Chrysalis – What Could Emerge from the Pandemic?

by Jose Ramos

How do we make sense of the dramatic changes happening during the coronavirus pandemic? How do we get on an empowered footing rather than reaction and confusion? So many have simply been struck by “future shock”, i.e. the future has arrived but it has arrived in a daunting pathological guise. People are not prepared, indeed many are just dumbfounded as taken for granted aspects of life are thrown asunder. Many search for meaning amid the intellectual centrifuge which is social media today, lost in the bramble of conspiracy theories, xenophobic blame and a 24 hour news cycle. Futures studies researchers and practitioners know that psychological orientation is critical. However, we are in an ongoing process of re-orientation during these times of change.

Understanding some of the broader changes afoot can help us to re-orient, and metaphors can provide the deep structure for such re-orientation (Inayatullah 1998). The result can be a sense of empowerment, even in the face of the dramatic challenges we face. This paper uses a simple metaphor, that of the Chrysalis, to review ten shifts we are experiencing. The intention here is not scholarship but personal-to-political reflections and sensemaking, to explore a metaphor that helps to orient, to better navigate this new landscape of change. As such it is a combination of personal viewpoints, values, hopes, weak signals and imagination.

On top of dramatic lockdowns and the physical distancing that has been mandated to stop the spread of the virus, other economic and social activities have also been partially or even fully stopped. This has put both people, our economies and society into a strange period of inwardness. We have been forced into our homes, and nations have been forced back into themselves. It has also forced each one of us into our own inner worlds. We can see this as a personal to collective and globally extensive turning inwards.

A Chrysalis is a biological formation that allows a caterpillar to fundamentally alter its physical composition and appearance. It is part of a lifecycle. A caterpillar when ready forms a chrysalis, but from the chrysalis comes a completely different looking creature, a butterfly of striking beauty and capability, able to do things on an order completely different from the caterpillar. Inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar’s body breaks down into a kind of soup and is reorganized into the adult structures of the butterfly!

We are living in Epic Times, historic times imbued with personal and collective meaning and logic. For each of us this story will be different, however we all have a part to play in the drama we see unfolding. Who we are, how we act, what we do, makes a difference. The era is calling forth new selves and new patterns from us. What does our world, its challenges and transition, want from us? What thinking, innovations, methods, feelings, movements? What could emerge from the Chrysalis?

Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash

1 – End of an Era

It looks like the old world will never die. We need dramatic action on climate change, while the mineral industry has hampered this through lobbying (Hamilton, 2007). We need smart and decisive approaches to deal with COVID-19, but we see in too many countries (e.g. USA, Russia, Brazil) a failure of leadership that is marked by gender.^[1]

Johan Galtung had forecast the end of the US “empire” several decades ago, based on 8+ structural contradictions, systemic problems that over time make the US less and less viable (Galtung, 2009). His original date for this fall was 2024, but when President George Bush Jr. invaded Iraq, he revised this to 2020. The Republican Party or the Grand Old Party (GOP) in the US today is today the champion of these contradictions: inaction on climate change, patriarchal / misogynistic attitudes, corporate privilege, anti-democratic policies, a constant stream of disinformation, race baiting.

It feels like it will never end. Yet GOP are desperate. They know that the archaic world they represent is under serious threat. Climate change challenges US exceptionalism and their fossil fuel donors. Afro-americans and the millenial alliance through Black Lives Matter (BLM) challenges racial injustice. Obama won two terms with a rainbow coalition (women, some “white”, Afro-americans, Latinos, LGBTQ, etc). Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. Republicans know they are hanging on by just a thread, due to gerrymandered voting districts. But when we’re in the hurricane it is hard to see beyond it.

We see similar dynamics elsewhere, such as in Brazil, India and other countries where the historical privilege of certain groups is being ruthlessly defended. What the Chrysalis means here is that… yes we are indeed in the midst of a kind of breakdown, but on the other side of this there is the potential for transformation whereby we break through the chokehold on power of the historically privileged. A new pattern can emerge which expresses inclusive leadership that affirms the value of all people, with strengthened democracies, respect for women and disadvantaged minorities, and a planetary ethos through action on climate change.

