January 2021: One moment in time – reflect, review and rethink for the future

Our first Smart Infrastructure Blog of 2021 brings both hope and caution as we adjust to a world with COVID-19 and face the urgency of climate crisis. Sister Margaret Atkins, Canoness of St Augustine and a contributor to the CSIC and Centre for Digital Built Britain paper ‘Flourishing Systems: re-envisioning infrastructure as a platform for human flourishing’, considers our choices.

When historians look back in a hundred years from now, they won’t say that COVID changed the world – but they will say that the world changed. Pandemics aside, we were already on the cusp of a paradigm shift comparable to the time of the Reformation or the Enlightenment. Historians will remember the information revolution, wars in the Middle East, the 9/11 attacks, the economic crises in 2008 and beyond, forest fires and floods, mass migration and countless refugees. They will note the impossible pressure on the natural world and the increasing gap between rich and poor. And they will identify the moment in which it all changed – politics, economics, society, and our response to the planetary crisis. The question is: what will that moment look like? Will it be an era of collective wisdom, leading to careful, compassionate and far-sighted changes, or will it be an epoch of madness, leading to ever-greater polarisation, catastrophe and unprecedented suffering?

As we welcome a New Year, we endeavour to restart our economy and the daily life in which it is embedded. This offers choices and demands decisions. We can approach this carelessly and without imagination, sliding back into ‘business as usual’. Or we can meet the task intentionally, reverencing our humanity, embracing the hard choices we need to make about our goals and purposes, and welcoming the opportunity we have had to reflect, face facts and to learn new things – to experience different ways of living.. Sister Margaret Atkins, Canoness of St Augustine and a contributor to the CSIC and Centre for Digital Built Britain paper ‘Flourishing Systems: re-envisioning infrastructure as a platform for human flourishing'

If 2020 is remembered for anything, perhaps it will be as the year when the human race was forced to take a collective breath and, in that stillness, began to pay attention to what it was doing to itself. Or so we can hope.

There are propitious signs that positive change is emerging, in the provinces and on the margins, and from below. What I call the ‘Undergrowth Movement’ has been budding, bringing a gentle green growth of egalitarian, independent but interconnected shoots – not the prized infinitely exponential economic ‘growth’ of political bluster, but something quieter, shared and collective – the underpinning of a flourishing society. COVID has brought this promise into the public eye, but its shoots have been growing for many years. Undergrowth is organic, flexible, spontaneous, evolutionary, creative, inclusive, democratic, networked, rooted in the local but embracing the global. It is ethical, with ecological health, wisdom, justice and compassion as its watchwords. It puts relationships centre stage. It is exactly, I would argue, the eco-system we need to sustain us through this time of multiple global crises.

How can we sustain this undergrowth eco-system? We need the right goals, supported by a shared vision of what it is to be human. We need flourishing communities and the human virtues that sustain these. We need a healthy environment in which we can provide our own food, shelter and energy, while protecting the climate and fostering biodiversity. We need wise, humble and imaginative leadership, which enables, connects and supports rather than commanding and controlling; a leadership of service not ambition. We need to recognise the gifts and contributions of every person and of every small group in our society – and to connect states, big business, small enterprises, volunteers, families, schools, charities and not-for-profit organisations in a spirit of collaboration rather than competition. As we come together to try to tackle the multiple crises that face us, we need honesty, truthfulness and trust as the basis for all of the above.

COVID-19 has been, without doubt, a huge challenge and a test. It has also invited us to reflect, review and rethink. COVID has made us ask what really matters in our lives. As we have come face-to-face with our vulnerability, mortality and suffering, we have learnt more about the meaning of love. COVID has sent us back to our families and our local communities. Parents and children have had time to play and to study together. We have rediscovered our neighbours and relearnt the power of volunteering.

COVID has given us cleaner air, fresher water and a quieter world. It has allowed us to slow down and notice the plants, birds, insects and animals on our doorstep. It has given us the chance to question ‘business as usual’ and forced us to ask what all our travel is for, and how much we really need it.

COVID has shown us examples of wise, decisive, selfless and energetic leadership. It has also revealed mistakes and limitations from which we can learn much. It has also taught us who the key workers really are, and how little we have valued them under ordinary circumstances. It has seen groups from all sectors of society collaborating to an unprecedented degree.

COVID has shown us how decisively we can act, how many courageous and hard-working people there are in our society, how much we are prepared to sacrifice to face a serious threat. It has shown us thousands of examples of flexible and imaginative reinvention – from fashion designers making scrubs to sports stadia becoming hospitals. We have been reminded where bluff, bluster, false news and misplaced optimism will lead, and of the fundamental importance of facing scientific facts, and of honesty and openness about complexity and hard choices.

COVID has allowed us to pray, as individuals and communities, without embarrassment. We have been forced to learn humility, to learn the limitations of our capacity to fix our own messes with nothing but our own resources.

As we welcome a New Year, we endeavour to restart our economy and the daily life in which it is embedded. This offers choices and demands decisions. We can approach this carelessly and without imagination, sliding back into ‘business as usual’. Or we can meet the task intentionally, reverencing our humanity, embracing the hard choices we need to make about our goals and purposes, and welcoming the opportunity we have had to reflect, face facts and to learn new things – to experience different ways of living. The choice is ours, and that is both a gift and a responsibility.