The treadmill starts again, and already I’m nostalgic
One thing few predicted about life after lockdown was that many would soon miss it. Lockdown was couched in terms of restrictions, sacrifices and inconveniences. For many it was a time of crushing disappointment and anxiety as businesses faltered, jobs were lost and uncertainty reigned.
For others, however, it turned into a golden autumn pause, in which the treadmill simply stopped and a life of new possibilities emerged.
Parents could be seen out with their children, enjoying the sunshine and each other’s company.
Birdlife returned, the air was cleaner and, because everyone was in this together, people felt a greater sense of kinship to their fellows. They got to see the best hours of the day and not through an office or factory window.
It was a bit like that episode of The Simpsons in which, for a reason I can’t remember, television was shut down.
In a great irony, the episode showed children playing outside, birds chirping in the trees and people getting off their couches and enjoying the outdoors.
Like lockdown, the episode gave a glimpse of a life off the narrow track on which the average people of Springfield were stuck.
The costs of lockdown for us and future generations should not be overlooked. But, as the treadmill gets going again, I’m sure many are wondering if life could be different; if the normal that some may have longed for during lockdown was all that it was cracked up to be.
I’ve been thinking, for instance, about Golden Bay, at the top of the South Island, where we had a holiday in February.
The area, served by the charming town of Takaka, cultivates its hippie past as a marketing tool, but real remnants of that lifestyle remain.
You still see some adherents, with hair down to their waists and baggy pants, heading home on foot, no doubt, to tend to their vegetables and play folk songs into the warm evening. That’s if they aren’t meditating or enjoying a massage.
Although it’s easy to see the hippies as ridiculous and parasitic, you have to wonder if they got at least some things right and if, by getting off the treadmill instead of waiting for it to stop, they allowed themselves the time to get their priorities sorted, in the way lockdown has forced us all to hold up a mirror to our lives.
Deep down we all suspected our pre-pandemic lifestyle was unsustainable and damaging, not only to the planet but to ourselves.
For years now, scientists have been warning the world that unless radical action is taken to reduce greenhouse emissions, future generations will inherit an increasingly uninhabitable planet. In fact, it’s probably already too late to prevent substantial climate change and the most we can hope for is that we can mitigate the damage.
Even the best scenario features weather bombs, disasters, famines, droughts and political upheaval as the struggle for resources intensifies.
The lockdowns around the world demonstrated what the world might face to avoid more damage to the planet.
Stay at home, buy locally made and grown, and try to enjoy the small things that don’t damage the environment. Share, conserve, consume less and be more selfsufficient. Sound familiar? It could be the hippies’ manifesto.
We have also had a taste, through lockdown, of the economic devastation that would ensue if we really got serious about climate change. The Government has decided to shield the average citizen from the worst financial effects of the pandemic, expecting the need will be short-lived.
It will hope it can pay back the money it borrowed by expanding the economy and keeping interest rates low. Ironically that growth, necessary to keep people employed in New Zealand, and more importantly in the big industrial powers, will take us back to square one in dealing with climate change.
And the enormous amount of money used to put the economy into a deep freeze, so it can fight another day, is money that should really have been used to make the radical changes to deal with climate change.
Lockdown has therefore delivered some important lessons. By stopping the treadmill it gave us time to consider other ways of living productive and useful lives. It showed us what happens when the resource-intensive practices that support our rich lifestyles stop overnight. Both the good and the bad. And it gave us a glimpse of the upheaval and innovation that will be required to fight other threats to human existence.
How things will shake down after this pandemic is impossible to predict. We are not going to turn into a sophisticated peasantry or into generous philanthropists. Nor are we going to forgive and encourage governments who, with the future in mind, force us to take our medicine. We prefer to think some fantastic new technology will save us all.
We have, however, seen what happens when the treadmill stops. It wasn’t all bad and, as it starts up again, albeit at a reduced speed, we need to start thinking about whether we should stop it again, but this time without being forced to and not overnight.