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N&C - Nature & Cultures

The American University of Paris online geographic magazine for global explorers

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 DIGEST SECTION: CORONAVIRUS​ as seen by experts and an artist 

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Practical advice from UN University experts

Stopping coronavirus – what does the evidence say are the best measures?

Claudia Abreu Lopes, United Nations University et Sanae Okamoto, United Nations University

The new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been spreading rapidly but at a different rate in different countries. A variety of emergency responses and policy strategies have been implemented with varying outcomes so far.

The Asian countries and territories that were first hit by the outbreak have built on responses to previous epidemics such as SARS. Other countries are learning from this but also adopting their own strategies.

It’s possible there is no best strategy that works for everyone, as measures will have different results in countries with different political and health systems, social norms or operating procedures. There also seems to be a lack of consensus between various experts and governments as to what will work best, partly thanks to the limited evidence. However, there have been a number of new studies that give us some indications.

One of the first measures many countries try to prevent the disease reaching them but also to limit its spread after it is established, is to ban travel in and/or out of a region. A study on restrictions in Italy showed they reduced travel by 50% in affected regions after three weeks.

A global analysis that modelled how travel restrictions have affected transmission revealed that a travel ban in Wuhan delayed the inevitable epidemic progression by only three to five days in Mainland China. But travel restrictions were effective in reducing international transmission by nearly 80%, suggesting that such bans can be effective when paired with other interventions.

Social distancing

One strategy that does seem to be effective at interrupting the transmission of the virus is social distancing, minimising social contact by limiting public gatherings and getting people to stay in their homes unless necessary. We have seen evidence for this in the slowdown of new cases in China and South Korea, as well as the relatively low numbers of cases in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan.


À lire aussi : Why Singapore's coronavirus response worked – and what we can all learn


European countries have learned the hard lessons from the rapid spread of the virus in Italy and are implementing social distancing measures in the first stages of the outbreak. This includes the UK, which has ramped up the limited measures it introduced initially. But there are ongoing debates over whether social distancing should be encouraged or enforced, and whether social isolation should apply to the whole population or the groups most at risk.

These options reflect two main approaches: mitigation and suppression. These have been modelled in a report by the scientists from Imperial College London advising the UK government on its approach. The aim of mitigation is to delay the spread of infection to avoid a large peak in healthcare demand that could overwhelm the health system.

This was the UK’s initial strategy, which involved encouraging those with symptoms to stay at home, and testing and treating only those with moderate or severe symptoms. It is only likely to work in countries with very robust health systems that can cope with a surge of mild and severe cases. But the Imperial report showed that the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) would still be overwhelmed by pursuing mitigation, and that suppression would be better to reduce the number of deaths both from COVID-19 and other causes.

Suppression consists of halting the progression of the pandemic in a shorter period, keeping the total number of cases very low. It involves more extensive social distancing even among those at low risk from the disease, banning public gatherings and potentially closing schools and other public venues. This can be done on a voluntary basis or with an enforced lockdown, as has been implemented in parts of China with a positive outcome.

But there are other factors to consider besides the effect on the spread of disease. Women may be more vulnerable to the infection given the fact they make up most of the health workforce. School closures may force health workers and other essential personnel to stay at home to look after their children. Children from low-income families will not have the same resources to learn.

Lockdowns may trigger or aggravate mental health problems. People living with depression and anxiety will suffer from withdrawing social contact and psychotherapy. Elderly households will be isolated. Victims of domestic violence will be confined to the same space as their aggressors.

Evidence from China suggests that suppression is possible in the short term without a massive increase of cases after the measures are lifted (at least so far). It remains to be seen what the optimal duration of lockdowns should be and whether it’s possible for suppression measures to work consistently or even be kept in place for longer.

It is possible to pursue a combined strategy of intermittent social distancing, guided by changes in the spread of the disease. This involves relaxing restrictions for short periods and observing the effect. If the number of cases rebounds, suppression measures need to be reintroduced. This could help prevent people from becoming so psychologically fatigued by the restrictions that they start to ignore them, although behavioural scientists have argued there’s no evidence for this problem.

Testing

One final element that South Korea’s success in limiting the spread of the disease suggests is essential is the testing of suspected cases. Evidence from one of the initial clusters of COVID-19 in Italy supports the idea that widespread testing coupled with quarantining sufferers can significantly reduce the number of people infected and halt the disease progression.

