There is a time when a crisis becomes a way of life. This seems to be the case with the flu. It is wise to look at the permanent condition in which it has left us. One obvious lesson is that societies have to relearn how to live with pathogens, just as they did when they first discovered them.
The discoveries were only about one aspect of the life of the bugs. One aspect of the earth system that comes to mind is viruses andbacteria. The very composition of the environment in which we humans live is dependent on the composition of the earth's microbes, fungi and plants. The Pandemic has shown us that we will never escape the presence of these living beings, entangled as we are with them. If they change, we have to change as well.
The situation in which humanity finds itself locked up for good is an analogy for the many national lockdowns imposed on citizens to help them survive the virus. Lockdown was painful, and yet many ways have been found, thanks in part to vaccination, to allow people to resume a semblance of normal life. If you consider that all living forms are locked down for good inside the limits of the earth, there is no chance of a restart. I don't mean the planet as it can be seen from space, but the shallow layer of earth in which we live, which has been transformed into a hospitable environment by the aeons-long labour of evolution.
The critical zone is the only layer of earth where life can flourish. Everything we care for and everything we have ever encountered exists in this finite space. Young climate activists are shouting: "There is no planet B." We are trapped in an environment that we have already altered irreversibly, and this is the connection between the Covid lockdowns we have experienced in the past two years.
If we have been made aware of the agency of viruses in shaping our social relations, we must now think about the fact that they will be molded for ever by the climate crisis and the quick reactions of the ecosystems to our actions. The feeling of living in a new place is back at the local and global levels. If they did not have the sensation that a huge lid had been put over their territory, why would they convene in Glasgow to keep global temperature rises below the agreed upon limit? Are you not aware that you are locked up under a dome, and that you are looking up at the blue sky?
You are responsible for the safety of this dome as much as you are for your own health and wealth, because the infinite space has been gone. It affects you, your body and your soul. We have to undergo a sort of transformation in order to survive.
Politics enters here. It is very difficult for people who used to be part of the industrialised way of life to suddenly see that it is now confined and hidden inside a closed space where their concerns have to be shared with new entities.
The shift is a source of deep political divisions. The sentence "you and I don't live on the same planet" used to be a joke, but has become true of our current reality. Rich people use private fire fighters and scouting for climate bunkers, while poorer people are forced to migrate, suffer and die in the midst of the crisis.
This is why it is important not to overstate the political dilemma of our age. It is the same magnitude as when westerners had to shift from the closed universe of the past to the infinite space of the modern period. Political institutions had to be created to work through the new possibilities offered by the Enlightenment. The same task will befall the present generations: what new political institutions could they invent to cope with people so divided that they belong to different planets?
It would be a mistake to think that the epidemic will end in a few months, instead of the perfect warning for what's to come. The resources of science, humanities and the arts will have to be used again to shift attention to our shared condition.
The winner of the Holberg prize is Bruno Latour, the author of After Lockdown: A Metamorphosis.
