Page 187 - COVID-19: The Great Reset

from the mistakes we made in the past? Will the pandemic open
the door to a better future? Will we get our global house in order?

Simply put, will we put into motion the Great Reset? Resetting is
an ambitious task, perhaps too ambitious, but we have no choice
but to try our utmost to achieve it. It’s about making the world less
divisive, less polluting, less destructive, more inclusive, more

equitable and fairer than we left it in the pre-pandemic era. Doing
nothing, or too little, is to sleepwalk towards ever-more social
inequality, economic imbalances, injustice and environmental
degradation. Failing to act would equate to letting our world

become meaner, more divided, more dangerous, more selfish and
simply unbearable for large segments of the globe’s population.
To do nothing is not a viable option.

That said, the Great Reset is far from a done deal. Some may
resist the necessity to engage in it, fearful of the magnitude of the

task and hopeful that the sense of urgency will subside and the
situation will soon get back to “normal”. The argument for passivity
goes like this: we have been through similar shocks – pandemics,

harsh recessions, geopolitical divides and social tensions – before
and we will get through them again. As always, societies will
rebuild, and so will our economies. Life goes on! The rationale for
not resetting is also predicated on the conviction that the state of
the world is not that bad and that we just need to fix a few things

around the edges to make it better. It is true that the state of the
world today is on average considerably better than in the past. We
must acknowledge that, as human beings, we never had it so

good. Almost all the key indicators that measure our collective
welfare (like the number of people living in poverty or dying in
conflicts, the GDP per capita, life expectancy or literacy rates, and
even the number of deaths caused by pandemics) have been
continuously improving over pas centuries, impressively so in the

last few decades. But they have been improving “on average” – a
statistical reality that is meaningless for those who feel (and so
often are) excluded. Therefore, the conviction that today’s world is

better than it has ever been, while correct, cannot serve as an
excuse for taking comfort in the status quo and failing to fix the
many ills that continue to afflict it.

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