If one good thing comes out of this crisis it’s that we think a bit more about ‘us’ and a bit less about ‘me’
IN early March, governments were in two minds about whether or not to let hundreds of thousands of people on to the streets for St Patrick’s Day. Now, it’s forbidden for even small groups of people to gather.
Queueing to enter the supermarket has become routine and studiously avoiding one another on the footpath has become a courtesy, rather than hostility.
But, when all is said and done, will Covid-19 have a more profound effect on the way we live our lives? When this pandemic passes — for pass it will — how will our world have changed? And how will we relate to one another in a post-virus world?
Well, one place where we would do well to start would be to think a bit more about others and a bit less about ourselves.
When you think about it, the behaviour that this pestilence asks of us goes against almost everything that our modern culture tells us will make us happy.
Our bookshops — when they were open — were filled with self-help books; everything from revolutionary diets to change one’s life to others promising to contain the secret to happiness.
And, yet, coronavirus has forced our collective imagination to think more about the “us” of society. We’re being asked to put the needs of others ahead of our own desires.
It’s what philosophers and political scientists call the common good. The common good has become very real for us as our individualistic culture has been turned upside down.
Jonathan Sacks is the former Chief Rabbi and one of the foremost thinkers in the English-speaking world about community and society.
His new book, Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times, was published in March just as Covd-19 was starting to hit the headlines.
As you might guess from the title, his main focus was the fallout from Brexit, but, as I turn every page, I’m struck by the fact that what he is actually presenting is a roadmap for a new vision of the world post-coronavirus.
“Ours,” he writes, “is an age in which there is too much ‘I’ and too little ‘we’.”
He suggests that, to make the world a better place for every one of us, we perform a searchand-replace operation on our mind. Wherever we encounter the word “self ”, we should substitute in the word “other”. It’s a paradox that the more we live our lives for others, the happier we become.
Doing good to and for others is good for our health, physical and psychological.
In experiments in which people are given a sum of money and half are told to spend it on themselves, while the other half are told to give it to charity, those who gave it away received more pleasure than those who spent it on themselves.
We have seen a massive outpouring of altruism in response to Covid-19. Taking pleasure and deriving strength from others seems to be deeply embedded in our nature.
Even children as young as 18 months old show empathy for other children and adults in whom they see signs of distress.
Our capacity to feel and be moved by the pain of others is an undeniable fact of our nature. As restrictions ease, social distancing and the need to continue to make sacrifices for others will be part of our new normal.
We have an opportunity to emerge from this crisis stronger and to build a better, more just and safer world.
Rabbi Sacks is adamant: “Do a search-and-replace operation in your mind and, every time you see the word ‘self ’, delete it and write ‘other’. Just do that and you’ll find that you will be much happier, your relationships will improve and you will feel that your life is meaningful in a way that it wasn’t before.”
In any crisis, we can be overwhelmed, or we can try to see how we can make something good out of something terrible.
If we can see this pandemic as an opportunity for a reboot, a good place to start would be trying to walk in the shoes of others and thinking a bit more about us and a bit less about me.
We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world and that being decent is worth it.