1177 BC

'Unprecedented' new crisis coming: Covid-19 pandemic could be a warning for civilisation 28 Dec, 2020 06:10 AM 13 minutes to read Play Video A look back at the highs and lows of 2020. Video / NZ Herald news.com.au By: Jamie Seidel 9 Think 2020 was bad? 1177BC was worse. That was the year a civilisation collapsed. Now historians are warning that – if we don't heed the warning signs – 2077 may bring the same fate. Like our own, the Bronze Age civilisation survived many crises in the century before 1200BC. But, then – all of a sudden – it fell apart. It took just 30 years for seven centuries of world building to come apart at the seams. Historians have a favourite saying: History doesn't repeat – but it does often rhyme. ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with NZME. And its tune can be telling. Mostly, it offers an opportunity to drown out partisan politics by dubbing the past over our future. And the result sounds bleak. War. Climate emergency. Economic disruption. Famine. Pandemic. Refugees. Sound familiar? A similar convergence of calamities occurred 3200 years ago. The outcome was Biblical – both in the figurative and literal sense. Now archaeology is providing us with a rough idea of how things panned out. Related articles WORLD South Africa on verge of new virus rules as it hits one million cases 28 Dec, 2020 07:00 AM Quick Read BUSINESS Steven Joyce: Covid, border controls and economic hangover. Buckle in for 2021 25 Dec, 2020 05:00 PM Quick Read WORLD One Covid vaccine side effect - global economic inequality 26 Dec, 2020 12:15 PM Quick Read ENTERTAINMENT Beyoncé to donate more than $700,000 to people in need 27 Dec, 2020 03:38 PM Quick Read Priests suddenly lost their appeal. Kings were brought low by war and revolution. Trade routes unwound and economies collapsed. Meanwhile, a mysterious militarised force roamed the Mediterranean. Collectively called the Sea Peoples, this rag-tag assortment of pirates looted cargoes, sacked cities and built colonies. "You reach a point in the Bronze Age where it could no longer deal with the catastrophes that were happening, so it falls," says Professor Louise Hitchcock. "Then it emerges as something else 600 years later." ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with NZME. Medical workers of a COVID-19 intensive care unit (ICU) in Italy. Photo / Getty Medical workers of a COVID-19 intensive care unit (ICU) in Italy. Photo / Getty The scenario isn't just an academic exercise. It's reflected in the United Nations' 2020 Human Development Report. It warns humanity faces an "unprecedented moment". It warns civilisation's – and the planet's – "pressures have grown exponentially over the past 100 years". It also makes one salient point: "Humanity's future is largely within humanity's control". The coming century of crises needn't be Armageddon, Professor Hitchcock notes. But that depends on how we recognise the rhyme of history. FUTURE FOUNDATION ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with NZME. Isaac Asimov explored the idea of "psychohistory" in his famous Foundation series of science fiction novels. It was a science of predicting the future. Of determining the fall of empires. Of charting the reconstruction of civilisation. The current state-of-the-art is nothing so grand. But its equations are producing disturbing results. "I use a scientific model called self-organised criticality," the University of Melbourne School of Historical and Philosophical Studies professor says. Civilisation, the theory postulates, is like a pile of sand. Grain after grain of troubles can be heaped on each other to form a growing pile. ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with NZME. Occasionally, a little avalanche cuts loose as it self-corrects for stability. "Eventually you reach a point where instead of having one or two avalanches, you have cascading avalanches. And then the system collapses." You can't be sure which grain of sand is the one that causes the cascade. "But it comes at the point where every grain is disrupting the system, and the system has no choice but to collapse," Hitchcock says. The hourglass of our future, she says, is yet to run empty. But the grains of disruption are falling fast on our global society. ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with NZME. "Does the ship right itself or doesn't it? Does it keep going steadily down? What happens when the automated economy hits? What happens if populism takes hold?" she asks. Unless you've heard it before, it's part of a historical rhyme you're not likely to notice – until it's too late. Iron ore and oil are the equivalents of copper and tin in the Bronze Age. Photo / Supplied Iron ore and oil are the equivalents of copper and tin in the Bronze Age. Photo / Supplied PROSPERITY TRAP Professor Hitchcock's internationally renowned research explores the Bronze Age civilisation collapse. Naturally, she has a tendency to compare then with now. But the 2020 pandemic took the professor by surprise. "I was predicting political populism as the next major disrupter," she said in an interview for news.com.au. "I believed we were on the verge of a tipping point from our economic automation, the impact of the internet and smartphones – not some pandemic." ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with NZME. Just as we're impressed by the power of silicon, the ancients were in awe of bronze. Everything revolved around its production and use. "The Bronze Age and a lot of globalisation was being driven by the metals trade," Hitchcock says. The oil and iron of the 13th Century BC was copper and tin. Put together in controlled quantities, and you get glittering bronze. The strength of this alloy made soldiers almost untouchable – except to others also armed with bronze. Its expense and complexity put it out of reach for all but the extremely wealthy. So metal magnates quickly became warlords and kings. These soon started accumulating prestige goods, like ivory, to broadcast their wealth. Gold was imported from Egypt. Strong cedar woods from Lebanon. Middle-men also began to grow rich. International trade boomed. Middle classes of artisans, scribes, technicians and skilled trades arose. ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with NZME. There was no network of trade treaties as we'd recognise now, Hitchcock says. "It was what you'd call an international brotherhood of kings. They would exchange elite objects with each other that they could display to impress their retinues and subjects. They probably had more in common with each other than with their own people." This produced diplomacy: Kings would ask each other for help in the face of famine or attack. But it was a short-lived utopia. At some point in the 13th Century BC, Mediterranean palaces and temples began to sprout walls. Towns began moving off the coast to more defensible hills. Everywhere in the archaeological record are signs of war. The COVID-19 pandemic is another trouble heaped on top of climate change, economic destruction and famine. Photo / Getty The COVID-19 pandemic is another trouble heaped on top of climate change, economic destruction and famine. Photo / Getty PRICE OF PROGRESS History teaches us the only certainty is change. ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with NZME. This fate eventually befell the Mediterranean's bronze magnates. The specialisation that transformed Bronze Age economies brought about dependence on distant supplies. This ultimately proved vulnerable to the weather, coercive diplomacy – and piracy. It's another rhyme. "I'm a big believer in globalisation and free trade," Professor Hitchcock says, "but to outsource the manufacturing of things like PPE (personal protective equipment) or critical drugs – it's not so bright." Bronze Age metal magnates found themselves similarly out on a limb. The supply lines of materials for their exclusive alloy were disrupted. Deposits were mined out. Monopolies were overturned. ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with NZME. On top of all this, another winning innovation emerged: Adjustable sails. This soon fell into the hands of pirates. "A brailed sail has rings on it so you can easily turn it about to sail in directions that you couldn't before," Hitchcock says. "But pirates would actually take any ship they could capture and use." The pressures of progress, however, is not uncommon. The horse-and-cart underwent a transition to the combustion engine and car. The industrial revolution was wildly disruptive. But civilisation didn't collapse in AD1977. So, like the Bronze Age, there must be more to the story. PESTILENCE ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with NZME. "It's possible the Bronze Age Collapse had plague as well," Professor Hitchcock says. "I used to sort of dismiss the idea because why would people go around destroying things if they're hungry? But watching what coronavirus has done, I can see it hurts certain communities and classes more than others." Transportation. Living conditions. Overcrowding. This made some communities susceptible. It also determines the speed any plague spreads. It's another rhyme. COVID-19 was carried around the world in a matter of weeks by airliners and cruise ships. We know a devastating plague was carried through Europe in the 14th Century AD by sail. ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with NZME. "There was a mouse found on the 14th Century BC Uluburun shipwreck off southwestern Turkey," Hitchcock says. "A mouse itself doesn't cause illness. But if you had mice, you could have had other things as well – like fleas. These could have brought viruses or bacteria to various centres, causing weaknesses in supply chains." The evidence of a global Bronze Age pandemic remains indirect and inconclusive. There are Hittite records of plague leading to the death of a king. The Amarna tablets of Pharaoh Akhenaten's era talk of epidemics. There are hints of a rise in disease-related deities. Some changes in burial customs also suggest health fears. But no discovery as yet incriminates pestilence for bringing the Bronze Age to its knees. Instead, the professor says it most likely added yet another destabilising pressure on the already strained, fast-paced, high-density international network. The pro-Trump hat was burned in front of protestors. Photo / Brayden Jones The pro-Trump hat was burned in front of protestors. Photo / Brayden Jones POLITICS ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with NZME. The Bronze Age gave rise to two great superpowers: Egypt and the Assyrians. Egypt was isolationist. "They kept to themselves because one of the worst things that could happen to you if you were an Egyptian would be to die outside of Egypt," says Professor Hitchcock. It also had an internal power play between the Pharaohs and the priesthood. "This is why Akhenaten created a monotheistic religion, to deny the priesthood of Amun some of its wealth and power". But the distribution of wealth was likely a fundamental issue. All through the ruins of this ancient world are signs of violent struggle. But not all match the profile of an outside invader. Some ruined cities reveal deliberate destruction in the palace and merchant districts. But not the suburbs. The cause, Hitchcock says, could have been civil unrest. ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with NZME. Disrupted international trade had up-ended local economies. Unemployment was added to the growing toll of disaster, migration and hunger. Soon after, elites failed to deliver their side of social contracts. It was a scenario faced by Bronze Age priests and kings throughout the Mediterranean and the Middle East. They found linking their wealth and power to divine providence came with a steep price: "If the elites weren't able to deliver on their promises, it could be a reason for revolt". "The most important thing the Egyptian King had to do every year was to deliver the flooding of the Nile," Hitchcock says. "That's why they developed astronomy. But if they didn't predict its arrival correctly, the king might be overthrown." It's another rhyme echoing through society now. Even before the pandemic, people in the service industries had been losing jobs to automation at an alarming rate. ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with NZME. The result, Hitchcock says, is social disruption and even greater concentration of wealth. And that's in a context of global unrest, political discontent, fire, flood, famine and migration. Migrants from Eritrea hold their children after been rescued from a crowded wooden boat as they were fleeing Libya. Photo / AP Migrants from Eritrea hold their children after been rescued from a crowded wooden boat as they were fleeing Libya. Photo / AP FLEEING FOR SAFETY The UN warns some one billion people may be on the move by 2050. No one factor will be the cause. It will likely involve a mix of catastrophes. It's something history has seen before. And once on a potentially similar scale. Some researchers have pointed to possible mass migration out of Europe at the end of the Bronze Age. Indications are the continent was undergoing a century-long drought brought on by volcanic activity in Greenland and Iceland. ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with NZME. Echoes of war across the Bosphorus between Greece and Turkey hint of this human tide. But there's also the longstanding mystery of the "peoples of the sea". The popular narrative talks of this assembly of tribes rampaging across the Mediterranean, sacking cities as they went. Eventually, the Sea People were fought to a standstill at the mouth of the Nile by Pharaoh Ramesses III in 1177BC. But Professor Hitchcock says the term falsely implies co-ordination and unity. Instead, they were likely a diverse collection of cultures that happened to sometimes share common goals. "They might have joined together in a single attack, but that doesn't mean they were all working together all the time," Hitchcock says. They may have been pirates. They might have been refugees. Most likely, they were a combination of both. "I think some of them are refugees because anybody can row a ship," Hitchcock says. "But to be a warrior takes a certain amount of skill that you need to develop from an early age." ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with NZME. Another rhyme can be seen in the mass migration out of Syria into Europe. "People rarely migrate to a place they don't already have some kind of prior connection to," Hitchcock says. Trade and pilgrim routes left multicultural communities across the map. Stories of brave new worlds filtered their way back home. "It's quite likely that some of these different tribes of Sea Peoples that settled in the Levant or Cyprus had prior links to these places because some sites are destroyed, but not all sites are destroyed". A masked Somali pirate stands near a Taiwanese fishing vessel that washed up on shore after the pirates were paid a ransom and released the crew in 2017. Photo / AP A masked Somali pirate stands near a Taiwanese fishing vessel that washed up on shore after the pirates were paid a ransom and released the crew in 2017. Photo / AP PIRACY "What you have at the end of the Bronze Age is that the sea lanes start to become less secure," Professor Hitchcock warns. International relations were deteriorating. Outlaws became increasingly bold. ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with NZME. Ultimately, this up-ended everything and little could be done to stop it. "Pirates tend to engage in hit-and-run attacks where they go in and burn a village at night rather than engaging in direct warfare," Hitchcock says. "This left organised armies unable to respond effectively". Eventually, however, indications are these marauders became a powerful force. "I think what you have with the Sea Peoples is that you have a small amount of piracy going on at the start. But, then, as they sack more cities, they attract more and more followers." Hitchcock says a rhyme can be seen in the 13th Century AD Barbary Pirates of the Mediterranean and again in the 18th Century North Atlantic corsairs of popular culture. "There you had just two original ships," she says, "and from taking on more ships and followers, they eventually grew to be 3500 pirates". That's yet another historical rhyme: Piracy is catching. ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with NZME. "The Cilician pirates were big in the era of the late Roman Republic," Hitchcock says. "There were like 10,000 of them, but they could not have all come from Cilicia. Cilicia didn't have a big enough population." In every case, social circumstances were ripe for revolt. The crews of the British Royal Navy, for example, were poorly paid and harshly treated. Ships of the Crown were minimally crewed and fed cut-price rations. So they eagerly jumped ship. "With the pirates, their ships had more people carrying the workload. Everything was shared equally. So you might have had a short life as a pirate, but you had a better life." It's a similar story now off Somalia. Fishers there lost their livelihoods when poorly-policed local waters were stripped bare by illegal international trawlers. Civil war raged across their land. Now they're swapping nets for Kalashnikovs in the hope of a rich bounty. ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with NZME. RHYME TIME? "When we look at the Bronze Age Collapse, we tend to say 'oh, what terrible things happened'," Professor Hitchcock says. "Eventually complexity re-emerges, and you get the Assyrian Empire, you get the Greek city-states, and then you get the Roman Empire. "If you didn't have all the inventions of the Bronze Age – like domesticated agriculture, agricultural surplus irrigation, writing, contracts, private property, maritime navigation, metallurgy, ceramics – you wouldn't have had the basis for the world that followed where philosophers debated what the ideal state would be." But the new world was born from the wreckage of the old. And foreseeing the future of this world isn't easy. "I've largely been socially isolated since mid-February. But I still get a paycheck," Hitchcock says. "I bought a new bicycle and a bunch of nice new clothes. I go out with my dogs. I write my articles. We order Uber many nights. The garbage gets collected. So life hasn't really changed." ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with NZME. But it's not that way for everybody. The world is awash with woes. And, as history teaches us, we'll likely not recognise the last grain of sand that brings everything tumbling down. "Maybe it's time to look at where the economy's going instead of trying to bring it back to where it was," Hitchcock says. Her key takeaway lesson from the Bronze Age Collapse? "Don't be elite. I would not want to be a leader of any sort, to tell you the truth."

