First of all, a double premise is necessary. There is no doubt that, in Coronavirus time, we all find ourselves with a little more time in our hands. For many, “teleworking” has spared them tiring trips to and from work, while the domestic routine, to which many have had to get used to, certainly has transferred energies towards the management of household chores and the creative care of children. Indeed, we have more time for these daily tasks, which means also a challenge to use it wisely: to rest, to reflect, to plan our future (certainly uncertain), to develop thoughts and ideas to which we would like to dedicate some energy. In this logic, we at Glocal Factory have activated “a time for reflection and discussion” together, which is expressed, inevitably, in a digital meeting space where we bring together our meditations and elaborate them dialogically. A sort of “think tank” branded Covid19, a basin to develop thoughts about the current situation and prophecies about the future. This article, or rather this series of mini articles, reveals the desire to share our reflections, to extend them to our fellow adventurers in Italy and all over Europe, so that, together, we can make this crisis an opportunity for progress. This article is written, therefore, by several hands and at different times, in a sort of itinerant “vademecum” in the current course of time. The second premise concerns the title. Media (whether social, printed, or traditional ones) have forged, in these weeks of pandemic, a list of words that, unfortunately, have become very familiar. Words that refer to the technical and scientific characteristics of the virus, terms that describe the structural and procedural aspects of the interventions. We would like to propose an alternative glossary, less contingent to the situation, but equally pertinent to describe the phenomena that arose with the outbreak of the Covid19 crisis. And we would like to do so by taking a dual perspective. Winston Churchill, who had to deal with many emergencies during his political mandates, stated as follows: ” The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see”. Drawing upon this thought, therefore, we want to turn our attention to the horizon of meaning expressed by the question “what has this crisis taught us?”. At the same time, we want to look to the future according to the adage “how – we believe – should things be different after the Corona virus emergency?”. With this double vision in mind we want to select our words.

Undoubtedly, the different phases of complicated management of the crisis have been characterized by a sense of “stumbling around in the dark”, which in turn has highlighted the need for good preparation on the part of those involved. For both scientists, who are familiar with the phenomenon, and the health care workers who manage it, for both the bodies protecting citizens and for those making the necessary political decisions, the key word has been “expertise”. Perhaps it has not always been so; perhaps it has not been so for all those who have a role in our society and who should have been able to exercise that expertise. If the crisis has taught us anything, it is the importance of relying on the proven knowledge, experience and rigorous expertise of professionals capable to deal with a tsunami of this nature. Unfortunately, the tendency to improvise as “bar-immunologists”, “keyboard-economists”, and “consensus-politicians” has made it extremely complex – and often contradictory and confusing – to define the strategic synergy necessary to find solutions. Never before has the crisis enlightened us on how necessary it is to rely on those who know, and know not by hearsay, but by actual familiarity with and /or deep knowledge of the subject. This applies not only to emergency workers, but above all to politicians, who are responsible for taking difficult and often final decisions, but who in many instances have shown incompetence and ignorance in terms of powers to be exerted, procedures to be triggered and priorities to be guaranteed. And if there is a lesson to be learned, it is that in the future we must choose to be guided, professionally and politically, by serious, competent people, verified in their expertise. Just as, in our private life, we would never rely on an online test to diagnose a disease, nor would we ever entrust the repair of our car to our neighbour just because he bought a toolbox, so much less would we entrust the development strategy of our communities to those who are not competent. Nothing new per se, but the Covid19 crisis has confirmed how seriously this should be taken.

