'We need no longer to just get by...now is the time to plan for human flourishing'

I remarked to someone the other day that the things we manage to keep going during the pandemic are probably the things we’ll still have once it’s over.

I wonder to what extent that’s true, and whether any of the very good things that have happened over the past months will be part of our future.

A determination to keep in touch with – and support – the vulnerable and lonely, bearing in mind we had an epidemic of loneliness before Covid.

Hungry children and hungry families, of which we had plenty before Covid, but who’ve become much more numerous because of it.

A whole society thinking about accessibility and who can share in the events and occasions that are so important to our communities, much of which we had before, but which becomes a point of priority when very few are able to leave home without breaking the

rules.

It was, as Bonfire Night, Diwali and Remembrance Sunday approached, inevitable that the public desire to gather and mark those occasions would cause extreme nervousness for the authorities.

In many places, measures were already in force that would have dramatically impacted them, yet the National Lockdown (version 2.0) caused a bigger complication.

But, in a tribute to Daphne and Celeste’s hit from the year 2000 ‘Ooh stick you!’

Northampton, and many other communities, showed it could act in complete defiance to the virus, even if it was in complete compliance with the rules.

Virtual fireworks, virtual Diwali, virtual Remembrance; pre-recorded material made specially, mixed with footage from previous years, mixed with live footage made for some impressive events.

As one civic leader wrote to me after Remembrance Sunday: “What we’ve seen this morning has felt to me to be an adaptation of usual customs, but not a compromise.”

And the same goes for everything our communities are putting out at the moment to stay connected, stay related, and to keep caring for each other.

These are glimmers of hope that our community is adapting to survival, which is more than a matter of keeping ourselves moving forward while medical science develops testing, treatments and vaccines that will get rates lower and allow a new normal to take effect.

It also debunks the false dichotomy that we either shutdown entirely or face the danger recklessly.

There is a centre ground of realistic proportionality, and one that also speaks to our politics at the moment.

Humanity will always be open to alternatives, but quack therapies for an ailing liberal democracy hide brutal realities that can’t be fixed by monolithic orthodoxies on what is acceptable, whichever end of the political spectrum that comes from.

Even more hopefully, perhaps we can think forward to a time when things are less bad than they were predicted to be, or where we live by our highest ideals rather than our basest fears.

We need no longer to just ‘get by’... now is the time to plan for human flourishing.