Covid-19 as a ‘critical juncture’

I’ve been challenged recently to work out if the changes created by the Covid-19 pandemic are going to lead to fundamental changes (critical junctures’ or ‘paradigm shifts’) in the way we all lead our lives, or if this is just a temporary crisis from which we will find our way back to how we lived before. Obviously, it’s too soon to say – the evidence is very patchy and there’s too much ‘noise’ to capture the direction of change – but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be thinking and planning now. Are we stepping irreversibly into a digitally controlled world? Will the amazing popular outpouring of mutual aid develop into effective and lasting movements for change? I don’t know the answers – my crystal ball is very cloudy right now – but we should all be asking the questions: ‘what’s next?’ and (just as important if not more so) ‘what are we going to do about it?’