2 – Return of the State

One of the lessons of COVID-19 is that we need a well oiled and disciplined state which can respond in a coordinated way to this crisis and future crises. We’ve seen in stark terms the difference between countries with poor, indecisive or dithering political and state responses (USA, Brazil, Mexico, UK) and those with decisive and well resourced responses (Taiwan, S. Korea, New Zealand, China, Vietnam).^[2] In general terms, the states that best combined available resources with preparation, coordination and discipline are the ones that have responded to the pandemic the best.

What emerges is a greater appreciation for the role of the state in spear-heading responses to crises. This is in fact what we need with the climate crisis- i.e. decisive leadership to rapidly draw down carbon emissions. However this has been hamstrung because the climate crisis is not immediate—it is a crisis of future generations—and the fossil fuel industry has worked hard to muddy the message.^[3]

From this Chrysalis, I can imagine new approaches for a “partner state” – where the state is empowered to create an ambitious “framework” for change, but where communities are in control of the “where, what and how”. In governance terms this is the principle of “subsidiarity” (Ramos, 2015). And while we need the state we also see how statism is being abused in many places during the pandemic. China opportunistically re-writing the laws in Hong Kong, Trump opportunistically using BLM to argue for military lockdown/repression. So we need deeper and more sophisticated democratic controls and systems (not less) as state’s powers expand to deal with emerging crises. From the Chrysalis emerges innovations of new governance systems that are on one hand more inclusive, while increasing the power and resources of the state to act in the public interest.^[4]

3 – Science and an Ecology of Knowledges

Every time Trump uses magical thinking and says COVID-19 is going away this is in stark contrast to Dr. Fauci and others saying, sorry it isn’t. Trump is one of the best advertisements for science the world has ever seen. Anti-science can be put into a broader context now. Anti-science means poor understanding of COVID-19 and an inept response costing the lives of potentially millions. Anti-science means no action on climate change.^[5] Anti-science means anti-vaxxers spreading misleading information on disease and vaccines, with greater spread of diseases society wide (Benecke & DeYoung, 2019).

What emerges from this Chrysalis is a greater appreciation for science and the domain expert, and a greater wariness and precaution against conspiracies, magical thinking, disinformation and armchair facebook ‘experts’. The pattern that may emerge is a new humility about what one knows and does not know, and an understanding that humility and critical subjectivity saves lives. A smart or a dumb facebook share has real consequences.

We need many knowledges to navigate through the pandemic, not just bio-medical science. Meditation, computer science, community mental health and wellness, new economic thinking, deep sustainability, any many others. Thus we also need make sure science supports knowledge democracy and epistemological pluralism (Ramos, 2020).

4 – Wise Rage

Most societies suffer from structural inequalities and structural violence of some kind. Neoliberalism has had the effect of hollowing out the middle class and creating hyper inequality in many parts of the world, amplifying class / caste disparity everywhere.

COVID-19 has shined a spotlight and exposed these inequalities. I am fortunate to live in a country like Australia with universal health care, but these were political choices and efforts by Australian citizens in the 1970s and 80s, not the product of random chance. We hear horrifying stories from other countries where hospitals are overwhelmed and those infected cannot get proper treatment. Once out of hospital, many have been hit by absurd medical bills.^[6] The lack of equitable health care, combined with the treatment of minorities and people of color and economic precarity has added to the pressure cooker of the lockdown.

From the Chrysalis “wise rage” against injustice is born. Wise rage is rage through peaceful and wise means. Rage erupted with full force after the killing of George Floyd. Black Lives Matter harnessed this rage in a constructive way in response.^[7] The global response and solidarity to BLM is significant, as a global rainbow coalition (multi-ethnic / intersectoral) is proclaiming that this type of structural violence is not acceptable. Wise rage is, importantly, wisdom about and rage against the structural dimensions of injustice. This is why, when answering the questions of who killed George Floyd, Inayatullah argues that “structures” are the critical determinants.^[8] From the Chrysalis many are more than ever challenging the many inequalities and inequities people face, economic, racial, gender based, whether it is “us” or “them” who is suffering, with a deepened sense that “we” are indeed “them”.

