Page 113 - COVID-19: The Great Reset

health). These structural changes in how we work,
consume and invest may take a little while before they

become widespread enough to make a real difference but,
as we argued before, what matters is the direction and the
strength of the trend. The poet and philosopher Lao Tzu
was right in saying: “A journey of a thousand miles begins

with a single step.” We are just at the beginning of a long
and painful recovery and, for many of us, thinking about
sustainability may seem like a luxury but when things start
to improve we’ll collectively remember that a relation of

causality exists between air pollution and COVID-19. Then
sustainability will cease to be secondary and climate
change (so closely correlated with air pollution) will move to
the forefront of our preoccupations. What social scientists

call “behavioural contagion” (the way in which attitudes,
ideas and behaviour spread throughout the population)
might then work its magic!

4. Activism. Some analysts ventured that the pandemic

would provoke the obsolescence of activism, but the exact
opposite may well prove to be true. According to a group of
American and European academics, the coronavirus has
emboldened the motivation for change and triggered new
tools and strategies in terms of social activism. Over the

course of just several weeks, this group of researchers
collected data on various forms of social activism and
identified almost 100 distinct methods of non-violent action,

including physical, virtual and hybrid actions. Their
conclusion: “Emergencies often prove to be the forge in
which new ideas and opportunities are hammered out.
While it is impossible to predict what the long-term effects
of such growing skill and awareness may be, it’s clear that

people power has not diminished. Instead, movements
around the world are adapting to remote organizing,
building their bases, sharpening their messaging, and

planning strategies for what comes next”. [114] If their
assessment is correct, social activism, repressed by
necessity during the lockdowns and their various measures

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