Laurie AznavoorianReprinted (with permission) from Futures Rambling #110
May 2020
I caught up with an old friend, as you do when you’re housebound reminiscing about the days when you could grab a chicken laksa at Jimmy’s or share a beer after work. He mentioned former colleagues of his were on the verge of moving into a new office just as Covid-19 hit and wondered aloud whether the design would still be relevant. He asked what I thought.
Another old friend called and wanted to know the same, followed by a colleague in London and then a client – all imploring, what does it mean, where to next? Having the privilege of talking with many company leaders about what keeps them up at night, they felt I might have some enlightened viewpoint.
But truth be told I wasn’t even savvy enough to ask the company I did a workplace strategy for in January to consider pandemic. It seems an egregious oversight now, and even Mr. Stable Genius in America saying “who’d of known a pandemic was in the midst”  doesn’t make me feel better.
The experience has caused a lot of us to consider what’s next. In this post, I share my views with the warning that they are coloured with a shit brown crayon. A cynical posture developed from consuming more world news and political podcasts than is healthy, and while it would be right to argue judging society and what may happen next by the shortcomings of world leaders and the other yahoos who make the headlines, it never the less has significant bearing on my outlook.
With that caveat, here goes:
It’s just like Feb fast – on March first you’re back to boozing like there’s no tomorrow
History tells us there will be pandemics that can and will disrupt lives. Despite the earnest dedication some practice in following restrictions, as soon as we get the chance, we’ll revert to what we were before. Especially if the behaviour satisfies a real or psychological need lying dormant under our compliant facades. We need our Super to recover, Kardashians need nose jobs and bogans must have new tattoos! You want proof, the governor of the U.S. state of Georgia has opened for business despite experts’ warnings, and people in that state are already queuing up to get haircuts and fake fingernails.
Certainly, some behaviours will stick, singing Happy Birthday will become a part of handwashing rituals, but don’t expect much more. AIDS did not stop people from having sex it simply changed the conditions of the exchange. Thirty years beyond the initial crisis, AIDS is now returning and the twenty-somethings who didn’t experience the heartache of going to seven funerals a year don’t understand what’s the big deal about not wearing a condom. It simply proves, people are people:  they’re horny, selfish and greedy, and many would lose a memory challenge with a goldfish.
Putting a more positive spin on this, Aristotle eloquently noted in 385 BC.
“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.”
We are neither beast nor god, we haven’t changed in +/- 2400 years and we aren’t going to change now. In fact, since the 1950s there has been a steady increase in migration to cities that is expected to continue,

People like to be by other people, amenity, culture and possibilities that come from living in a dense environment. Going to work every day provides much of the same.

Reflecting on sage advice another philosopher named Dolores once gave me, “Honey, be careful what you wish for.” She said that after she said, “Clean your room or you’re grounded.”
Before Covid people wished they didn’t have to go into the office, now that the realities of working from home are apparent – partners passing wind with abandon, kids no longer cute and the cat proving to be a poor conversationalist – many have changed their tunes.
Genies don’t go back in bottles
Through this process we’ve been exposed to technology that has changed the way we communicate. Looking to history again, we’re not known for giving up shiny things that intrigue us even when they’re untested or fail to serve us well e.g. the atomic bomb and gene editing….