During this pandemic there were multiple times at which I came across news, blog posts and social media opinion about the the potential impact this forced quarantine will have at different aspects of society: working cultures, pollution levels, economy, relationships, etc.
A large number of these articles left me curious about or reveal themselves a wish of possible ‘Great Global Reset’. A kind of hopeful view.
It is extraordinary the scale range that the storyline of this pandemic has. From the nanoscale of the first virus that was able to start it all, to the planetary change that it established by imposing a worldwide quarantine. Never in Human History existed such a globalized and focused consciousness towards one single entity. The virus required behavioral change to be defeated and, in exchange, behavior reformulated the Human thought experience – and vice-versa. The biological virus morphed into a conceptual virus.
Left – Scanning electron microscope image of SARS-CoV-2 (yellow) Credit: NIAID-RMLRight – Earth’s Photograph taken from the ISS livestream on April 14, 2020 Credit: NASA
This left me thinking if there really is a necessity of such an extreme event to establish a “reset”. My first intuition was based on individual reset, individual change. For the sake of the argument, most of personal change happens over time, and personal resolutions can be implemented at any time. Individually we are much more agile. Pivot points can be infinite, if we allow ourselves.
But humankind’s change is a lot different. It is larger than the sum of its parts. The internal individual resistance we experience to change is amplified when each human being becomes a node within a larger system. It is full of feedback loops and inertia: when one elements fights for change, the remaining elements resist it. It’s a gooey process. As such, the number of resets society can experience over a period of time is much smaller when compared to what every single person can. With each sunrise or any other ritual one might prefer, we can establish a personal reset.
The period we are living in is one of those pivotal points, or at least it might be so if we, collectively – each one of the nodes – allow so.