Without working out who has the disease and ensuring they self-isolate, it’s much harder to break the infection chain. The World Health Organization is encouraging widespread testing, but many scientists disagree because testing everyone is unnecessary, could induce a panic and raises the question of how to counsel patients about their result.

There is also a shortage of test kits in certain countries and screening capacities are stretched in countries with many cases. Not only does this make stopping the spread of the disease difficult, but it also means less accurate evidence about whether measures are working.The Conversation

Claudia Abreu Lopes, Research Fellow, International Institute for Global Health (IIGH), United Nations University et Sanae Okamoto, Researcher in Behavioural Science, Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute (MERIT), United Nations University

Cet article est republié à partir de The Conversation sous licence Creative Commons. Lire l’article original.


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"​The treadmill you’ve been on for decades just stopped. Bam!"

Prepare for
the Ultimate Gaslighting*

(part 1)
by Julio Vincent Gambuto. The N&C staff wishes to thank the author for his friendly response to our mail and his permission to use these two articles. 
Mister Gambutto, 
a graduate of Staten Island Academy, Harvard University, and the USC School of Cinematic Arts is a writer whose work has appeared in Forge and LEVEL magazines on Medium, The Harvard Crimson, Genre, HX, and the Staten Island Advance and a film director who has written and produced film and television content for Nickelodeon, PBS, E! Entertainment, James Franco’s Rabbit Bandini, and Stone & Co.

The text proposed here has already gone viral and read by 2 million viewers as of early may 2020  
  
*Gaslighting, if you don’t know the word, is defined as manipulation into doubting your own sanity; as in, Carl made Mary think she was crazy, even though she clearly caught him cheating. He gaslit her.

Pretty soon, as the country begins to figure out how we “open back up” and move forward, very powerful forces will try to convince us all to get back to normal. (That never happened. What are you talking about?) Billions of dollars will be spent on advertising, messaging, and television and media content to make you feel comfortable again. It will come in the traditional forms — a billboard here, a hundred commercials there — and in new-media forms: a 2020–2021 generation of memes to remind you that what you want again is normalcy. In truth, you want the feeling of normalcy, and we all want it. We want desperately to feel good again, to get back to the routines of life, to not lie in bed at night wondering how we’re going to afford our rent and bills, to not wake to an endless scroll of human tragedy on our phones, to have a cup of perfectly brewed coffee and simply leave the house for work. The need for comfort will be real, and it will be strong. And every brand in America will come to your rescue, dear consumer, to help take away that darkness and get life back to the way it was before the crisis. I urge you to be well aware of what is coming.
"Gaslighting" comes from the 1944 classic "Gaslight" (above). It has come to describe the manipulation of perfectly sane people in order to convince them that they are insane when they start questioning the extremely toxic relationship they got trapped in.    
For the last hundred years, the multibillion-dollar advertising business has operated based on this cardinal principle: Find the consumer’s problem and fix it with your product. When the problem is practical and tactical, the solution is “as seen on TV” and available at Home Depot. Command strips will save me from having to repaint. So will Mr. Clean’s Magic Eraser. Elfa shelving will get rid of the mess in my closet. The Ring doorbell will let me see who’s on the porch if I can’t take my eyes off Netflix. But when the problem is emotional, the fix becomes a new staple in your life, and you become a lifelong loyalist. Coca-Cola makes you: happy. A Mercedes makes you: successful. Taking your family on a Royal Caribbean cruise makes you: special. Smart marketers know how to highlight what brands can do for you to make your life easier. But brilliant marketers know how to rewire your heart. And, make no mistake, the heart is what has been most traumatized this last month. We are, as a society, now vulnerable in a whole new way.
What the trauma has shown us, though, cannot be unseen. A carless Los Angeles has clear blue skies as pollution has simply stopped. In a quiet New York, you can hear the birds chirp in the middle of Madison Avenue. Coyotes have been spotted on the Golden Gate Bridge. These are the postcard images of what the world might be like if we could find a way to have a less deadly daily effect on the planet. What’s not fit for a postcard are the other scenes we have witnessed: a health care system that cannot provide basic protective equipment for its frontline; small businesses — and very large ones — that do not have enough cash to pay their rent or workers, sending over 16 million people to seek unemployment benefits; a government that has so severely damaged the credibility of our media that 300 million people don’t know who to listen to for basic facts that can save their lives.
THE GREATEST MISCONCEPTION among us, which causes deep and painful social and political tension every day in this country, is that we somehow don’t care about each other. White people don’t care about the problems of black America. Men don’t care about women’s rights. Cops don’t care about the communities they serve. Humans don’t care about the environment. These couldn’t be further from the truth. We do care. We just don’t have the time to do anything about it. 
The cat is out of the bag. We, as a nation, have deeply disturbing problems. You’re right. That’s not news. They are problems we ignore every day, not because we’re terrible people or because we don’t care about fixing them, but because we don’t have time. Sorry, we have other shit to do. The plain truth is that no matter our ethnicity, religion, gender, political party (the list goes on), nor even our socioeconomic status, as Americans we share this: We are busy. We’re out and about hustling to make our own lives work. We have goals to meet and meetings to attend and mortgages to pay — all while the phone is ringing and the laptop is pinging. And when we get home, Crate and Barrel and Louis Vuitton and Andy Cohen make us feel just good enough to get up the next day and do it all over again. It is very easy to close your eyes to a problem when you barely have enough time to close them to sleep. The greatest misconception among us, which causes deep and painful social and political tension every day in this country, is that we somehow don’t care about each other. White people don’t care about the problems of black America. Men don’t care about women’s rights. Cops don’t care about the communities they serve. Humans don’t care about the environment. These couldn’t be further from the truth. We do care. We just don’t have the time to do anything about it. Maybe that’s just me. But maybe it’s you, too.

