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The past year was a year of deep anger against ourselves, our destiny, other people and politicians. We were angry for good reasons, but even more so for the reason itself.
Instead of the age of science and technology, which could defeat disease, prolong our lives, and eliminate social injustices, almost half of the people do not believe in masks, good medical advice, vaccines, or even the news. daily.
Science, therefore, does not provide all the answers. If rationality succumbs to irrationality, emotion and anger will shape our decisions for the future.
We have been here before. In 1637, amid the horrendous Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) and the outbreaks of European plagues, the French philosopher René Descartes and his generation became desperate for religion and human destiny. They embarked on the logic and science that transformed Europe to master technology.
The specialization in logic, mathematics and knowledge was successful because science deprived emotion and humanity of the search for “objective truth.”
The discovery of steam and fossil fuels created industrial power. Wealth generated by energy. Wealth and technology generated concentration, inequality and more power.
By 1776, economics had become the leading social science, and Adam Smith discovered laws that revealed truths about the wealth of nations.
Economics emulated the physical sciences. But politically, the French and American revolutions promised freedom, equality, and brotherhood.
Ignoring politics, economics became more and more quantitative (scientific) that economists offered dominance over development and growth.
Neoclassical economics assumed with perfect markets that the economy balanced itself, giving order, efficiency and stability.
The current neoliberal order was based on democracy, the free market, the rule of law and technology, entrepreneurship and innovation.
The End of the Story by Francis Fukuyama (1990) assumed that these self-evident truths would lead to a better world.
What we got instead was the revenge of history: inequality, crime, corruption, political decadence, monopolies, distrust and anger came back to haunt us.
By 2020, the pandemic confirmed the worst: that technology reinforced concentration, that the rich were better protected against the pandemic, and that the poor were more exposed to death and disease because they performed all essential jobs.
Trust was lost because the pandemic revealed injustices where justice was promised.
To get it back, politicians now beat the drums of war to avoid being blamed for their own failure to restore order.
In 1981, the American inventor Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) argued that humanity must walk the Critical Path between the existential threats of nuclear war and climate change.
For a time, the nuclear threat faded due to the demise of the Soviet Union in 1989, but today, that critical path remains as relevant as ever.
We cannot ignore the fact that the pandemic is the interactive result of climate change, globalization, and human interaction with bats and other viral hosts.
With more deaths from the pandemic than from World War II, the United States is angry and hurt. Both Democrats and Republicans are hitting the “reset” button, but with big differences.
They both go back to a “golden age” that may never return, but with completely different visions. Without saying so explicitly, Republicans call for a return to white supremacy in power, while Democrats call for a return to the values of freedom amid diversity. On the other side of the Atlantic, Brexit also represented an emotional response to national sovereignty over European economic integration.
Therefore, the centrifugal forces of tribalism are tearing apart nations, creating more disorder than order. Protests, rebellions and polarization have increased throughout this decade, according to the Global Unrest Index. This is a dangerous time for everyone.
What is the solution to our current existential condition?
The central thesis of the neoliberal market economy is Hayek’s political observation that “markets have their own order” and that authoritarianism leads to servitude. The president of the United States, Reagan, said that “the government is not the solution to our problems; the government is the problem ”.
In other words, the solution is a political choice: more government intervention or market-driven forces.
However, after the pandemic, most business leaders at the World Economic Forum have positively valued government intervention. Very few are against governments increasing their role due to government bailouts.
Therefore, the concentration of power increases rather than decreases.
But there are fundamental differences in world views on how to deal with these concentrations of power.
The American approach is that democracy will act on technology monopolies through antitrust laws.
Surprisingly, it is the Chinese government that is the first to act against monopolies on technology platforms.
Impatience for quick fixes also fuels vaccine and reestablishment preferences, hoping to find “miracle” solutions that fix everything quickly. But Asians know from experience that the virus will mutate faster than vaccines can be discovered. Vaccines are not 100% effective, so we can never eliminate them, just live with them.
That is why vaccines are less important than the widely practiced social distancing.
Complex thinking suggests that anger and reason are two sides of humanity that cannot be separated.
Competition and cooperation coexist simultaneously, just as crisis and opportunity are inseparable.
In that sense, economics, politics, philosophy, and technology are deeply intertwined with each other, so assuming that one part can explain the whole is a fallacy. Humanity and science are not binary opposites, but are part of the entire ecosystem of life.
In short, our future depends not only on science and reason, but on our values. If we value human life, then we should cooperate for the future, even as we compete.
The glass is always half full or empty, and 2021 promises as much hope, as well as anger or despair.
As the poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) wrote: “To err is human, to forgive, divine.”
Andrew Sheng is a Distinguished Fellow of the Fung Global Institute, a Hong Kong-based global think tank. The opinions expressed here are yours.
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