Covid-19 brought to the fore what had already been going on the last decades: that the whole world was experiencing chaotic states, both on a territorial and on a global level (fires, unemployment, migration, wars, memorandums, stock exchange failures, migration, violence, poverty, environmental threats, and severe mental health issues such as depression and existential alienation). Even if – and when – successful treatments and vaccines develop to combat the coronavirus, the rest of the problems will still be there for humanity to face up to and deal with. Among other competencies, what becomes prevalent in this emergency is resilience. Resilience is defined as: “Overcoming adversity”, “Being able to adapt to challenging situations”. In my psychotherapeutic work with individuals and families, resilience comes in as a key factor for psychological and systems survival. But resilience cannot be perceived in a vacuum or rather, as not taking into account the “Zeitgeist”, the spirit of the time. The chaotic states mentioned before are here to stay. So, what does resilience constitute of, with regard to the chaos round us? It seems to be the case that the mindset of accepting chaos as a major force in life, preparing for it, actually designing one’s life towards it defines the pillars of resilience nowadays. According to the theory of chaos, systems develop with a certain equilibrium up to a certain threshold. When this threshold is reached, there are two possibilities: either the system collapses, or grows into a more differentiated, more complex way of existence, reaching another equilibrium, another order. The coronavirus presents such a threat and along with it, a chance for a higher, more sophisticated level of complexity regarding human experience, function and survival. Therefore, chaos is a constant state of our existence, and due to specific factors having to do with, for example, overpopulation on earth, extraordinary interconnectedness and the unprecedented developments of technology, chaos is reached very fast and without giving the world the ability to prepare. We must accept that change is probable, constant, pervasive, and potentially positive, if resilience for it is established. In order to develop resilience we should be able – or supported, in order to become able – to get in touch or develop multiple identities, listen to the different facets of a single identity, give room to each one of them to be attended to and expressed – in other words, develop a certain kind of personal leadership with elements such as mental agility, critical thinking and adequate reality testing. Leaving behind generational drawbacks and sterile stereotypes about ourselves and the world, we also develop what is called “situational awareness”; in other words, adaptation to external reality demands. How do we succeed in this? By developing external as well as internal models of “stability”, “order”, and “safety”, coupled with practical, hands-on skills (computer literacy ICT dexterity, distance learning and communication, to mention but a few). To these ends, nowadays, more than ever, counsellors and psychotherapists, mentors and spiritual leaders, together with ICT, physics, biology, medical and environmental experts are mostly needed to be “used” wisely. Being able to identify, trust and then follow “real expertise” becomes a key element of the so much needed resilience. On top of that, it is mandatory to shift from a fixed mindset of being to a flexible, “fractal”, a growth mindset, where, when a certain stage of expertise is reached with regard to resilience and other competencies, being prepared to face any chaotic situation – actually being more able to predict it – comes up as a key factor of resilience. With regard to connectedness and social distancing, we do not have always to operate on an “autonomous” mode – actually, we are more interconnected than ever. However, when chaos establishes again, we are called to have developed skills and competencies which put us immediately into the “resilient mode”. When a new equilibrium is reached – and it is always the case in chaos theory, otherwise the world will collapse! – then we can relax and connect to the others again. Basically, what is required from us is to become better, more developed, more complex, more “expert” versions of ourselves. Our human dimension will then become even more “fractal”; it will acquire new, unprecedented qualities. The coronavirus, with its pervasive force and the extraordinary threat it poses to our physical existence, offers us a unique chance: to get a bit closer to one of the basic tenets of Christian religion: moving from the figurative “I” to the analogical “I”: to excel as humans and to “resemble” God.

