Not understanding one another

THE PM has announced the end of the state of emergency in a fortnight. Funny videos about extreme, happy reactions to being let out of jail are circulating, but I worry, and I imagine others do too, that the experience of being free will not turn out to be quite what we hope for.

Personally, I feel a bit scared of what is to come in a post-lockdown, on-the-way-to-being post-covid world, which sadly could well be worse than the pre-covid one.

At the beginning of the pandemic, in the panic and fear the virus engendered, communities and neighbours pulled together in the face of a common enemy, but as we became accustomed to the new straitjacketed life, our ugly human flaws resurfaced.

The opportunity for introspection bore no fruit. The gurus had hailed the time to spend alone or with just those close to us as a big chance for us to re-examine our lives and the patterns we follow and to arrive at better self-knowledge, and eventually to lead us to being “nicer” people.

Actually, the experience has made us more selfish. It has been a wasted opportunity, for the most part.

Empathy – the ability to understand and share the feelings of others – is extremely important to us as human beings. Being capable of imagining ourselves in other people’s shoes is the key to better human understanding; yet even after covid showed us just how interconnected we are, even across continents, we have not been able to bring that realisation to bear upon our relations with others. We are only as strong as the weakest link and our very existence depends upon us acting in that knowledge.

At the global level, governments have behaved badly, grabbing more vaccines than they needed for their countries, leaving the poorer countries out in the cold, as if we were not dealing with an indiscriminate contagion. At national level, politicians used the pandemic for their own political ends, as continues to happen here in Trinidad and Tobago. Our Opposition, intent on trying to secure power, as is the mandate of every political party, has waged war on every aspect of TT governance and structures, regardless of the negative impact it might have on the already unsettled citizens.

But it is at the personal level that our inhumanity is most felt.

Recently, an inattentive young driver damaged the front of my car. He was unapologetic and never asked if I had been injured. In fact, he did not stop and I had to race behind him.

Later, I went to the nearby, well-refurbished police station to make a report. I drove down the unmarked entrance to the underground carpark. I had noticed a private SUV on one side with its engine running. I circled looking for a spot and eventually, with some effort, got into the only vacant, very tight one. Once in, I saw the SUV drive away from the much easier spot, but I stayed put. I locked the car and walked the length of the carpark to the exit, where the SUV was now stationed.

A tall, well-built man addressed me uncouthly: “Are you a police officer?”

I had to move the car to another unmarked carpark further up the street, which I was somehow supposed to know about. He had deliberately allowed me to waste time and effort only to exercise very small power over me.

Similar examples exist with checkout staff at the supermarket, post-office counter staff, airport personnel, and even in the workplace and the boardroom.

It is an unhealthy self-centredness, a deep-seated desire to take down everyone else to make ourselves feel good, and it is very troubling. In a few ways, it is understandable and it has always existed but I fear that because some people have benefited from the pandemic but many more are now poorer, angrier, more unfulfilled and more unable to manage in a world where technology is deepening the cleavage between the able and the less able that it is going to intensify.

What will be the nature of human relations hereafter, once we get lost down the rabbit hole of self-obsession and emotional unintelligence? It is a question we must all ask, even in business.

Home working and Zoom-only interactions have driven people into silos and the victims do not recognise the fact. How are employers to deal with people who won’t return to the office and are becoming more strident about it?

We are social animals, but what does that mean when we cannot exercise our ability to sense vibes and observe character traits, which are as important as what people say? How can teams be built when its members have never met, and what becomes of organisational culture when we do not inhabit a single space with a name on the door?

I am sure these challenging new modes of operation are being studied, but the change is rapid and we are behind the curve in knowing how to manage it all right now, as it happens.