Well, the treadmill you’ve been on for decades just stopped. Bam! And that feeling you have right now is the same as if you’d been thrown off your Peloton bike and onto the ground: What in the holy fuck just happened? I hope you might consider this: What happened is inexplicably incredible. It’s the greatest gift ever unwrapped. Not the deaths, not the virus, but The Great Pause. It is, in a word, profound. Please don’t recoil from the bright light beaming through the window. I know it hurts your eyes. It hurts mine, too. But the curtain is wide open. What the crisis has given us is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see ourselves and our country in the plainest of views. At no other time, ever in our lives, have we gotten the opportunity to see what would happen if the world simply stopped. Here it is. We’re in it. Stores are closed. Restaurants are empty. Streets and six-lane highways are barren. Even the planet itself is rattling less (true story). And because it is rarer than rare, it has brought to light all of the beautiful and painful truths of how we live. And that feels weird. Really weird. Because it has… never… happened… before. If we want to create a better country and a better world for our kids, and if we want to make sure we are even sustainable as a nation and as a democracy, we have to pay attention to how we feel right now. I cannot speak for you, but I imagine you feel like I do: devastated, depressed, and heartbroken.

Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting (continued from top right column)
And what a perfect time for Best Buy and H&M and Wal-Mart to help me feel normal again. If I could just have the new iPhone in my hand, if I could rest my feet on a pillow of new Nikes, if I could drink a venti blonde vanilla latte or sip a Diet Coke, then this very dark feeling would go away. You think I’m kidding, that I’m being cute, that I’m denying the very obvious benefits of having a roaring economy. You’re right. Our way of life is not without purpose. The economy is not, at its core, evil. Brands and their products create millions of jobs. Like people — and most anything in life — there are brands that are responsible and ethical, and there are others that are not. They are all part of a system that keeps us living long and strong. We have lifted more humans out of poverty through the power of economics than any other civilization in history. Yes, without a doubt, Americanism is a force for good. It is not some villainous plot to wreak havoc and destroy the planet and all our souls along with it. I get it, and I agree. But its flaws have been laid bare for all to see. It doesn’t work for everyone. It’s responsible for great destruction. It is so unevenly distributed in its benefit that three men own more wealth than 150 million people. Its intentions have been perverted, and the protection it offers has disappeared. In fact, it’s been brought to its knees by one pangolin. We have got to do better and find a way to a responsible free market.
WHAT IS ABOUT TO BE UNLEASHED (...) WILL BE THE GREATEST CAMPAIGN EVER CREATED TO GET YOU TO FEEL NORMAL AGAIN. It will come from brands, it will come from government, it will even come from each other, and it will come from the left and from the right. We will do anything, spend anything, believe anything, just so we can take away how horribly uncomfortable all of this feels. 
til then, get ready, my friends. What is about to be unleashed on American society will be the greatest campaign ever created to get you to feel normal again. It will come from brands, it will come from government, it will even come from each other, and it will come from the left and from the right. We will do anything, spend anything, believe anything, just so we can take away how horribly uncomfortable all of this feels. And on top of that, just to turn the screw that much more, will be the one effort that’s even greater: the all-out blitz to make you believe you never saw what you saw. The air wasn’t really cleaner; those images were fake. The hospitals weren’t really a war zone; those stories were hyperbole. The numbers were not that high; the press is lying. You didn’t see people in masks standing in the rain risking their lives to vote. Not in America. You didn’t see the leader of the free world push an unproven miracle drug like a late-night infomercial salesman. That was a crisis update. You didn’t see homeless people dead on the street. You didn’t see inequality. You didn’t see indifference. You didn’t see utter failure of leadership and systems.