Why you should ignore all that Cotonavirus

Show more sharing options Why You Should Ignore All That Coronavirus-Inspired Productivity Pressure By Aisha S. Ahmad MARCH 26, 2020 GettyImages-1207986265web APU GOMES, AFP, GETTY IMAGES Update: Please join the author of this article, Aisha S. Ahmad, and other guests for a free interactive forum on faculty work/life balance. Sign up here to watch on demand. Among my academic colleagues and friends, I have observed a common response to the continuing Covid-19 crisis. They are fighting valiantly for a sense of normalcy — hustling to move courses online, maintaining strict writing schedules, creating Montessori schools at their kitchen tables. They hope to buckle down for a short stint until things get back to normal. I wish anyone who pursues that path the very best of luck and health. Yet as someone who has experience with crises around the world, what I see behind this scramble for productivity is a perilous assumption. The answer to the question everyone is asking — “When will this be over?” — is simple and obvious, yet terribly hard to accept. The answer is never. Coronavirus seen under electron microscope Coronavirus Hits Campus As colleges and universities have struggled to devise policies to respond to the quickly evolving situation, here are links to The Chronicle’s key coverage of how this worldwide health crisis is affecting campuses. Here’s Our List of Colleges’ Reopening Models The Year That Pushed Higher Ed to the Edge Live Coronavirus Updates: Here’s the Latest Global catastrophes change the world, and this pandemic is very much akin to a major war. Even if we contain the Covid-19 crisis within a few months, the legacy of this pandemic will live with us for years, perhaps decades to come. It will change the way we move, build, learn, and connect. There is simply no way that our lives will resume as if this had never happened. And so, while it may feel good in the moment, it is foolish to dive into a frenzy of activity or obsess about your scholarly productivity right now. That is denial and delusion. The emotionally and spiritually sane response is to prepare to be forever changed. The rest of this piece is an offering. I have been asked by my colleagues around the world to share my experiences of adapting to conditions of crisis. Of course, I am just a human, struggling like everyone else to adjust to the pandemic. However, I have worked and lived under conditions of war, violent conflict, poverty, and disaster in many places around the world. I have experienced food shortages and disease outbreaks, as well as long periods of social isolation, restricted movement, and confinement. I have conducted award-winning research under intensely difficult physical and psychological conditions, and I celebrate productivity and performance in my own scholarly career. ADVERTISEMENT I share the following thoughts during this difficult time in the hope that they will help other academics to adapt to hardship conditions. Take what you need, and leave the rest. Stage No. 1: Security Your first few days and weeks in a crisis are crucial, and you should make ample room to allow for a mental adjustment. It is perfectly normal and appropriate to feel bad and lost during this initial transition. Consider it a good thing that you are not in denial, and that you are allowing yourself to work through the anxiety. No sane person feels good during a global disaster, so be grateful for the discomfort of your sanity. At this stage, I would focus on food, family, friends, and maybe fitness. (You will not become an Olympic athlete in the next two weeks, so don’t put ridiculous expectations on your body.) Next, ignore everyone who is posting productivity porn on social media right now. It is OK that you keep waking up at 3 a.m. It is OK that you forgot to eat lunch and cannot do a Zoom yoga class. It is OK that you have not touched that revise-and-resubmit in three weeks. Ignore the people who are posting that they are writing papers and the people who are complaining that they cannot write papers. They are on their own journey. Cut out the noise. ADVERTISEMENT Know that you are not failing. Let go of all of the profoundly daft ideas you have about what you should be doing right now. Instead, focus intensely on your physical and psychological security. Your first priority during this early period should be securing your home. Get sensible essentials for your pantry, clean your house, and make a coordinated family plan. Have reasonable conversations with your loved ones about emergency preparedness. If you have a loved one who is an emergency worker or essential worker, redirect your energies and support that person as your top priority. Identify their needs, and then meet those needs. No matter what your family unit looks like, you will need a team in the weeks and months ahead. Devise a strategy for social connectedness with a small group of