It’s amazing how quickly an unexpected global crisis can upend predictions. At the end of 2018, I published my annual trends report. While I make no claim to be able to read the future, with good research, an experienced eye, and some help from my friends it’s possible to identify shifts and trends that will shape our lives at home and in business.
The big theme, as I saw it some 16 months ago, was an end of four big pillars of public discourse: civility, compromise, constraint, and conversation. The “End of C,” I called it. Fast forward 12 months, and, at the end of 2019, I introduced my next trends report on my site with these words: “2020 will be all about ways to inject control, calm, and clarity into a world that can seem to be spinning out of control.”
Feeling calmer yet?
Yeah, not so much.
Barring a few data-tracking scientists and Bill Gates, it’s clear that this pandemic took all of us by surprise. So much for my hope that this year would help to restore some small measure of control in a world in which chaos had become the new normal.
And yet not all is lost. Even as the virus continues to wreak devastating havoc, it’s also restoring my faith in the generosity of humankind. If I were to preface my 2020 report now, I’d write about an entirely different set of Cs: camaraderie, compassion, and community. Is it possible that we will witness a return to civility in our conversations, tempering the combative exchanges so common in the digital age?
“Be a little bit more sensitive, understand the stress, understand the fear, be a little bit more loving, a little bit more compassionate, a little bit more comforting, a little bit more cooperative … We are going to get through it, and we are going to get through it together.” These were the words of New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, on March 17.
Meanwhile, Governor Gavin Newsom of California posted several measures that residents of his state could take to help during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among them: delivering meals, donating to a food bank, supporting nonprofits, and checking in on elderly neighbors.
Even in the notoriously gridlocked U.S. Congress, it seems that something unthinkable just a few months ago—consensus—has been achieved, with bipartisan agreement on a massive $2.2 trillion emergency relief package.
In the U.K., meanwhile, the government’s appeal for a 250,000-strong army of volunteers to help the stricken health service was met within a few days by some 750,000 raised hands. The queen responded with this tweet: “Volunteers always have a huge role to play in society, but never more so than in difficult times—and for that we salute you.” (As fans of Netflix’s The Crown know, this is a woman who volunteered as a mechanic during World War II.)
Let’s not kid ourselves. It will not be easy to breach the bitter political, ideological, and social divides that have driven so many—even families and couples—apart in recent years.
But there are signs that the tectonic plates in the public discourse may be shifting, if only subtly. Last year may have brought new levels of coarseness from some of our world leaders, but things might be changing.
Already, many sociologists and commentators are suggesting life will never be the same after COVID-19, that soon we will refer to life as before and after the novel coronavirus.
Dare we hope that a return to civility and community will be part of life A.C.?
Hope has been in the air, as hinted at by the cinematic success of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”—about Fred Rogers (a.k.a. “Mister Rogers”). It speaks volumes that this real-life story of a cardigan-wearing, well-mannered, compassionate Presbyterian minister should have triumphed at the box office. (It’s also a movie friends kept urging me to watch on Netflix during my quarantine.) I have no doubt that its success was a reflection of our collective yearning for a more civilized future.
“Civility, always a tenuous thing, cannot be quickly restored in a society that has learned to hate in public, at full throttle,” wrote author and columnist Timothy Egan in the New York Times in 2016.
If there’s one thing this fast-moving novel coronavirus has demonstrated, it’s that the unimaginable can happen—and very quickly. Let’s hope we beat it sooner rather than later. And let’s hope this pandemic serves as a sort of reset—shepherding in a new era of compassion, camaraderie, civility and community. We’re overdue for a win.