5 – Green Industrial Transition

Trillions have been spent propping up economies in the early stages of the pandemic. As the pandemic has driven an economic crisis, there has been knee-jerk spending by nations everywhere trying to rescue economies teetering on the edge of collapse. The pandemic is driving a joblessness crisis the likes of which we have not seen since the Great Depression.^[9]

At the same time we are faced with the most epic challenges we have ever faced—in drawing down carbon emissions and addressing the broader ecological crises. We live in a world with many mouths to feed, but we are butting up against ecological limits. From the Chrysalis emerges more clarity that we need a Green Industrial Transition which both creates jobs and drives down carbon emissions. The idea for a Green New Deal has been around for a while, and it has taken a variety of forms in various countries.^[10] These are solutions that have been developed in many different places that can achieve both economic stimulus, job creation and industrial transformation to draw down carbon. In Australia the Beyond Zero Emissions NGO has launched a well researched Million Jobs plan to draw down carbon.^[11] The coming years will need both job creation strategies and dramatic investment in energy transition, and the case for this is now strong. Neither can happen with just industry led or even community led efforts. It will require political-economic-community coordination of great scale and strategic clarity.

6 – Economic resilience

Under neoliberalism the past 30 years has created a new “precariat” class, a workforce that lives in continual economic uncertainty with gig jobs and short term contracts. Under “normal” conditions the effects of this were hidden to many. The pandemic has taught us that this, and our hyper leveraged credit based economy, is much more fragile than we thought. Airlines out of business, restaurants and other businesses in ruins, and millions upon millions unemployed. In reality we can’t totally blame neoliberalism for an economic crisis when previous pandemics have also created economic crises. However the particular way in which neoliberalism combines with the pandemic shows the limits to an economy where people no longer have savings, hold sky high mortgages and loans, and where the state and welfare have retreated and dwindled.

We have also seen that some of the state responses to the economic crisis looks like an emergency version of universal basic income (UBI).^[12] This was a knee jerk response to avoid economic collapse. But more broadly and looking into the future, how many other crises will we face? From the Chrysalis is an emerging understanding that we need a resilience approach to the economy, able to support people in a variety of ways. UBI is one solution – whatever happens people will have economic support. As well, a real sharing economy can unlock idle social energy and resources. This can include new local and trans-local currencies designed to tap and circulate social energies and talents. Localizing economic opportunities can help, as can leveraging our global design and knowledge commons. All these can support livelihoods amid the turbulence and shocks that we are increasingly likely to experience this century.

7 – Cosmo-localism

We had been told globalization was inevitable. Questioning it was attacking a sacred cow. Suddenly, in the pandemic national borders are closed, international air travel is practically gone. We no longer commute to work, we work from home. Global supply chains are disrupted. At the same time the world is very close. Everybody is on zoom or similar platforms. Knowledge is ubiquitous and shared. Between homeschooling the kids and lunch, sneak in a call with a colleague in Minsk, London or Mumbai. The pandemic has altered spatiality in various ways. It has reduced physical movement to the local. It has reduced movement across national borders.

It has accelerated global connected-ness via web conferencing. And the world experiences itself as a unit, as the effects of the pandemic are planetary and ubiquitous.

In short, the pandemic has made us “cosmo-local”, both planetary in digital scope but localized in physical scope. This cosmo-local turn has come quicker than anticipated – but driven from an unexpected source, a virus. P2P-driven and commons-oriented citizen groups have stepped in, showing the vitality of the open source and commons movements, as well as their expertise, capacity for mobilization, and global-local scope. This includes open source medical devices, open data and social networks for COVID-19 containment, open knowledge testing, vaccine production, open mutual aid and localised coordination systems, rigorously documented by Michel Bauwens at the P2P Foundation.^[13] From the Chrysalis emerges cosmolocalism as a mainstream social form, and we can expect this shift to strengthen in an era where global trade and travel can no longer be taken for granted, but digits flow ever more fluidly.

