Lessons from COVID: An Opportunity to Pause
Image via Upsplash
The COVID-19 crisis, panic, ensuing lockdown, ensuing boredom, ensuing Tiger King, and finally ensuing partial-reopening-that-only-counts-for-bars-but-not-for-seeing-your-grandma has been both overwhelming and utterly boring. However, like every self-obsessed, unemployed “creative,” I have spent the time musing over deep questions posed by this unprecedented calamity:
a. How does the cooperation and forced altruism suddenly expected of us all collide with the selfish elements of human nature? (a.k.a. if I have a runny nose and go to the pub, does that make me a bad bloke, or was that an inevitable action of my humanness?)
b. Should I really be spending the most historically notable year that I may ever live through on the couch re-watching Friends and eating old noodles?
c. To what extent is Rishi being a dick for telling me to re-train, when the only realistic use for my degree is drunkenly yelling at innocent bystanders about feminism?
Additional to these general ramblings, the most valuable question came (and I hate to say it) from my parents. My parents are both middle aged (sorry mum), high risk, if anything, they should have been stressed out by the situation. But no. They’ve slowed down, had time off work, enjoyed the monotony of daily life.
This slowing is a theme that I believe is significant (viewing the world in compact themes is a GCSE History overhang I cannot seem to shake). This slowing is also something that I have found deeply unsettling.
Speed, rush, and efficiency are all things that have defined my existence to this point. At risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, our generation (loosely “young”) is used to instant. Instant message, next day ASOS delivery, a Chinese from app-to-door in twenty minutes. In consumer culture, production life cycles are shorter and shorter. Demand for better and better, faster and faster.
There is no more important manifestation of these expectations than the global networks that fuel our consumerist lifestyles.
Although the trendier topic is “fast” fashion, the demand for instant can be broadly illustrated across the manufacturing sector. The pressures of multinational production can be associated with worker and environmental violations. Increasing auditing in this area has been powerless in the wake of the overbearing efficiency expected of supply chains.
When looking at the example of the iPhone, Apple has even made profits in times of financial uncertainty by simply squeezing the profit margins of their manufacturers and in turn the wages of their workforce.
Following a significant decrease in wages in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis at Foxconn factories (Apple’s main supplier), eighteen workers lost their lives by suicide. “Suicide nets” and locked windows were introduced following this to deal with the PR fallout. In the same period, Apple’s operating margins reached an all time high. Horrific.
Additionally, the expectations of shorter product life cycles, cheaper prices, and increased manufacturing speed coupled with increased regulation on working conditions inevitably encourages cheating rather than improvement. Foxconn’s ethos “time to market, time to money” illustrates their commitment to the culture of crippling efficiency.
The pressures of “race to the bottom” consumerism also encourages manufacturing companies to sidestep environmental regulations. For example, during China’s three decades of industrialisation, lung cancer mortality rates increased fivefold. Of China’s five hundred largest cities, less than 1% meet the air quality targets set by the WHO. This is in direct correlation to the increasing efficiency and corporate pressure enforced by China’s industrial development.
This sudden pause in life and forced slowdown is therefore an opportunity for reflection. A chance for us to accept that the expectation of immediacy is unsustainable.
The anti-fast fashion movement has championed this theme of slowing that in my mind is so prevalent in the wake of a national lockdown. As consumers, it is our responsibility to interrupt the ruthless cycle of increased efficiency created by the structure of multinational corporations. In a nutshell, shop slow and shop local.
The forced cooperation of a global pandemic extends our responsibility to outside of our immediate bubbles (pardon the Corona pun). The opportunity we have to pause, reflect and reassess is unique and should not be wasted. “Slowness'' should be the invaluable pandemic overhang.
Katherine Keddie is a recent graduate of Durham University with a degree in Politics, now working freelance in production and digital marketing.