The Future Depends on How We See Ourselves

From an English-speaking perspective, I am not sure how much Michel Houellebecq is known. I know his books have been translated and reviewed in English newspapers (Economist and NYT). I suspect they sold well. Although I have read him before moving to France, I cannot say I know a lot about what he wrote. What I got from what I read was that his ideas could be quite provocative (to say the least).

The French like “enfants terribles”, even when they are not that young anymore. And they like provocateurs (writers and commentators with a particular taste for controversy).

Who doesn’t, right?

France was hit hard by the covid-19 pandemic. As I write this piece, the country has over 29.000 deaths and counting. The isolation lasted until May 11th, but, although it is over, the future remains uncertain.

Like everyone else, the French people are asking themselves what lies ahead. How the world is going to change after this pandemic. Regarding this question, Mr. Houellebecq has written a letter to a news site in France.

Mr. Houellebecq argues that nothing will change. In fact, things will remain the same, but a bit worse.

If you are a nerd like I am, you will realize that is a paradox. Either thing do not change, or they do; to be worse is to change. But this is the French way: they state ideas in layers of meaning. I guess one should gather, from Mr. Houellebecq’s point of view, that nothing meaningful will change; we, as individuals, people, and society, will not change. Nevertheless, some features we have nurtured the past few years will be enhanced, and those features are not nice.

He argues that social networks, working from home, homeschooling and everything that gets us apart as a community (I.e. living in the same neighborhood, visiting each other, getting to know the stores around you, buying local…)will get stronger. The necessity of being socially distanced will make us more and more apart from each other.

(One might think Mr. Houellebecq to be one of those old people that keep complaining about the new generations, saying that “those old days that were the days”, but if we are honest, Amazon Prime, Whole Foods, and Starbucks are not exactly community traders. Not only we live outside a community, but the people working in such services are both unknown and unseen by most consumers. So, perhaps he does have a point).

Houellebecq follows the same ideas of some other analysts, who also say that some of those trends pointed out by the French writer will gather strength after the covid-19 pandemic.

Being right about predictions does not mean being right about the future. Although those trends may get momentum; that is not enough to say how we will behave or feel.

The thing about predictions is that they are always right, and always wrong. They aim at a movable target, and, very rarely they get a bullseye, even when they get really close.

For me, it is all about the time horizon. And time is a matter of perception as much as anything else.

After the Covid-19 crisis, governments will move fast to place enough infrastructures so to avoid a new shut-down pandemic. People will not move that fast. School time, work time, leisure time, they have been changing gradually; each small step taken is a step away from the old ways.

As a societal time, our sense of time is constructed between our lives and our community. Besides that, there is another time frame, a biological one, that cannot be changed. People raise kids a bit like they were raised themselves. As much as we like to think otherwise, we are the product of our time and experiences, and broadly cultural changes vert rarely happen overnight.

We are both ships sailing in time and castles, long-standing our heritage.

Each one of us is facing this moment in a particular way, and everyone will get to the other side with some unique perspective. And that, even that, will not be the end of it. As time goes by, and new things change, the experiences, the past itself will change too. Our experiences change as we look back.

To predict the future is something tricky exactly because it is to look into the future and figure out how we will look back into ourselves.

—

This post was previously published on Medium.com.

***