The health crisis at Covid-19 has revealed the fragility of our system. Of this system, people are the main element. It has been said that the virus treats all as equal, because the disease can affect everyone. It doesn’t really seem to be going like that. Moreover, the virus has stressed inequalities between generations, showing weaknesses and contradictions. At opposite ends, we have the elderly and young people, who are, respectively, the drowned and the saved from contagion; between them there are all the others or, as they are called, the “middle generation”. At present, elderly people are the majority among the victims: the intended victims – we would dare say – as the virus largely attacks bodies the age has already exhausted. As if that were not enough, it’s not a mocking destiny, but well-identified management choices, which have transformed retirement homes – the places of care and assistance that should protect their health – into their Calvary. To the middle generation – which includes the vast majority of the workers – lock-down prevention is stealing the present: to the endemic economic crisis, pandemic has added further insolvencies, closures, unemployment. For too many families, precariousness turns rapidly into poverty. Every day new poor join old poor: the number of people forced to turn to the services of the diocesan Caritas, in Italy, are increased of 114% compared to the period before the coronavirus. Statistics tell us that young people better resist the disease. Some commentators even said that, for them, phase number 2 could have started earlier, if it were not for the risks associated to asymptomatic people. physically undamaged, our youngsters are – unfortunately – much less strong from the emotional point of view. And they’re right. Because the mocking virus, which looks at them at a distance, is going to steal their future. About this, Italian youngsters, among their peers all over Europe, are the most concerned – and pessimistic. A survey promoted by the Youth Observatory of the Giuseppe Toniolo Institute, on a sample of 2,000 citizens from 18 to 34, reveals that – at Covid-19 times – almost half of them thinks that their tomorrow life will be worse than today. How is it possible, in these conditions, to plan one’s own future? But in this pessimistic mood there are also glimpses of optimism: the desire to react; to change attitudes and habits which in the past were considered “normal”; to rediscover the value of life and relationships; to be open-minded towards the change and its opportunities. It’s a positive energy, which we need more than ever before, because the future can be thought of only by those people who have new eyes to see it and a straight, positive resourcefulness to plan it. We need to cultivate and support this desire for a new “normality”. Which, I add, needs all ages of life, to reduce inequalities, even age inequalities, that wear and tear our societies. A pact between generations, with a coherent planning, await us. Let’s start! Together.

Without embarking on debates about who and for whom this feeling has been expressed, we would like to highlight three meanings (conceived so far) with which the term has been interpreted in these days of emergency. First of all, compassion in the sense of “suffer with”. The social distance imposed on people has never prevented each of us from exercising emotional closeness with our beloved ones, friends, people who have crossed our lives. The suffering of others has become ours, that of each one of us, and in many cases, this affective sharing has made people less alone, both those who are sick and those who are alone and isolated because of the quarantine. The second definition of compassion is according to its original meaning of “pietas”, indicating in this case devotion for and respect to the others. We think about those who are sick, those who have been affected by the virus, including the elderly. Elderly people who have not only been the most affected by the virus but – tragically – also the lowest priority in the management of the pandemic. These last few weeks have shown how high this value is on the list of professionals who have worked on caring for people. It is clear that for them respect for others and devotion to humanity are feelings that have bypassed any personal interest (health care workers have operated at the expense of their own health) and that has made them always consider sick and dead as people, not as numbers. Finally, com-passion as “shared passion”. The incredible zeal of everyone, in public and private, in professional and voluntary work, has been the protagonist of the care of people both in daily and ordinary attentions, and in the extraordinary effort of these days. For tomorrow, this threefold momentum, of which humanity has shown itself capable, should keep its bar oriented to those who, in a similar way to the victims of these days, suffer daily far from the spotlight. This emergency is showing us that by orienting ourselves passionately on those in need we can defeat any invisible enemy. Today this enemy is Covid 19, but we still have among us other emergency diseases such as poverty, discrimination, social injustice, marginality, hatred, ignorance, fanaticism, and many others. It is with synergistic passion (con-passion) and compassionate spirit that these diseases of our society can be fought and perhaps, one day, eradicated.