Daily Times

The Crystal Balls are out. The pundits are churning out their post Corona apocalypse predictions. Foreign Policy magazine talked to a dozen of these minds. The New Yorker dissects the next decades. So perhaps this is an opportunity to dwell on the impact it’ll leave on the world. On society.On our social, political, cultural norms.On power centers.On education, healthcare, warfare. On everything we know as we know it now.

Will the world be more equitable and fair?

Will CIVID19 turn out to be the great social and economic leveler that Marx and Engels dreamed of.

Or will it be a dark and dreary big brother Orwellian world.

It’s really hard to say. Given that pre event and post event punditry resembles the same gimmickry as illusionists use. Astounding people with magical illusions, till we discover how the illusion is created. Pundits are really good at reverse engineering events, after the fact, once the “trick behind the illusion” is known.

But before that?

I feverishly scanned scores of predictions, most made at the beginning of this year and the start of a new decade as well, about the next decade. Many of these predictions were made by the world’s leading crystal ball gazers and futurists. Highly regarded experts in their fields, including social scientists.

Surprise, surprise, not one talked about a possible pandemic like COVID 19 while talking about the future and its effect on the fabric of our society in any form or shape.

Some, like Bill Gates did talk about a pandemic but in general terms. And no wonder he founded Microsoft!

But before we hazard a guess about the post COVID19 world, a quick reference to our wondrrful tin foil hat conspiracy theory specialists.

This wonderful bunch is out in full force espousing amazing theories of the virus having being developed in petri dishes by a Zionist group of really evil minded cold hearted scientists to unleash this terrible menace on our poor unsuspecting world.

And the outcome?

Enormous wealth as these mad scientists gleefully wring their gnarled hands watching people die in the millions, laughing hysterically like the Joker in Batman, watching everyone rushing to them for that ever elusive vaccine, which only they have. And flooding their bank accounts with gazillions of dollars. But wont they also be infected, one asks.

Oh yes, they will not. They have the vaccine you idiot, they look at me with a look only an idiot can give! Oh and where will they spend this money with everything dead and gone? And on and on they go.

Its impossible to argue with these conspiracy theorists except pity them including those bombarding social media with the mad ravings of our very own home grown lunatic and his personal monologue on the subject!

But back to our crystal ball.

Will it change the world? I mean really change the world? Will it make us better human beings? Will the exploitation of the poor and the disadvantaged become less by the rich and the powerful? Will nations eschew conflict, friction, war and become rational? Will the purveyors of deadly and deathly weapons give up their sordid trade and invest in world peace? Will Cannabis become legal in Pakistan? (ignore that last comment)

40 million died as a result of the Spanish Flu of 1919, barely a century ago. Quite frankly but for Corona, very few knew about it and the extent of its devastation. I doubt there’s anyone alive today who was an adult in that period and share the horror and its devastation. To all of us, it was and is just another historical footnote. Period!

Did the world, as a consequence become better, softer, gentler, more equitable?

Here’s what followed in the next two and a half decades

20 million were killed in the First World War. 85 million in the Second. Add the Spanish Flu. That’s over 125 million dead in 26 years! 125 million!

Then we had the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the mass scale slaughter in USSR and China. The genocide in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen! The coming to power of mad cap dictators in the Middle East. Arab monarchs still ruling over countries. Loot and plunder. Economic devastation.

Nothing changed. In fact things got worse!

Telemedicine. Online learning, Ecommerce, Digital payments and currencies, Supply chain, while clearly emerging winners even today will grow exponentially after Corona

Hardly a decade ago we had SARS and MERS, yet no one recalls them. Did it create an urgency in world capitals of the possibility of an even bigger pandemic and to invest in it?

Was this a “Black Swan” event, as defined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, completely unpredictable, a complete outlier with huge impact on society or a white swan, predictable and expected.

From hindsight it’s clear, also part of Taleb’s theory that COVID19 was a white swan.

Singapore thought so and as far back as 2010 were prepared to deal with a possible pandemic outbreak! So was South Korea.

But the rest of the world? Too busy gouging each other and making money, by the gazillions, like our evil conspiracy theory scientists.

So will things change? Yes. Some.

I think work from home and telecommuting will become more acceptable in third world countries.

Telemedicine. Online learning, Ecommerce, Digital payments and currencies, Supply chain, while clearly emerging winners even today will grow exponentially after Corona.

Anything to do with big data, analytics, machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, will also get a huge kick in the pants and pole vault all of them over other disciplines.

So all those young kids out there. Pay heed to the above professions.

But!

Will exploitation end? Will we see the end of world hunger and disease end?

Will conflicts end? Or will but asymmetric warfare overtake conventional methods?

What of the Nuclear Arsenal?

Will power shift? Yes even more rapidly to those controlling data.

Will the USA and China still be Super Powers controlling 1/3 of the Globe’s GDP. Think not.

Will Corona impact and change the way we as individuals, groups, societies, nations, live, interact and engage with each other at various levels?

For a few years maybe.Perhaps a decade.

But as COVID19’s memory fades, as faded the Spanish Flu and the devastations of the two World Wars or of the millions of wars, battles, famines, pandemics since Homo Sapiens became Homo Sapiens, we will revert to the new normal, not much different than the old one, which is pretty much the same in terms of the human ability to enrich itself at the expense of others. Only the tools change!

The rich will become richer and more powerful. Even more than now.More evil. The poor, poorer! The weak, weaker.

So while the pundits may like to predict the end of society as we know it today and show us dreary world of people living in isolation, of empty streets and cafes, I’d like to sadly differ, despite my own ignorance and absolutely no pretensions of being a social scientist.

2120. Pretty much the same messed up human race as we see it today!

Nothing changes. And to state a cliché. The more things change the more they remain the same!

So for now its to survive this monster and back to washing my hands and my 57th Netflix movie!

The writer is a Geo political commentator / blogger on National and International affairs. Formerly a media anchor, corporate leader