life After the Pandemic

This spring marks the 50th anniversary of my undergraduate graduation from Penn State. It had been an unusual spring on campus in 1970. It was the height of the Vietnam War.  The military draft had been reinstated, and many seniors knew that they were likely to be drafted shortly after graduation. The killing of students at Kent State by the National Guard radicalized students across the country. Opposition to the war led to demonstrations on campus that spring, some of it focused on opposition to military research. The demonstrations led to riots on campus.  The riots led to classes being cancelled and the term brought to a hasty, early end.    
We never really finished that semester, but as things quieted down, the University went ahead with graduation ceremonies anyway and sent us on our way. We all trooped into Beaver Stadium in our caps and gowns, listened to a speech (the memorable remark was that Penn State was “equally inaccessible from any part of the country”) and picked up our diplomas on the way out.
Fifty years later, the campus is again closed at graduation time. This time, the cause is not a foreign war or student protests, but the global corona virus pandemic that found its way to the U.S. in February and closed the University—in fact, all universities, all public schools, and almost all businesses—starting in March and projected to last at least through the end of May.  Campus has been closed now for almost a month. Students were encouraged to go home in order to obey the statewide “social distancing” requirement. As a result, the town feels almost empty and very quiet.  Fraternities are closed or sparsely populated. Apartment houses—the focus of major building spree over the past few years—are largely empty. Grocery stores are full of masked shoppers but most other businesses are closed. Meanwhile, courses—both at the University and in local school districts—continue through online distance education. The University has announced that the 2020 spring graduation will be “virtual”—an online experience that honor social distancing.
            Looking back, I have to say that life went on pretty much as normal after the campus riots of 1970. The biggest changes had little to do with student activism and much more to do with the Information Revolution that began in earnest at the end of the 70s, when satellite changed how we distributed information and paved the way for national cable networks, and the 90s, when the Web was born. We’ve become used to the Technological Revolution and its impact on how we live and work, although there is yet much to be done to give all citizens equal access.
            We don’t know yet what will happen after the pandemic, but Jim Fong from the University Professional and Continuing Education Association, has just come out with a piece, “A Glimpse into the Future Economy after the Pandemic”, that suggests some of the changes that may flow from today’s pandemic.  Here is how he sees the challenge facing us after the 2020 pandemic subsides and we all venture out of our physical isolation:
The massive lifestyle and workplace disruptions experienced over the last month, and likely to last at least another month or more, have accelerated the shift to the new economy, one that is fueled by automation, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and robotics. Society has suddenly become more accepting of not only online learning, but the delivery of prepared meals, contactless retail, remote meetings, flexible schedules, home-life balance and mental health, data-driven health prevention, remote workforce collaboration, and digital currency. Another unintended consequence is an acceleration of generational conflict, as some generations have adapted better to self-quarantine while others find it challenging.
         Jim sees the potential that the experience of living through the pandemic—and the “social distancing” regulations that have been imposed because of it—will stimulate long-term social change in everything from healthcare systems to international supply chains to acceptance of robotics and automation, transportation of both people and goods, and even nutrition.  He also foresees changes in how we communicate in businesses and within and across cultures.
            The “stay at home” rule that we are now under has given me a chance to read more.  I recently finished John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, which dramatizes how the experience of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression of the 1930s challenged the long-held social values of a family of tenant farmers in Oklahoma—the Joads. Their story gave me a perspective on the pandemic by bringing into sharp focus the price that working people pay when society is disrupted, whether by industrialized agriculture or by a pandemic. We should not—we cannot—embrace the kinds of dramatic change that are being considered as leaders ponder re-inventing the economy and the society it supports without fully understanding the impact on all sectors of our society and ensuring that all are protected.  The story of The Grapes of Wrath is an important lesson.
I’ve also used some “stay at home” time to read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.  In it, he argues that, while all animals are able to communicate in one way or the other, what distinguished Homo Sapiens from other early humans was our ability to extend the concept of community beyond the family and beyond the “tribe” by developing a skill with language that allows us to invent new ideas and bring people together around abstractions.  It is an issue that was very much alive in The Grapes of Wrath. My question:  In the post-pandemic world, as we build new supply chains, new transportation and business systems through technology, will we be able also to realize new cultural values that will hold us together in new kinds of communities that extend beyond national and cultural borders and help us solve the unique problems that will surely arise in this new environment? Will technology help us to see ourselves as part of a larger family or will it encourage a re-tribalization?  This is not an issue arising from political bias.  It is a basic question that we need ask—and answer—in times of great change such as we appear to be entering today.