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, many things have changed, whether worsening the already precarious living conditions of many vulnerable people or causing only slight changes in the daily habits of the better-off. Even if in a less intrusive and shocking way, yet landscapes around us also appear different, and so does our perception of them. The streets, parks and squares of both overpopulated metropolis and small towns have become deserted, abandoned places during the lockdown. Natural and wild environments outside the urban centres, emptied of the human presence – with the exception of those living and working there – also seem to have remained motionless and silent in the face of the tragedy of the epidemic. Just as silent have remained many international debates and initiatives which, directly or indirectly, influence the future of such spaces and, most importantly, the lives of their inhabitants. The COVID-19 epidemic has delayed most of the major climate events and policy summits planned for 2020, such as the COP-26, while the energy transition towards renewable resources is facing a rapid slowdown worldwide with huge investments being diverted to other sectors (now more essential than ever). Also, climate movements which mostly rely on public, crowded demonstrations are being forced inside and online. All when this year was expected to be crucial for environmental decision-making processes. It is clear, however, that the processes of climate change cannot be paused, and that the most negative effects will be spilling over the most vulnerable people and communities, again. As it has happened in other periods of crisis, persistent voices are now calling for the postponement of the choices needed to make our economies and societies more sustainable, in order to focus on – business as usual – economic growth and employment protection objectives. But that should no longer be an option. On the contrary, the economic recovery models that will follow will necessarily have to take environmental issues into account to provide new jobs, to develop better health and education systems, to preserve natural areas. Urban realities will also have to be rethought in light of physical distancing measures, to protect the health of all without encouraging polluting habits. At the international level, collective and sound decisions are badly needed. It should be put high on the agenda, among many (many) other things, the implementation of restrictive and preventive measures, for example. Think of the staggering 55% increase in the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest during the last four months – in the midst of the epidemiological and economic emergency. An activity irreversibly destroying habitats, also considered a determining factor in the emergence of new infectious diseases. At the same time, changes cannot be only top-down. The fact that social movements addressing environmental issues have never reached such momentum worldwide, has shown that people want to be part of the solutions. It is really necessary to collectively redefine what should resilience mean, and to develop local initiatives that give communities the chance to better absorb future external shocks. There is also a need for a constant exercise of the mind, maybe starting from those landscapes that we feel closer to us and the people that inhabit them, for the reappropriation, transformation, but also protection of such spaces, in a perspective that is environmentally sustainable, socially just and accessible to all.

Paolo is a friend of Glocal Factory and heads a consortium of cooperatives: a network of social enterprises with two thousand workers, including many asylum seekers and many disadvantaged and vulnerable people. I called him at the beginning of the lockdown to find out how they were doing. He asked me: “How can I say ‘stay home!’ to someone who doesn’t have one?”. Yeah. Because the virus told us we’re all equal, all exposed to the risk of infection and disease. All potentially fragile. But then, what had to be done to stop the pandemic reminded us that we live in a world of inequalities. The quarantine was different for those who spent it in a villa with a garden and for those who remained segregated in a small apartment in a metropolis. For the Italians who knew they could count on an average good health service with universal access, and for the Brazilians in the favelas. Not to mention the homeless in every European city, precisely, or the refugees on the island of Lesvos. And also phase 2 will be different for those who have lost their jobs and for those who, instead, will only have to change a few habits and give up something superfluous. Now, which direction history will take after Covid-19, it is all to be seen. As historians have already argued, the ways out after the big shocks can be the most varied. Germany came out of the great crisis of 1929 with Hitler. The USA with the New Deal, i.e. with the strengthening of democracy, the development of welfare, the improvement of the living conditions of millions of blue collars and white collars. The coronavirus shock could have violently recessive consequences on the world economy, and especially for the most backward countries and those with the greatest public debt. And recession does not mean, unfortunately, “happy de-growth”, but unemployment, poverty and further growth of inequalities. In the meantime, without wanting to be Cassandras, new shocks – caused by climate change and the enormous flows of environmental migration set in motion by ecological disasters – could intervene. For this reason, it is essential to act now and act well. With one keyword in mind: equality. Which in concrete terms means education, health and work for all. With an unprecedented, gigantic redistribution of income from the richest to the poorest sections of the population, on a planetary and state level. With the hijacking of military spending on social spending. With a powerful intervention by the States and the European Union for the economic renaissance. But while in 1929 the Keynesian recipe could have been enough on its own, today development must necessarily be sustainable: clean energy, protection of natural resources, organic agriculture and building, smart mobility. History teaches us that great turning points are possible, but only when objective factors are added to the subjective will. Today the objective conditions are all there: it is in the interest of the economic system itself to radically reform itself, so as not to run the risk of a recession much worse than that which began twelve years ago. But we also need subjective drives, people, leaders, movements, parties capable of throwing their hearts over the obstacle, of making feasible but also visionary proposals. The next months and years will be truly crucial, and what will happen depends on each of us.

