What will be the post-covid world? Or, should I write, the covid-compatible world , since we may have something like this to maintain this "new world" order (I put quotes not to confuse with one of the unquoted versions, although they might be related): the covid itself, its second wave, a menace of covid22, or whatnot. A collapse of some sort is impending. It is long due given the very capitalistic nature of our society, with unsustainable exponential growth, always producing more, always consuming more, always more and more and more. The economy with its inflating tensions between the increasingly poorer and the obscenely richer, has to collapse, or the resources copiously wasted, have to collapse (but this would come later). Unexpectedly to most, so it seems, another collapse may have got in the way before that. A sanitary collapse. Instead of everybody going to a standstill because banks have gone bankrupt, or because oil tanks have gone dry, we have instead a twelve-Monkeys scenario which brings us to something in essence equivalent: the collapse of society. Possibly in its wake, the collapse of civilization. To me there is no surprise that our way of life has changed so briskly in so little time. I've been expecting this since 2013 or so. But I was thinking this would come either from the bank, or from the streets. I toyed with the idea of a world-war, an international conflict, to change the rules. I regarded sci-fi scenarios like AI taking over as too far remote although they are catching up quickly. Indeed, I didn't think of a sanitary crisis. And here we are.
There are things that are striking. One is the perfect timing. The societal collapse, the civilisational mayhem that I'm awaiting like boiling milk on the fire, did, like boiling milk on the fire, happen all of a sudden.
Everybody gets offended by everybody else. There is no