family, friends, and/or neighbors, while maintaining physical distancing in accordance with public-health guidelines. Identify the vulnerable and make sure they are included and protected. The best way to build a team is to be a good teammate, so take some initiative to ensure that you are not alone. If you do not put this psychological infrastructure in place, the challenge of necessary physical-distancing measures will be crushing. Build a sustainable and safe social system now. Stage No. 2: The Mental Shift ADVERTISEMENT Once you have secured yourself and your team, you will feel more stable, your mind and body will adjust, and you will crave challenges that are more demanding. Given time, your brain can and will reset to new crisis conditions, and your ability to do higher-level work will resume. This mental shift will make it possible for you to return to being a high-performance scholar, even under extreme conditions. However, do not rush or prejudge your mental shift, especially if you have never experienced a disaster before. One of the most relevant posts I saw on Twitter (by writer Troy Johnson) was: “Day 1 of Quarantine: ‘I’m going to meditate and do body-weight training.’ Day 4: *just pours the ice cream into the pasta*" — it’s funny but it also speaks directly to the issue. Now more than ever, we must abandon the performative and embrace the authentic. Our essential mental shifts require humility and patience. Focus on real internal change. These human transformations will be honest, raw, ugly, hopeful, frustrated, beautiful, and divine. And they will be slower than keener academics are used to. Be slow. Let this distract you. Let it change how you think and how you see the world. Because the world is our work. And so, may this tragedy tear down all our faulty assumptions and give us the courage of bold new ideas. Stage No. 3: Embrace a New Normal On the other side of this shift, your wonderful, creative, resilient brain will be waiting for you. When your foundations are strong, build a weekly schedule that prioritizes the security of your home team, and then carve out time blocks for different categories of your work: teaching, administration, and research. Do the easy tasks first and work your way into the heavy lifting. Wake up early. The online yoga and crossfit will be easier at this stage. ADVERTISEMENT Things will start to feel more natural. The work will also make more sense, and you will be more comfortable about changing or undoing what is already in motion. New ideas will emerge that would not have come to mind had you stayed in denial. Continue to embrace your mental shift. Have faith in the process. Support your team. Understand that this is a marathon. If you sprint at the beginning, you will vomit on your shoes by the end of the month. Emotionally prepare for this crisis to continue for 12 to 18 months, followed by a slow recovery. If it ends sooner, be pleasantly surprised. Right now, work toward establishing your serenity, productivity, and wellness under sustained disaster conditions. None of us knows how long this crisis will last. We all want our troops to be home before Christmas. The uncertainty is driving us all mad. Of course, there will be a day when the pandemic is over. We will hug our neighbors and our friends. We will return to our classrooms and coffee shops. Our borders will eventually reopen to freer movement. Our economies will one day recover from the forthcoming recessions. Yet we are just at the beginning of that journey. For most people, our minds have not come to terms with the fact that the world has already changed. Some faculty members are feeling distracted and guilty for not being able to write enough or teach online courses properly. Others are using their time at home to write and report a burst of research productivity. All of that is noise — denial and delusion. And right now, denial only serves to delay the essential process of acceptance, which will allow us to reimagine ourselves in this new reality. On the other side of this journey of acceptance are hope and resilience. We will know that we can do this, even if our struggles continue for years. We will be creative and responsive, and will find light in all the nooks and crannies. We will learn new recipes and make unusual friends. We will have projects we cannot imagine today, and will inspire students we have not yet met. And we will help each other. No matter what happens next, together, we will be blessed and ready to serve. ADVERTISEMENT In closing, I give thanks to those colleagues and friends who hail from hard places, who know this feeling of disaster in their bones. In the past few days, we have laughed about our childhood wounds and have exulted in our tribulations. We have given thanks and tapped into the resilience of our old wartime wounds. Thank you for being warriors of the light and for sharing your wisdom born of suffering. Because calamity is a great teacher.

