Win, Win-Win, and CoronaWin
By Salim Kadıbeşegil Posted on April 2, 2020
We don’t know how long it’s going to take….
We have no idea how our data history will have recorded down the present a hundred years from now.
We do know one thing very well. Our future will be nothing like our past!
Borders will once open up, albeit in a controlled fashion.
Planes will gradually take flight again.
Traffic will flow through the veins of cities.
Shutters will open.
Children will set off to school again.
We will be heading back to that place we call “WORK”. But…
Our relationships will be as if we were living in protective bubbles. Our aura will say “stop” touching skin. Our corona and mutation reflex—hitting record high—will make us depend on “buffer zones” in our lives.
It’s as though the “warmth” of contact in human relations has abandoned us for good at the hands of the CoronaVirus…
Corona has also gnawed at our “emotions”. We’ve no idea how long it’s going to take for it to alienate the blanket on our friendships, respect, and love.
Life shall be re-formatted. In the word of Thomas Friedman: “B.C. (Before Corona)”, “A.C. (After Corona).”
Governments, heads of state, leaders, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, countries starting with a G – G7/8/20 it doesn’t matter – and all hundred-year old institutions have flunked out of school and at the end of this process, we suddenly exclaim: “The king is naked!”
A virus has locked down the world.
It has suddenly “devalued” everything we’ve ever viewed as valuable.
The rich, the poor…
Presidents, CEOs, bosses, rich people in tax havens, Joe Average walking down the street… It has levelled everyone.
Why? Because we didn’t act sensibly in the first place!
Our generation has witnessed the “win” state of the world. In other words, “let me—and only me—win no matter what”. This whole “America first” discourse – the reason why President Trump is in power – is just the latest example of a centuries-old sneaky, selfish, and manipulative approach. “Let the United States win first. The rest is none of my business”.
The politics of “winning” had lifted the veil on pre-capitalism colonial looting, and had left humanity to stand alone in the face of a tragedy with atomic bombs, world wars, racial discrimination, and the massacre of nature. Now, humanity has suddenly encountered CoronaVirus at its front door and has zero clue how to even approach it.
“Win” was never the right recipe for humanity. Nor the right compass, for that matter!
For it excludes people, morality, shame, solidarity, loyalty, nature, women, children, the disabled, cats, dogs and other living creatures, and even flowers.
So, what does it include?
Greed.
Shamelessness.
Personal interests.
Avarice. Arrogance.
Ego.
Evil.
Insatiable consumption craze.
Lies, bribery, corruption, theft, favouritism…! “I want it at all costs, no matter what it takes”.
Towards the end of the century, “Win-Win” entered our lives, saying “I am winning, and now you can win a little bit too.” What the first “win” covers has expanded. Our appetite for the dollar has doubled. Under-the-counter trade has been legalised. Tender stalls have been customised. The economy of making money out of money without producing anything is now the rule in the world. The rhetoric of “I will pay, whatever the cost” has bought human dignity. Wait, just human dignity? It has also bought countries, cultures, historical riches, art, families…. And, once justice ran dry, it consumed humanity and nature!
CoronaVirus has tuned things up, but …
We’re living through the CoronaVirus era.
We’re watching a planet get run by “chaos” not crisis in a quarantine siege.
We’re constantly wondering, “Are we next in line? Will a family member infect us?”
What we truly want to know is, “What is going to happen next? How are things going to unfold?”
All of us have become sci-fic characters in an ever-ghettoizing world.
We urgently need a so-called “third win” that’ll dismiss and idle the first and second “wins”.
In other words:
CoronaVirus has ushered us into a world where:
The planet and its natural cycle rule the roost…
We recognise the law of nature as the only valid format for life …
People and communities adapt their own life cycles around the above…
Morality is above money …
Everyone is “human” first, regardless of their birth place, or the colour of their skin.
Current developments remind me of an old blog post of mine. I wonder if humanity—which had set off on a journey from Göbeklitepe to Palo Alto—will one day knock on Göbeklitepe’s door again.
Is the “third win” going to offer human civilisation a chance as a fresh start, after 12,000 years?