In everyday Italian we say: “Salute!” (Bless you!) when someone we’re talking to sneezes or coughs. Until a few years ago it was also used as a form of greeting (rather recalling Latin language). My uncle, for example, who was a bit ‘old-fashioned’, always used to greet me like this: “Salute!” (Cheers!). The experience of the last few months made us dwell on the meaning of this word in particular. What does ‘health’ (salute) mean? What exactly are we wishing to the person in front of us, the man, the woman, the child, the old man we meet, when we say ‘salute!’? Maybe we wish him/her good appetite and sound sleep. No hospital? No injuries? Maybe we refer to his/her internal organs to be functioning properly? That he stays young and ‘fit’ for as long as possible? Or we wish him/her to meet almost no doctors? Or on the contrary, to meet as many as possible, precisely to stay healthy. Are we referring to his/her biological body, or family and work, or a combination of the two? The way he/she dreams, hopes, thinks, wishes is part of his/her ‘health’? For many years, I would say until the beginning of the 20th century, health was considered a sort of balance between one’s body, the external environment and one’s feelings. This balance was a personal matter. There was no such thing as an ‘objective’, scientific and neutral narration, nobody could tell it except for the person directly concerned. But above all, people close by, that is the environment (in the sense of people, things, places nearby) were elements of the story and therefore had the power to influence health. They not only had the ‘real’ ability to take care of that particular person, but also had the responsibility to do so. It would be good to start from here to give a new meaning to the word ‘health’. Do we still feel able to influence it? Are we able to really take care of it, to play an influential role in the (psycho)physical balance, in the personal story, of the person in front of us? And vice versa, do we feel that the people close to us are responsible and able to take care of us? Or is it only a professional doctor who can guarantee us that rigid and efficient integrity we call ‘health’? The traumatic experience of not being able to stand by our sick and dead during the lockdown gave us a clue. We should start by asking ourselves, with courage: we talk about ‘traumatic experience’, but was it really so traumatic? Haven’t we been accustomed for a long time to isolating the sick and the dead away from our homes, our families, our lives? And haven’t we also removed our fragile, mortal part, the part that gets older every day, thus preventing the people we live with from taking care of us and preventing us from taking care of them? This confinement, this forgetfulness could be one of the main reasons why we are powerless to operate and to believe we are capable of effective action on health, school, the environment and everything else that affects our lives. It is the right time to rethink the relationships we have with the body, with people and objects around us, to rediscover and appreciate the ‘beneficial disease’ of imperfection and aging that characterizes us as human beings. And from here try to learn and exercise the ability to care and with this the power to give a true and alive meaning to the world.

