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Shift of values in society

After discussing a bit where we were in March 2020, now it is time to go through a silent, continuous, albeit immense, change experienced by our societies in the last decades. It is important to understand this change to be able to analyse the global response to the pandemic outbreak.

Politicians as a mirror of society

At the time the COVID-19 outbreak surprised the world, we had some political leaders that one could have never expected to be there (except the creators of The Simpsons). There was a generalised feeling that the people in charge were not prepared to respond to the challenge.[1]

In politics, there is always a balance between the satisfaction to do something to have a better society (i.e., to do the right thing) and the own interest in getting re-elected to remain in power. In the last years, there seems to have been a shift towards the latter (power is addictive), and re-election has become the main objective of many politicians. That leads to a situation where “quick wins” are actively sought: small actions that can improve the perception of the politician, even if they are empty in themselves. Necessary discussions on big issues (education, pensions,…) are postponed, because these are difficult discussions that require a long-term vision as well as hard decisions, which do not generate short-term gains. Politics then turns into a continuous image campaign, where the progress of society takes a secondary role, if any.

But sad as it sounds, these leaders were elected democratically: they concurred to elections and got enough support as to take the government. Their message and their attitudes were, one way or the other, appealing to a significant part of the population in their jurisdictions. From that point of view, these politicians were a mirror of the values in their societies. Our current politicians are not an island of poor values and depravation, just a sample of the prevailing values in society.

Let me offer a small example of how values have shifted (I do not dare to say “evolve”) in our society. When I was a child, everybody in the school wanted to be astronauts or archaeologists (like Indiana Jones) or doctors. These are professions of a scientific nature, requiring some intellectual training (and effort), with a strong sense of progress: explore the space, know more about the history, find ways to defeat diseases. Nowadays, children want to be football players or influencers. The main characteristic of these professions is that they are there to entertain others in an easy way (nothing on the progress of mankind) and a lot of money can be earned with relatively little effort. Society has somehow push children towards getting things quick (including money) and not caring about progress.

This example offers two important issues on which we observe a change in society: immediacy and pleasure.

I want it now

By immediacy, I refer to our search for quick outcomes in the activities we undertake, ignoring that sometimes outcomes come only in the long-term. Anything that is not able to deliver quickly is simply not pursued anymore. Associated with the concept of immediacy are the characteristics of being impatient, as an inability to understand that things take time, and short-sighted, unable to see beyond the short-term impact of things.

For example, it takes many years of study to become a doctor and being able to have a responsibility job in a hospital, with a financially sound position. It requires time and effort, with fruits coming only in the long-term. I cannot see many “low hanging fruits” here. On the other hand, looking for an easy way to make money in Internet (YouTube, speculation with financial assets or whatever) offers immediate rewards and less effort over the long-term.

Linked to the concept of immediacy comes our strong search for pleasure and acceptance by others (probably, signalling low self-esteem on our side). Here, smartphones and social media play a fundamental role. We need to get immediate positive feedback from our actions, in the form of “likes” or similar. For example, I go to a concert not for the pleasure I get from the music and the memories I can take from the experience, but just to post it in social media and get likes. It is sad to see people in concerts looking at their mobile phones and missing the whole point of it.

This is not the place to discuss in-depth the impact of smartphones and social media on our brain. As a quick reference, you can check the work of Michel Desmurget.[2]

Where we take a little bit of immediacy, impatience and short-termism, and mix it with a strong search for pleasure and acceptance, the result is a society of numbed people, pursuing wrong objectives and leaving aside progress. As a raw comparison, the Boing 747 and the Concorde were developed more than 40 years ago (soon after the man got to the moon for the first time); the main outcome of our digital society are Facebook and Instagram, to name just two big examples. Boing 747 improved our lives as it allowed us to travel through world safely and quickly. I am still looking for the improvements of social media on mankind...

As a result of it, we have a society where many people depend on the acceptance (“likes”) of others and break down mentally when they experience a setback in life. In political terms, that is a society looking for quick solutions to big issues and supporting those offering such quick solutions (remember the point about politicians above). For instance, somebody can think that building a wall of 5 metres long is the solution to immigration. That looks simple and quick, but the underlying problem is far more complex than the proposed solution.

Direct consequence: less spending on what matters

With such shift of values in society, the COVID-19 pandemic came at a time where the quality of the services provided by the government had deteriorated substantially, particularly looking at the health and education systems.

When the current form of government in Western countries developed several decades ago, some key areas were thought to be enough important as to guarantee access to it to all the population. One quick example is the pension system, to ensure a minimum income to the elderly. The health system and the education system would fall under this categorisation as well. However, the deterioration in the quality of the services provided in the last decades is substantial.

Public schools are overcrowded everywhere, the buildings and the equipment are old and in need of renovation, the content of the subject has been watered down and violence has appeared in schoolyards like never before. At the same time, private schools have flourished and seem to be the only alternative is we want our children to have good education. This is quite a complicated topic, on which I do not wish to elaborate further, but just to offer some broad picture.

More relevant for the pandemic is the deterioration in public health systems in Western countries. Probably as a result of an ageing population, hospitals are overcrowded and understaffed, resulting in poorer services and very long waiting times. Many doctors are exhausted and underpaid, and some leave their job looking for better working conditions. So many years of education to become a doctor seem not to compensate anymore. Like in the education system, the private provision of health services has grown substantially in the last years.

Governments have been struggling in the last years to keep a balance in their accounts, between the amounts they take from citizens (mainly, through taxes) and their expenses. They have been very quick to use the health and education systems to achieve some savings (actually, the outcomes of good education system are seen only in decades from now), while other alternatives were not able to gain traction (for example, introducing some small payment for every use of the health care system). That also tells us about where the priorities of governments and societies at large are.

Summing up

To sum up, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic found ourselves in the following situation: (i) a false sense of safety as regards the potential for a pandemic to emerge, (ii) a population focused on its own needs and immune to the needs of others, (iii) a political class obsessed with re-election and not willing to take decisions regardsing the largest societal challenges, and (iv) a deteriorating public health system in terms of quantity and quality.

That is not a recipe for success when asked to fight against pandemic and, unfortunately, results have been in line with these expectations. 

Two small final points on this: nobody was willing to stop air travelling at the outbreak of the pandemic, and suddenly, we started to appreciate nurses and doctors, only when we were in strong need of them, after years of ignoring their existence.

[1]  I do not think this is an efficient way to fight a pandemic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkghtyxZ6rc.

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