Coronavirus: Mindfulness is useless in a pandemic

1843 magazine - section CORONAVIRUS Mindfulness is useless in a pandemic Living in the present has never felt more overrated 1843 magazine Nov 27th 2020 BY CATHERINE NIXEY I’d been looking forward to the meal for weeks. I already knew what I was going to eat: the rosemary crostini starter, then the lamb with courgette fries. Or maybe the cod. I planned to arrive early and sit in the window at the cool marble counter and watch London go by. In the warm bustle of the restaurant, the condensation would mist the pane. As a treat, I would order myself a glass of white wine while I waited for my friend. It won’t surprise you to hear that the meal never happened. Coronavirus cases started rising exponentially and eating out felt less like indulgence and more like lunacy. Then it became illegal to eat together at all. Soon it became illegal even to eat at a restaurant by yourself. Then everything shut. The cost of these lost lunches has been totted up many times: the trains not taken, the taxis not flagged down, the desserts not eaten, the waiters not tipped. Then there is the emotional toll, too. Spirits are flagging, the lonely are getting lonelier, the world is wilting. Covid has already disrupted so much of how we live. It has altered something else, as well – time itself. Not so long ago, we had merely months and years. Things happened in November or in December, last year or this. Some events are so big that they divide the world into before and after, into the present and an increasingly alien past. Wars do this, and the pandemic has, too. Coronavirus has cut a trench through time. The very recent past is suddenly another country. Now, amateur archaeologists of our own existence, we sort through our possessions and stumble on small relics from “then”, that strange place we used to live: a bus pass, a lipstick, a smart watch, a pair of shoes with the heels worn down, work clothes that, after just six months in stretchy active-wear, feel as stiff and preposterous as whalebone. News of vaccines fills us with hope. But the timing, the take-up, the roll-out to ordinary souls remain unresolved. The actual future still lies drearily in front of us, with the prospect of further lockdowns, overcrowded hospitals and ever greater financial losses. Days stretch on, each much the same as the last. One week blends into the next. ADVERTISING Amid these cancellations something else has also been lost. It won’t appear on any spreadsheet because it is not quantifiable. But it matters. So much of life, big and small, is about fleeting moments filled with hope. The prospect of an exciting Friday evening or Saturday afternoon used to make a dismal Tuesday morning bearable. So, too, did browsing online for your future self: the top that you’d always feel good in, the bag that would take both your laptop and book. Soon it became illegal even to eat at a restaurant by yourself. And then everything shut Hope hung everywhere in the old world, hovering in our peripheral vision – on the billboard that made us ponder our next holiday or reminded us to dig out dark glasses and sun cream; among the spices in the supermarket that conjured a conversation over curry with friends, chatting about things that didn’t feel like life and death. Many moments of happiness are about anticipation, the joy of the imagined future – and distracting ourselves from the tedious, exhausting or difficult present. Yet even our small consumer choices or our musings about what to do this weekend now bring us back to the big, overpowering reality of the pandemic. We cannot escape it. Our daydreams have come crashing back to earth: 2020 is the year that the future was cancelled. In recent decades the present has become rather more fashionable than the future. Living in the moment, being present in our present, is the desired mind-state of our age. There’s nothing new about the idea, of course – it forms the basis of Buddhism and there are elements of it in many religions. Long ago Horace commanded us to “carpe diem” and Seneca exhorted that the present is all we have: “All the rest of existence is not living but merely time.” Hope hung everywhere in the old world, hovering in our peripheral vision Over the past ten years the once-niche idea of “mindfulness” has gone mainstream. It has become an aspiration, an advertising opportunity and an overused adjective. You can practise not only mindful meditation but mindful breathing, mindful eating, mindful drinking, mindful walking, mindful parenting, even mindful birth. (As if childbirth were something that you might miss if you weren’t paying close enough attention.) It isn’t always clear quite what mindfulness is. Despite its promise of mental clarity, its own origins are decidedly foggy. It seems to be a translation of a Buddhist term, sati, which itself is tricky to define – its meaning lies somewhere between memory and consciousness. The English version is neither a very good translation nor a particularly helpful word. The longer you think about it, the stranger the word “mindful” seems: that puzzling “-ful” feels odd when talking about emptying your thoughts. (And is its opposite “mindlessness”?) If the definition of mindfulness is elusive, the practice is even more so. Its aim is to empty your mind