Page 163 - COVID-19: The Great Reset

have prompted not only social commentators but also the general
public itself to ponder whether the pandemic succeeded in

bringing the best out of us and in so doing triggering a search for
higher meaning. Many questions came to mind, like: Might the
pandemic give birth to better selves and to a better world? Will it
be followed by a shift of values? Will we become more willing to

nurture our human bonds and more intentional about maintaining
our social connections? Simply put: will we become more caring
and compassionate?

If history is any guide, natural disasters, like hurricanes and

earthquakes, bring people together, while pandemics do the
opposite: they drive them apart. The reason could be the
following: confronted with a sudden, violent and often brief natural
disaster, populations bond together and tend to recover relatively
fast. By contrast, pandemics are longer-lasting, prolonged events

that often elicit ongoing feelings of distrust (vis-à-vis others)
rooted in a primal fear of dying. Psychologically, the most
important consequence of the pandemic is to generate a

phenomenal amount of uncertainty that often becomes a source
of angst. We do not know what tomorrow will bring (Will there be
another wave of COVID-19? Will it affect people I love? Will I keep
my job?) and such a lack of surety makes us uneasy and troubled.
As human beings, we crave certainty, hence the need for

“cognitive closure”, anything that can help erase the uncertainty
and ambiguity that paralyse our ability to function “normally”. In
the context of a pandemic, the risks are complex, difficult to grasp

and largely unknown. Thus confronted, we are more likely to
retrench rather than look to the needs of others as tends to
happen with sudden natural (or not) disasters (and in fact contrary
to the prevailing first impressions conveyed by the media). This in
turn becomes a profound source of shame, a key sentiment that

drives people’s attitudes and reactions during pandemics. Shame
is a moral emotion that equates with feeling bad: an
uncomfortable sentiment that mixes regret, self-hate and a vague

sense of “dishonour” of not doing the “right” thing. Shame has
been described and analysed in countless novels and literary
texts written about historical outbreaks. It can take forms as

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