8 – Crisis of Trust

Surveillance capitalism and state surveillance has destroyed peoples trust in relational platforms, when we need it the most (Slaughter, 2020). Just when we needed trust in social networks and the sharing of personal information (for example to track COVID-19), platforms like facebook have lost credibility. In Australia where I live the government developed an app that helps with tracing and containing the virus. However many people were so skeptical that their data was being used by large corporations being employed as third party suppliers, or that it was a Machiavellian play on the part of the state, that the uptake of the app was much lower than required to be a useful tracing platform. China’s use of data to control citizens (social credit system, firewall, etc) is well established and this example has corollaries in many parts of the world, e.g. NSA surveillance in the USA and the Five Eyes (Snowden, 2019).

From the Chrysalis is an understanding that in order to harness the strengths of social networks and the use of apps that can do micro tracing, we need to fundamentally reimagine our relationship to the internet and data. Relational data needs to either be added into public trusts (state regulated), data cooperatives, or owned and controlled outright by those that create the data (Nycyk, 2020). Rebuilding this trust can then allow more people to use sophisticated app tools that can help the right people solve social problems, far beyond COVID-19 and through the 21th Century.

9 – Relational Health and Wellbeing

The pandemic has created asymmetrical home structures. People who were single are now more single, many suffering isolation. Those people with young families and in lock down or homeschooling face intense pressure to hold jobs and home-make (I know first hand what this is like with two young kids). Incidences of domestic violence^[14] and mental health problems are up.^[15] Personally, this has underlined for me the importance of extended family and friends, who are as important as the people we are living with every day. The biggest impact on my two children has been the inability to see friends – upsetting for both of them. As a parent I have tried to be their “friend” as much as possible (not just play the role of the parent), but it is a challenge.

From the Chrysalis is new clarity on family structure. New questions have emerged. Can we acknowledge the limits of the nuclearisation of the family? Can we design or coordinate larger groupings (pods) to be part of during future crises? What does relational health look like in a time of crisis? (Milojevic, 2020) What are the new relational forms and structures that could engender better health and wellbeing in such situations? From the Chrysalis new relational structures may emerge that are more viable within the context of challenges we face.

10 – The inner game of Epic Times

The pandemic has driven a movement inwards: nations into themselves, communities into themselves, families into themselves, the planet into itself. Yet the most felt movement inward is our subjective experience. Many of us have also been thrown into a personal movement and moment of crisis. Can this be a Chrysalis moment, and what does this mean for each of us?

For me, I lost half a year of anticipated work in a matter of a month. I came back from a workshop in Mexico City and was in quarantine with my family for 2 weeks, and then in a strict social lockdown imposed on all of the state I live in (Victoria) for 3 months. It was a weird moment. It took some time to just process and accept the changes. It then became more clear that this moment had a lot of challenges but also some opportunities. Magic time with my kids, Spanish lessons for my son, a stronger exercise routine and getting fit.

There were also some ideas and projects where I had the inner story that I was “too busy” to do them. Courses I wanted to run, blogs and books to write, all require time and effort. This requires letting go of some things, to begin to do the new. Would I take the opportunity to do those special things I’ve told myself I would do?

The inner Chrysalis takes patience, letting go of old patterns, accepting the present, and push, out of the Chrysalis. We live in Epic Times. What new patterns is the era asking from us?

Conclusion

Photo by Joshua Torres on Unsplash

Finally, from the Chrysalis is a greater appreciation that social structures and systems matter. Public health, our economies and the ecological health of the planet are all commons – we mutually depend on them for our health and wellbeing. We’re in this together. One critical structure and commons we’ll need moving forward is a “global foresight commons” (Dumaine, 2010). COVID-19 will not be the last challenge humanity will face. In fact, we may see this pandemic as an early road test for the 21st century. Can we really afford to be unprepared for the next shock? Can we really accept sleep-walking into climate catastrophe like zombies? Out of the Chrysalis, can the post Covid-19 world embody anticipatory governance and participatory futures (Ramos, 2015, 2020) – shared global systems and structures to anticipate change, prepare for change, mobilize and adapt in the face of change. It is with our futures at stake that we need to lean in, embrace our ability to think futures and adapt in ways our children’s children will be proud of. Wings out – lets fly!