But you did. You are not crazy, my friends. And so we are about to be gaslit in a truly unprecedented way. It starts with a check for $1,200 (Don’t say I never gave you anything) and then it will be so big that it will be bigly. And it will be a one-two punch from both big business and the big White House — inextricably intertwined now more than ever and being led by, as our luck would have it, a Marketer in Chief. Business and government are about to band together to knock us unconscious again. It will be funded like no other operation in our lifetimes. It will be fast. It will be furious. And it will be overwhelming. The Great American Return to Normal is coming.
WE CARE DEEPLY ABOUT ONE ANOTHER (...) THAT CAN BE SEEN IN EVERY supportive Facebook post, in every meal dropped off for a neighbor, in every Zoom birthday party. We are a good people. And as a good people, we want to define — on our own terms — what this country looks like in five, 10, 50 years. This is our chance to do that, the biggest one we have ever gotten. And the best one we’ll ever get.
From one citizen to another, I beg of you: take a deep breath, ignore the deafening noise, and think deeply about what you want to put back into your life. This is our chance to define a new version of normal, a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity to get rid of the bullshit and to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us truly proud. We get to Marie Kondo the shit out of it all. We care deeply about one another. That is clear. That can be seen in every supportive Facebook post, in every meal dropped off for a neighbor, in every Zoom birthday party. We are a good people. And as a good people, we want to define — on our own terms — what this country looks like in five, 10, 50 years. This is our chance to do that, the biggest one we have ever gotten. And the best one we’ll ever get.

We can do that on a personal scale in our homes, in how we choose to spend our family time on nights and weekends, what we watch, what we listen to, what we eat, and what we choose to spend our dollars on and where. We can do it locally in our communities, in what organizations we support, what truths we tell, and what events we attend. And we can do it nationally in our government, in which leaders we vote in and to whom we give power. If we want cleaner air, we can make it happen. If we want to protect our doctors and nurses from the next virus — and protect all Americans — we can make it happen. If we want our neighbors and friends to earn a dignified income, we can make that happen. If we want millions of kids to be able to eat if suddenly their school is closed, we can make that happen. And, yes, if we just want to live a simpler life, we can make that happen, too. But only if we resist the massive gaslighting that is about to come. It’s on its way. Look out.
​​
The Gaslighting of America Has Begun.
Understand your power, my friends. Business and government do.
(Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting* - part 2)

