Here’s something I posted on social media. Not directly related to art, although I could expand on what this means for a life dedicated to the arts and teaching, but in the interest of reaching a few more people, here it goes:
OK, trying to get my thoughts straight… When reading this, bear in mind that I’m just an artist with an interest in systems thinking and human development. I’m neither a scientist, policy maker nor a medical professional. With that said, here’s what’s on my mind.
For those with open minds and hearts there will be many kinds of realizations available to be had during this coming time. On the more abstract side of the spectrum: the wider world is about to have a real life immersive study in exponential developments and higher-order effects of nonlinear change. It is not in our nature to deal with exponential growths at a pace where we can witness them. For example, the fact that the world population has doubled in less than 50 years (when my parents were still kids!) as it had in the 50 years before that, is not available to us on a sensory level – too slow is the development. So exponential growth rates are highly predictable yet take us by surprise – until we can’t deny the facts, such as when the rate of infections races past the health system’s capacity to deal. But there’s more to that: lots of people infected means more people having to care for them, many of them not professionals, many of them also getting sick. This is what “exponential“ means: the more, the more, the faster the faster. That is a common dynamic playing out again and again across millennia, across centuries, across decades, years and months and – as is #Covid_19 – across weeks. (Side note: Us musicians have an intimate familiarity with it from putting microphones to close to speakers and creating audio feedback.) So, for example: the more people dying, the more funerals, until funeral attendance has to be prohibited, causing massive trauma, causing yet again less capacity for society to keep a clear head, which would be badly in need even without also having to deal with a global virus. This is what is called “second order effects”.
It’s heartbreaking to read statements from around the world by people saying how bizarre it is to watch the all-too-slow reactions by governments, without being able to do anything about it. This even as the rate and drasticity of measures taken is accelerating in many countries – if not at a rate that does the spread of the virus justice.
Now, the really surreal feeling I am getting is that the severity of the measures taken – the willingness to disrupt commerce, upend travel, school systems and social standards – would be the appropriate intensity for how we should be reacting to the climate emergency. The climate crisis’ unfolding has been documented by hard evidence and models that proved their accuracy again and again, yet many among us are not yet able to experience it on a gut level, let alone on a level where we have to fear for our own immediate health and our loved ones, nor our immediate economic security. And when we will, the runaway effects (the „contamination“ equivalent) will no longer be containable. This is the feeling I have been living with for many years, in many ways since I was a child.
History says we have a hard time learning these kinds of lessons, but let’s just hope that we as a global society will learn a few things about correlating our intuition with what the data says, nudging society into a kinder, more generous direction and take the drastic measures needed to deal with the climate emergency while its worst effects can still be attenuated. If not, the current crisis is just a dress rehearsal for a real global systems breakdown a couple of decades down the road.