*Many many thanks to reviewers and critical friends for constructive comments which improved the paper: Reanna Brown, Sohail Inayaullah, Peter Black, Mick Byrne, Mel Rumble, Gareth Priday, Andrew Ward, and many others.

Author

José Ramos, Universidade de Sunshine Coast, Australia; Journal of Futures Studies, Taiwan. jose@actionforesight.net

References

Benecke, O., & DeYoung, S. E. (2019). Anti-Vaccine Decision-Making and Measles Resurgence in the United States. Global pediatric health, 6, 2333794X19862949. https://doi.org/10.1177/2333794X19862949

Dumaine, C. (2010). On a Global Foresight Commons. Retrieved on Dec 30, 2013, from http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/on_a_global_foresight_com-mons/

Galtung, J. (2009). The Fall of the US Empire and Then What?: Successors, Regionalization Or Globalization? US Fascism Or US Blossoming?. TUP, Transcend University Press.

Hamilton, C. (2007). Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change. Melbourne: Black Inc. .

Inayatullah, S. (1998). Causal layered analysis: Poststructuralism as method. Futures, 30(8), 815-829.

Laville, S. (2019). Top oil firms spending millions lobbying to block climate change policies, says report. The Guardian, 22.

Milojevic, I. (2020). Minimising Conflicts Amidst The Covid-19 Pandemic, May, Journal of Futures Studies (Perspectives)

Nycyk, M. (2020). From Data Serfdom to Data Ownership: An Alternative Futures View of Personal Data as Property Rights, Journal of Futures Studies, June, 24(4): 25–34

Ramos, J. (2014) Anticipatory Governance: Traditions and Trajectories for Strategic Design, Journal of Futures Studies, Vol. 19 No. 1 September

Ramos, J. (2015). Liquid democracy and the futures of governance. In The Future Internet (pp. 173-191). Springer, Cham.

Ramos, J., Sweeney, J. A., Peach, K., & Smith, L. (2019). Our futures: by the people, for the people. Nesta, London

Ramos, J. (2020). Four Futures of Reality. Journal of Futures Studies, 24(4), 5-23.

Slaughter, R. (2020). Confronting a High-Tech Nightmare: A Review of Zuboff’s the Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Journal of Futures Studies, June, 24(4): 99–102

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1. The jury is still out but women leaders seem to be doing a better job of dealing with the crisis. See https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/world/coronavirus-women-leaders.html ↑
2. As Peter Black pointed out to me, in the case of Vietnam, they acted quickly and early as they understood they did not have the resources to manage society wide infections. See: https://theconversation.com/vietnams-prudent-low-cost-approach-to-combating-covid-19-136332 ↑
3. See: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/mar/22/top-oil-firms-spending-millions-lobbying-to-block-climate-change-policies-says-report ↑
4. See: https://awayforward.undp.org/ ↑
5. See: https://www.sciencealert.com/the-five-corrupt-pillars-of-climate-change-denial ↑
6. See: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/16/coronavirus-hospital-bill-healthcare-america ↑
7. Mahatma Gandhi believed in using anger toward wise ends. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDPc4CisPJQ ↑
8. See: https://www.facebook.com/ProutRev/posts/224815765840648?comment_id=225105209145037 ↑
9. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2020/06/08/the-global-economic-outlook-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-a-changed-world ↑
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_New_Deal ↑
11. https://bze.org.au/the-million-jobs-plan/ ↑
12. https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/blog/2020/the-need-for-universal-basic-income.html ↑
13. See: https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Corona_Solidarity_Initiatives#Tools ; https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Corona_Solidarity_Initiatives#Data ; https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Corona_Solidarity_Initiatives#Testing_Kits ; https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Corona_Solidarity_Initiatives#Mutual_Aid ↑
14. https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/new-reports-of-family-violence-spike-in-covid-19-lockdown-study-finds-20200607-p55096.html ↑
15. https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/new-reports-of-family-violence-spike-in-covid-19-lockdown-study-finds-20200607-p55096.html ↑