A Third Stark Truth
Our world economy in 2020 will be at its worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s, according to the International Monetary Fund’s forecast released in April 2020. IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath: “The world has been put in a great lock down. This is a crisis like no other.”* The Conference Board of Canada released the Canadian Outlook Summary for spring 2020 in April noting an economic contraction of 25% over April, May and June for the Canadian economy.**
Our economic world is upside down. COVID-19 has meant job loss or loss of income for millions of people. For those working, our work has changed: there are new germ protocols, we work and learn online, parents have become teachers, and front-line workers face risk of contracting COVID-19. Many businesses have closed or have to operate differently.
“Adaptation is a survival skill. ”
The third stark truth is that adaptation is a survival skill. If we insist on behaving “as usual” collapse is the result. If we adapt our behaviour, healthcare practices, business practices, care-giving practices, we choose hardship. And hardship also requires adaptation. We need to live our lives differently. (The first two stark truths: not everyone survives the pandemic and our lives are not going to return to what they were.)
The choice between collapse or hardship becomes a more powerful and conscious choice if, when we choose hardship, we reach for, and create, new possibilities for ourselves. Our resilience as communities, cities, provinces, a nation and a species depends on our resilience—our ability to receive feedback and adapt to changing conditions.
Our Resilience Relies on New Work
For thousands of years communities, towns and cities demonstrate their adaptability through the creation of new work. The creation of new work is a survival skill that is creative and innovative. People who generate new work recognize a creative impulse. They see an opportunity to create something new (printing press, Facebook) that we could not have imagined, or they adapt when what worked no longer works.
“‘New work’ means thinking new things, making new things, and doing new things.”
“New work” means thinking new things, making new things, and doing new things. There are perfect examples of new work right now: online platforms to work together and socialize with each other were created years ago. There was a creative impulse, drawing on earlier work of others, to connect people. Today, we have amplified the use of these platforms in our everyday life because we need to be physically distant from each other.
While we look for ways to stabilize our cities and communities we are looking for new work. When we contemplate how to mitigate the financial hardship associated with the pandemic, the third course of action—to reach forward into new possibilities—needs our attention. Recreating the same kinds of work will stagnate the economy our cities and communities because it does not respond to our new life conditions; this course of action imagines we are back in the past. It is a big error of logic to assume that what once worked, under a certain set of circumstances, will work in a new set of circumstances. We are in a new set of circumstances and our previous logic will no longer serve us.
“We are in a new set of circumstances and our previous logic will no longer serve us. ”
In the second post of this series, Two Stark Truths, I identified four necessary simultaneous courses of action for our times:
Address the immediate and pending healthcare needs of the population.
Address the immediate and pending economic needs of the population.
Acknowledge the trauma and grief associated with our situation.
Reach forward to new possibilities.
New work reaches for new possibility. It involves improving the life experience for ourselves and others in our communities and cities. The improvements we make for ourselves regenerate our communities and cities in ways that are resilient, but this only happens when we choose the tension of creativity and not fall back into the familiarity of what was.
The quality of work we do, paid and unpaid, on the ground in our homes, communities and cities shapes our future. Is it work to keep ourselves busy and distracted, or is it purposeful, reaching for an improvement?
“The quality of the work we do, paid and unpaid, on the ground in our homes, communities and cities shapes our future. ”
Our lives are grounded in our cities and communities, whether they are urban, rural, northern or remote. This is where life takes place. This is where choices shape our world. This is where we are feeling the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic because this is where we get our food, have in-person relationships with people, work and make our livelihood, care for each other….
When it comes to the stark truth of our economy and our work, are we reallocating our resources in ways that foster our stagnation and demise, or our resilience? How can we reallocate resources in ways that foster new work and resilience?
* https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/imf-worst-year-since-depression-1.5531430
** https://www.conferenceboard.ca/temp/651bece0-2ab0-447d-bbbc-5ba0983388cd/10648_ES_CO_EN_Spring2020.pdf
This is the fourth in the Cities are a Survival Skill Series of posts, about the new work we are generating in our cities to resolve our health, economic and climate crises.
Collapse or Hardship. About the example of healthy feedback loops we are experiencing with the coronavirus pandemic, and how healthy feedback loops enable us to wisely reallocate resources.
2 Stark Truths and 4 Collective Actions. We will not all survive and life is not going back to how it was. There are four needed courses of action: address immediate healthcare needs, address immediate economic needs, acknowledge grief and trauma, and reach for new possibilities.
New Work Regenerates Cities and Citizens. Consider that innovation is simply new work, and that the constant regeneration of new work is how we adapt to our changing world. New work allows us to adapt and evolve.
A Third Stark Truth. Adaptation is a survival skill. The world economy is in bad shape and will be for a while; our economic world is upside down. Our resilience depends on the new work we create, paid or unpaid, and this means reaching for new possibility.
In the next post, The Bigger Curve, I identify the kinds of action that allow us to support the creation of new work that both helps our current economic situation AND addresses the other curve: the temperature of our planet.