One Day, After Will Come. But Until Then, Look After Yourself.

First published on October 28, 2020

Growing into adulthood in the late 90s and early 00s, I wondered what it must have been like to live through history. Too young to remember clearly (certainly to understand the significance of) the fall of the Berlin Wall or the collapse of the Soviet Union, history to me was something that happened elsewhere in the world.

And then, for me as for so many, things changed. The events of 2016 sent political shockwaves around the establishment in the UK and the USA, and, well, we all began to understand the old Chinese curse, 'May you live in interesting times.' At least, though, something was happening.

But the political machinations of the last four years are nothing compared to this. To this strange shredding of 'life before Covid-19'. To the incomprehensible shifts that are happening in our societies and in the lives of billions of individuals. One of the things that boggles my mind is that no matter what is going on for me as I wrestle with the changes to our lives, our societies and our psychologies, wrought by the virus and our responses (individual and collective) to it, is that no matter what I am feeling, many other people have it worse. That some version of my internal personal struggles is being played out in millions of dwellings around the world.

Amongst all this, I find my mind regularly wandering to what comes after. With the measures in the UK being increased again, 'after' feels a long time away, but we can already see the changes happening. London seems peppered with For Sale and To Let signs, house prices in the countryside (at least according to our research) seem to be significantly higher than a year ago. Industries that existed and thrived 12 months ago simply don't exist now. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in the industries that, for many of us, helped us feel alive: travel, events, experiences, live music. Our places of worship, our universities, our sporting occasions, too, are changed beyond measure.

I have been watching the pandemic, in part, through the lens of the thought of Jordan Hall. I happened to find my way to videos of him several times in the early days of the pandemic, first on Rebel Wisdom and then on his YouTube channel. Some of this is a question about what we do in the times of Kairos, when anything can happen. And some is, what will come after?

Hall hypothesises that coronavirus may have finally, really, truly shown everyone that the city, which in some ways is what has driven human progress, is on its last legs. That, with so many of us now able to and used to working online, the need for us to be clustered around each other is gone (or at least greatly lessened). In his vision of the future, things look differently. The great potential of technology, as we have discovered, is to connect people and to remove the constraints of geography. If this happens, the ideas and innovations fostered by the city can happen independent of our locations. And what, then, might we create?

Hall hypothesises that what we would create is a space which allows us to work online, creating ever-more-incredible innovation, technology and creativity to carry the world forward into the next phase of history. But that around that, we will need to find the things which allow us to be deeply human: nature, community and more.

These, in many ways, are what we are being restricted from right now. We are catapulted into a post-city future, where geographical proximity conveys none of the advantages that many of us have enjoyed and paid for. But we are restricted from the opportunities to bask in the things we need to feel alive, to be human: from nature, from travel, from family, from community, from collective experience.

One day, after will come. But until then, look after yourself.