Things will “never be the same again”?

There is quite a collection of articles these days on the fact that “Things will never be the same again.” We hear of the “World after COVID,” as if everything were going to change by the wave of a magic wand. 

Many states in this world have launched massive recovery programs and will have to chose where to invest their money. So there might be some bold government decision, for instance, to invest in green energy, rather than finance fossil fuels. Hopefully there will be massive plans to invest in more balanced and more equitable healthcare systems. 

That’s for some of the changes that might take place at state level. What about each one of us? 

Impact of the lockdown on consumerism 

Because we have not been able to purchase items and services the way we used to for the past two months, we have been tested on something that is at the heart of our culture today : consumerism. 

Coronavirus lockdown is probably the worst thing that could happen to our consumerist society—not because people have stopped consuming for a few weeks, but because they might realize that they don’t need as much as they thought they did. We know that our consumption levels are unsustainable. But many of us have a difficult time changing our habits. 

So, now that most countries are coming out of lockdown, things could go either way: we’ve got used to consuming less and enjoy it, or we don’t—we’ve missed it so much that the first thing we’ll do is go on a shopping spree. 

We use things because we have them 

Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We’ve been using them not because we needed them, but because we had them. Look at the number of things we buy because others have bought them or because they’re in most people’s houses. 

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 123 

What Seneca is really talking about here is mastering our desires. 

For the Stoics, there are three things that are in our control: our desires, our impulses to act, and our judgments. The COVID-19 crisis has been the opportunity, albeit a forced one, to think about our desires—our true desires—and detach ourselves from some of them. 

I’ll take a personal example: I love books and cannot step into a bookstore without buying one (or more.) Now for the first time in a very long time, I haven’t bought books in two months. I realized two things: first that I thought I desired books much more than I really did (my desire to purchase them has diminished.) And second I realized I could focus my desires on what was actually attainable in a context of restriction—desires whose accomplishment really depended on me and not on a shop being open or a book being available. Being “forced” to consume less may even have a soothing effect, I believe, because it opens up space and time for things that have more meaning. 

Psychiatrist and logotherapist Viktor Frankl (1905–1997) said that the rise of noogenic neurosis—neurosis arising form a lack of meaning in our lives—is a consequence of the increased pressure to conform with consumer culture. So, are we going to use this opportunity to revisit our desires and what really does give meaning to our lives ? 

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Flora Bernard co-founded the Paris-based philosophy agency, Thae, in 2013. Flora now works to help organisations give meaning to what they do.

 

 

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