Today we are strongly focused on Covid-19 as though it was the problem to be solved at global level. Actually, the virus is the emergency, that is the urgency to act due to emerging problems that have their roots somewhere else. Urgency of act which highlights the fragilities of the social and economical system that we created and which amplifies existing inequalities. According to current information, the pandemic has its origin in deforestation, intensive breeding, urbanization and consequent biodiversity loss and climate change, that science has been documenting for a long time, but that we struggle to face due to resistance to change at individual and political level. Human being, with its widespread propensity to trust in miraculous solutions and the inadequate contrast to illicit trafficking of wild animals, is responsible for the spillover and the spread of pathogens. In front of pandemic, inequalities between centre and periphery arise, at local, national, global level. Access to health care and adequate hygienic conditions are the answer to the emergency that we are living, but then we realize that access is not granted to all. In front of the rhetoric of the safe home and family, the silence of women victim of domestic violence sounds even louder, in a world which is denying equal dignity and rights to women. Digital divide is no more an issue for experts, but it’s actually taking shape and the access to digital competences, devices and infrastructures becomes a necessity, no longer an option. We discover that someone collects the agricultural products on our table, usually migrants who work in the fields, threatening in our harbours, invisible and without rights on our lands. Today smart working is an extremely important solution which allows many people to go on working and to bring home the salary and we realize that it helps reduce traffic and pollution. Before the emergency, many managers opposed this solution because it involves their roles and their competences. Now will we be able to preserve this way of working in the future, ensuring the relationships connected with workflows, the right to disconnect and a real gender equality? So let’s take action on the emergency created by the pandemic, but let us re-think ourselves starting from those issues interwoven with the emergency. It’s a matter of perspectives, but it’s a fundamental step. We need to look forward and to embrace complexity, without being paralyzed by complexity. Problems are complex, we need complex competences. An overall vision is more difficult, but it’s also the only antidote to the always more common populist messages, which simplify and iron out reality. “Good times for a change” sang The Smiths in the ’80, when we already talked of sustainable development. May we imagine that the experience of the pandemic, with all suffering and difficulties that it causes, could finally and actually urge an individual and collective change, keeping together social, economical and environmental sustainability?

At the end of the year 2018, many months before Covid-19, the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, in his traditional end-of-the-year message addressed an appeal to responsibility. He said: “Feeling community means thinking within a common future, to be built together”. In his speech “community” meant sharing values, perspectives, rights and duties, to finally react and overcome the endemic problems of our Country: shortage of jobs, high public debt, reduced competitiveness of our productive system, deficiencies and deterioration of infrastructure, the wounds of our territories. A year and a half later these problems, are still unsolved and, with pandemic, they’re getting even worse. Today, we have come out of the lockdown but we are not yet free from a virus still charged by too many uncertainties and contradictions, what do those words mean today? What future they provide for? First of all, let’s stop calling it “restart”, it would be better to say “new deal”. The restart, in itself, does not involve necessarily a change, which instead the adjective “new” implies. The same change that has been talked about a lot in recent months. Local fragilities, vulnerability of the system, interdependency in the global world, economy and environment. More or less authoritatively, everyone has expressed the need for a change, both at general level and in personal lifestyles. A different future seems to be waiting for us. Where do we start? And, above all, who is going to start? Here we are, back to the community, the real one, made up of people and totally different from the virtual one, which the lockdown has encouraged. A community of people that doesn’t merely share generic wishes, proposals, intentions as it happens online, where the verb “we must” bounces from page to page, from article to article, exhausting itself in self-satisfied enunciations.

Covid-19 has caused schools closures in 190 countries around the World. 1.5 billion children and young people, representing 90% of the world’s student population, remained at home. There is no doubt that these closures were necessary and contributed greatly to containing the contagion and defeating the first – and hopefully the only – wave of the epidemic. However, the social cost was very high, for the pupils and their families. And also the economic cost, apparently zero (the students do not produce Gross Domestic Product), will have to be measured in the medium – long term, in terms of learning gaps and therefore of capability gaps, especially for the students of the terminal classes and the university. There are some lessons to be drawn from this new experience. The first one concerns the extraordinary importance of the school for all contemporary societies. As always, we realize how important is something we take for granted, such as air or water, only when we miss it. And as UNESCO stated, the pandemic is also a “serious educational crisis”; school closures have in fact represented “an unprecedented risk for the education, protection and well-being of children. Schools are not just places of learning: they provide social protection, nutrition, health and emotional support“. The second lesson concerns distance learning; it was essential to adopt it in order not to reset the teaching activity to zero, but it also revealed all its limits. From the pedagogical and didactic point of view, it is clear that E-education can integrate and strengthen, but cannot completely replace the school in presence, which is also made of human relations, sharing of physical spaces, workshops that cannot only be simulated by computer. And from the point of view of social equity, because not all pupils have been able to benefit equally, due to lack of devices, connections, and their teachers’ digital skills.