The crisis has already taught us much, my friends. Primarily, it has schooled us in the power of scale — a concept every big business in the United States has mastered yet so many of us have never fully grasped until now. If you pitch your new app idea to any tech company or if you’re lucky enough to interview for Shark Tank, one of the first questions you’ll be asked is: How does your idea “scale up?” That means how do you take your idea and make it apply to all of America, all of the world? No one is ever interested in a product, service, idea (or screenplay, trust me) if the only people who love it are your friends and mother. Seeing the potential of your idea in the modern marketplace means seeing how it can be bought, used, or communicated to millions and billions of people.
With scalability comes great power. We have seen that power in action over the last month. Simply by staying in our homes, we have collectively lowered the death rate from a projected 2.2 million American deaths to 63,538 confirmed deaths as of this post. To come out of this collective trauma as better people and as a better country, we must fully understand that same power and use it against the great forces that are already manipulating us into going back to “normal.”
This lower death number is not evidence that this was “no big deal.” Quite the opposite. You and I made that lower number happen. It is confirmation of the power of scale and our own personal power to change the world. You saved millions of lives all by sitting on your couch and watching Netflix. So as the commercials and the gaslighting begin — in truth, they are already in full swing — we have a choice to make. Plainly put, we can either honor those 63,538 people by getting our collective shit together and forging ahead anew, or we can go back to clearing the shelves of Walmart, drinking every sugary Coke, and “liking” every duck-lipped Insta post of our favorite Armenian makeup moguls. The choice is ours.
Little did any of us know that we would spend the better part of 2020 roaring into the geeky details of charts, graphs, and the inner workings of an upside-down parabola. But here we are, flattening the curve, and the glaring takeaway is this: What I do and what you do affects everyone else in this world. Fuck, it’s so simple. I can only speak for myself when I say I never realized just how much I mattered. I now know that I have the power to save a life or unwittingly pass along an infectious sprinkle to my very best friends. If I wear a mask, I am less likely to spread a virus to two or three other people, who could then spread to another two or three people. For my fellow nerds in the house, the “R0” (pronounced “R-naught”) of the virus is now estimated to be 2.2 or higher. If you’ve watched Contagion on demand while homebound — and somehow managed to not be completely bugged out by the experience of living in the very world it depicts — you’re familiar with R0. It’s the rate at which the virus spreads or how many people you can give it to. It’s all simple multiplication.
Like a good old-fashioned ’90s chain-letter or my own essay that “went viral,” a virus spreads with lightning speed. The more connected we are physically or digitally, the faster it spreads. And because the 7.8 billion of us on the planet are now more connected than ever in the history of mankind, we are facing a new reality. Turns out, the future is viral. Virality is our new reality. This doesn’t have to be as terrifying as it sounds. If we can harness virality for the better, we can make life after the Great Pause truly beautiful, productive, collaborative, and humane. There is no going back. We can only go forward into this new unchartered land and create the New Normal.
Yes, maybe you’ve figured out by now that I’m a gay, yoga-loving, quinoa-eating, Prius-driving liberal. I promise you, that’s irrelevant. The power of scale is in all of our hands, both red and blue. We are all Americans. And we are all capitalists. But we have seen capitalism falter in egregious ways over the course of the last 30 years. Those are the same 30 years in which the divide between us has widened so deeply. Here’s my call: Let’s work together to become responsible capitalists. An example: My choice to use a fabric bag instead of a plastic one at the grocery store seems ridiculous to you if you have not lived in Los Angeles for the last six years. Now, there are many ridiculous things about living in Los Angeles, but California’s commitment to banning plastic grocery bags is not, in my opinion, one of them. What California understood is that when you embrace a new behavior and it’s perceived among your friends as cool, then they do it, too. Growing up in the boroughs of New York City in the ’90s, we would call those friends “biters.” The biters saw your new haircut, your new Champion sweatshirt, your new Capezio shoes, and they had to have them. The idea is still a fundamental of selling, well… anything. If you do something, your friends will, too. And if your friends do it, then so might their two or three relatives. And their kids. And their classmates. And their teachers. In the ’60s, it was a color television; in the ’90s, it was MC Hammer pants or Tupperware for Mom; in 2020, it is a fabric grocery bag or a fashionable mask.
And when a behavior — or an idea, or a product — spreads and goes viral, a market is created and the inevitable market opportunity emerges. “Market opportunity” is business-speak for the “chance to make some mo-ney!” The fabric grocery bag cannot only be sold for $2.99, but it can be tagged, labeled, branded, shipped, and gifted. You too can carry around your sliced mango in a Whole Foods-branded nonplastic bag. Do you feel cool yet? This is how capitalism can be a force for good, by marrying the art and science of marketing and branding with products, services, and behaviors that make the world a better place.
This is not a new idea, but it is high time we fully embraced it. Because of the crisis, every one of us knows — in our bones — that even though every action we personally take may seem insignificant, if you multiply it by 328 million people, it can have great or dire effects on our nation. That scale gives us far greater power as individuals than we understand, or that the great forces which currently run our economy, and arguably our lives, give us credit for. In fact, most of them don’t want you to understand your power. Why? Because if you don’t understand your true power in the process, you can remain on autopilot. And if you’re just too busy to pay attention or to complain or to rise up or to strike, well, then they can keep doing what they’re doing: getting disgustingly rich. But when we all come off autopilot, it all collapses. Within weeks. We just saw it with our own eyes. The empty streets and malls, the quiet downtown centers, the rush hour that is not — these are proof positive that without constant daily cash flow from every one of us, the American economy, along with the global economy, crumble almost overnight.
If we want and expect to lead long and fruitful lives, the slowdown and the great despair that comes with it cannot continue. We cannot, my friend, burn it all down. We must fix it. I have news for you: The fix is you. I don’t mean that in an obtuse, crazy, Jedi-master way. I mean it literally; what you and I do next matters. It matters for our ourselves, our parents, our kids, our future grandkids, and even for our living grandparents (the “high-risk” generation that so many have been so willing to let perish). Like it or not, we are in this together, you and me. We must reject the notion that somehow my getting what I want and need robs you of getting what you want and need. We must reject the idea that there are only a certain number of seats at the table, and if you get one then I lose one. And we must reject the belief, so deeply rooted in each of us and in our culture, that we cannot work together for the greater good.
So what do we do next? I can tell you to consider marching in the streets, and maybe because you are even reading this essay this far, you will consider that an option. There is a time and place for that. In my opinion, the time is November 3, and the place is every street in America. At that point, we will use the power of our voice and then the power of our votes to decide who will lead our communities, our states, our houses of Congress, and our nation.
THE QUESTION TO BE ASKING yourself right now, and asking your family, is this: Who and what do you want to support? To whom and to what do you want to give your time and money?
​What can be effective right now is a full-on cleaning house of your own personal economy. Every day, you give dollars, minutes, and clicks to any number of brands, celebrities, media outlets, and businesses. You think they are meaningless. They are not. They are your personal power. Because when you “scale up” those dollars, minutes, and clicks, that personal power becomes collective power and someone somewhere is getting that much richer, more famous, and more powerful — all thanks to you. The question to be asking yourself right now, and asking your family, is this: Who and what do you want to support? To whom and to what do you want to give your time and money?
Have you ever sat down and tracked your dollars, minutes, and clicks? Because I assure you that big business, big tech, and the big forces who want those dollars, minutes, and clicks most certainly have. Sit down and do it. Take one month and look closely at just how you spent your money, your time, and your energy. And then cancel every autopay, cancel every subscription, cancel every membership, cancel every commitment. Get off autopilot. And take this Great Pause to breathe. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to unsubscribe so that you can resubscribe to a life you actually want. All I wish for you through this keyboard right now is that you make a conscious decision about what you want your life, your wallet, your calendar — and, by extension, our world — to look like when we #reopen.

