BEST PRACTICES, or will SLIGHTLY BETTER ONES SUFFICE?
Thursday, Apr. 30, 2020
Life is a series of decisions – like the randomness of a dice roll in a board game when combined with the choices and impacts of all the decisions made by the other players in the game – intertwined, determine our course.
I was wondering if we have what it takes to keep playing this game – because it seems we are all, collectively, getting used to new circumstances, and obeying new rules. We aren’t universally or equitably following, but our behavior is being modified just the same. We are adjusting to a new normal before anyone can adequately describe a new normal.
I was thinking that, prior to this pandemic, we were all mostly oblivious to death rates, treatment methods, and life-altering realities of people with a chronic disease or life-threatening illness – because it was always happening to invisible statistical other people.
Now, we are altered.
We are impacted.
We are the life-changed so swiftly – suddenly seeing life, and death, through a very different lens.
And since we are all in this together, we are statistically invisible.
What choice do we have?
So many.
But …
Some things cannot be stopped. Some things, once stopped, cannot be re-started. Waterfalls, for instance, only cease when the water flows slows to a trickle, gets blocked or diverted away by some action of man or nature – but once that water flows, it has to go somewhere.
Some things, like a train, a pipeline, or an economy – once stopped, require a lot of energy and coordination of moving parts to start again. And when dormant for a while, there is no certainty its machinery will re-start quickly or easily …
I’ve been wondering, once we re-start our now-altered normal lives, what will we find easy to live without? What things won’t re-start in our lives? What will we insist be different?
More importantly, will they be healthy lives – in terms of physical health and medical health? Will dealing with the stress, tension, risks, and uncertainty, make us healthier? I believe it will strengthen resolve and extend our life expectancy. Moreover, I think our consciousness – our alertness to what matters in life will be heightened and enhanced, like a fuzzy picture brought into crisp, tight focus.
I ask, not so I can invent a brilliant business to cater to those changing needs, but I’m wondering how the adjustments will show up – and whether there will be any universality to all of it? For instance, in countries where the actions of government and populations have been significant (i.e., South Korea, Germany, Taiwan), what will change in societies, what will people seek to add vs. seek to expunge from their lives.
And, the converse, in countries who have (or are still) failed miserably, how will they change?
My point, or rather my question, is whether our planet, so rife with technology and wizardry, might ever develop a policy and practice regime for the whole world based on ‘best practices’? Not just for medicine, public activity, and pandemic punching back, but for everything?
I know it seems essential, but why should the public platform have to spend so much time emphasizing hand-washing, sanitizing, and safe-distancing?
Because we have low and inconsistent standards.
How tough would it be to aim for high and consistent ones?
Reader feedback:
Hi Mark, Today’s musing reminds me of a favorite quote: “My barn having burned down I can now see the moon.” ~Mizuta Masahide , GB, Waukesha, WI
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