by using your mind; to liberate it by restraining it. It is a puzzling and paradoxical thing, the mental equivalent of climbing up a ladder and removing it at the same time. Why let such finicky problems get in the way? After all, the present seems to be the gift that keeps on giving. In recent years many clever companies have found a way to empty our wallets along with our minds. You can now buy “gratitude” and “well-being” journals, and “positive year-planners”. In 2015 adult colouring books became a surprise hit: some 12m volumes were sold in America alone, according to Nielsen Bookscan. These days there are mindful guides to everything from anger to recruitment. There are even mindfulness advent calendars (who needs chocolate when you can feed your soul?). Like selling sand to the Sahara, these all pitch to us the ability to live in the “now”. It may be profitable but it flies in the face of thousands of years of evolution. Animals are hardwired to react to the future, says Sir Colin Blakemore, a neuroscientist at Oxford University and City University of Hong Kong. Expectation is integral to survival and is seen in even the most underwhelming creatures. Consider the sea slug. Touch one and it will withdraw. Keep touching it and it will soon become fed up, in as much as a sea slug can, and stop withdrawing. This is habituation, says Sir Colin, and it’s a “form of prediction about the future”. Many clever companies have found a way to empty our wallets along with our minds Babies, slightly more sophisticated than sea slugs, also do this. A game like peepo makes them laugh, but playing it also helps them learn that when something disappears behind an object, it will reappear. As the baby becomes habituated, the laughter fades. In a small way babies are learning to predict and anticipate the future. You can see similar responses throughout the animal kingdom. Give a chimp a raisin and its reward neurons fire. Teach a chimp that pressing a button will bring a raisin, and the chimp’s brain starts to react to the button as if that were the reward. “The process of getting the reward itself becomes rewarding,” says Sir Colin. The future is invading the present in a measurable physiological way. “It is well documented that the paraphernalia of drug taking,” says Sir Colin, “the syringes, the crinkled foil – those things themselves become desirable.” Planning is key to our physical survival. It’s also central to our emotional wellbeing. One dull autumn day earlier this year an aeroplane taxied along the tarmac at Hong Kong airport. The mood aboard was one of excitement. As a flight attendant started to walk to the back of the plane, there was a burst of applause. Unexpectedly, the attendant also applauded. Welcome, she said, to your flycation. A strange word. She went on: “Flight time will be about one hour and 15 minutes.” Cameras clicked as she spoke, and there was more clapping. The pandemic has reminded us that the joy we take in planning is as valid as the event itself The flight was going to the clouds and back. The individuals on board had bought tickets, been through airport security, queued and put up with the usual discomforts of waiting in an airport, only to land back on the same runway. The destination wasn’t the point: passengers had paid to experience the excitement of travel, the muscle memory of anticipation. Daydreaming, or mind-wandering, as the wonks call it, is part of universal human experience. In 2008 one Harvard study found that people spent nearly half of their waking hours mind-wandering – often about good things. Imagining a positive outcome is a popular technique to build resilience and confidence in everything from sport to job interviews. Teachers may tell pupils off for daydreaming in lessons but studies show a link between daydreaming and creative thought. When the future does arrive it is usually a let-down: an underwhelming meal, a rainy beach holiday, a weekend full of chores. That’s not the point. It’s our dreams that feed us. We are hardwired to anticipate the future and, with all due respect to the philosophers, to thrill to it. Whether your pleasure was once drinking in the pub or going on mini-breaks, cooking dinner for friends or going to the cinema, the joy they gave was almost certainly partly about the expectation: putting a date into your diary, packing your bag or hitting “order now” on a crucial missing item. As with the chimp, this pleasure was not illusory but real. The pandemic has reminded us that the joy we take in planning is as valid as the event itself. When the present is crushing – when lives and economies are being ruined – our imagination offers us a welcome escape Philosophers and Silicon Valley mindfulness gurus are advocates for the present partly because they tend to have rather a nice one (Seneca was one of the richest men in Rome and regularly threw dinner parties for 1,000 guests). For most people, daily life is more dreary. Would it be so very bad to be absent when stacking the dishwasher, to imagine yourself swimming in the sea off Croatia instead? When the present is crushing – when lives and economies are being ruined – our imagination offers us a welcome escape. The mind, as Milton put it, is its own place: it can make a hell of heaven, or a heaven of hell. Perhaps we should let it.■