RIGHT NOW, WE ARE ALL EXPERIENCING 'THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL' Screenwriters use this term to refer to that moment when the main character has lost everything, has not achieved his or her goal, has been beaten up and broken down, and is at her or his lowest point. You know this part of the movie. It takes place about three-quarters of the way in. The character is alone in her bedroom, his shower, her car, a forest, a cave. And they must look inward before they can move forward. That is where we are as a nation.
​Right now, we are all experiencing “the dark night of the soul.” Screenwriters use this term to refer to that moment when the main character has lost everything, has not achieved his or her goal, has been beaten up and broken down, and is at her or his lowest point. You know this part of the movie. It takes place about three-quarters of the way in. The character is alone in her bedroom, his shower, her car, a forest, a cave. And they must look inward before they can move forward. That is where we are as a nation. We have ridden the “fun and games” upward arc of the consumer free-for-all of the 20th century. We thought we were invincible. And then we fell. Flat on our face. Thanks, Covid. And now, here we are, alone in our houses, surrounded by loss, many in great despair, being asked to look inward. There is no brand, no leader, no voice that can help us now. We have to help ourselves. This is the moment in the movie that the truth comes out — the truth of who we are and who we most want to be. Armed with that truth, our main character heads into the next act with a better understanding of herself or himself and a revived purpose in the world.
What is your next act? And what is the next act for America? How do we as a country look inside, find the truth, and reemerge to create a wildly fantastic new chapter — one that is fairer, more just, more dignified, and more aligned with who we are as a truly good people? I assure you that if you use this Great Pause to look inside — at yourself, your fears, your dreams… and your calendar, your checking account, your social media — and if I do the same, and we both find our truth, we can both emerge a purer version of ourselves. The actions we take as our better selves and toward our own better future will spread. The biters will follow. Our new behaviors, rhythms, and spending habits will get multiplied. It will all scale up. It will all go viral. And we will harness our new understanding of how this all works to do some good in this broken world.
The two articles by Julio Vincent Gambuto features here have been republished from Forge magazine.
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  • Geopolitik
  • China
  • Black Voices
  • Wildlife photographer Michel Rawicki
  • Organic farming & ecotourism
  • Stopping Coronavirus
  • Reindeer vs wind farms
  • National Parks Need People
  • Paris 7th
  • Lavapiés
  • Verdun
  • Arctic Geopolitics
  • Zoos: Pros and Cons
  • Piracy
  • Not Latins "LaDins"
  • Photo essay: Africa
  • overopulation and environment
  • Orthodox Christianity