As I think about and talk to others about the current crisis, a lot of time is spent on coping, sharing stories of struggle, gallows humor, and anxiety about what is coming. Sometimes they turn to when and how life will return to normal, and also to all the good and bad ways what we consider “normal” will forever change. And occasionally, conversation touches on what the opportunities are and what gives us hope. I have been trying, with some difficulty, to spend more time on this final category in recent days.
My old friend Wendy Leshgold helped me tentatively start down this path when she described how the leader of an environmental organization she is involved with asked her and others what gave them hope now. She published a short, poignant, and uplifting reflection on LinkedIn about the answer she ultimately came up with. Wendy focused mainly on how individuals and organizations are responding by changing habits, behaviors and norms in positive ways much faster than is usually possible.
Let me build on that notion by expanding the lens to our nation and to our global civilization.
We live at a time when the world faces a series of transnational crises. These include climate change, our inability to prevent and treat infectious diseases, the depletion of the world’s fisheries, human trafficking, and now COVID-19. With the exception of the last one on my list, we already know – without exception – how to solve these issues (even though better and cheaper solutions are likely to emerge).
The failure to solve these problems has most fundamentally been due to gaps in international decision-making and governance. Nations have been unwilling to cooperate and to dispense with zero-sum thinking (much less give up a little bit of their sovereignty) in order to tackle these crises – since that is what it would take to apply known solutions in the coordinated and urgent manner necessary.
In fact, our global governance mechanisms are failing humanity to a shocking degree, though over time most of us have become numb to this dispiriting paralysis. Making matters worse, no leader or leaders have emerged to rally the global community to improve those mechanisms and to infuse some pragmatic solidarity into how nations relate to one another. As a result, major humanitarian and environmental problems persist unnecessarily.
At the national level, we are similarly hamstrung. Clear and in some cases large majorities of Americans favor commonsense gun control, election reform that ensures that many fewer people are fully or partially disenfranchised, and immigration policies that better control our border in a humane way while also creating a path to some kind of legal status for those already here (especially the so-called “Dreamers” who were brought here as children). And yet, nothing happens. Our national governance mechanisms are likewise completely unable to meet the critical challenges of the day.
Perhaps this crisis, like some others in the history of our nation and civilization, will be a historic wakeup call that will force constructive reforms, compromises, and actions to a degree that even six months ago would have been unfathomable.
Can you imagine a reinvigorated United Nations, G-7, G-20, and U.S. Congress that were able, however imperfectly, to rise to the challenges we face today by applying known solutions with the seriousness and urgency required?
I can imagine that scenario more easily today than I could one month ago. This ray of hope comes as a result of the trauma we are all now experiencing and how it shines an undeniable spotlight on the failure of our ability to effectively govern ourselves as a country and as a species.
Let’s draw strength from that, since actually taking advantage of this opening will require a great deal of wisdom, compromise, listening, boldness, risk-taking, curiosity, and empathy from each of us, and from all of us collectively.
Normally I would end a post like this with a comprehensive call to action. In this case, that feels like something to write another day. But I would recommend reading this terrific article about “the world after coronavirus” by Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the bestselling book Sapiens, and supporting FairVote and ClimateXChange, two leading organizations working on election reform and climate change, respectively. Please feel free to add to this short list, and share any other reactions to this post.
The author recently published his fifth book, When in Doubt, Ask for More: And 213 Other Life and Career Lessons for Mission-Driven Leaders.