Opinion | Gloom is a luxury in the Netherlands
The French elections, which offer only a short-lived relief, the war in Ukraine with no end in sight, the financial crisis with high energy and food prices, the future geopolitical tensions: is anything good in the world of 2022? Or should a man bow his head in fatalism, now that even the thought ‘it will take my time’ is obsolete?
In 2019 the French-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf excludes his book Le nafrage des civilisations (The Shipwreck of Civilizations) in which he unleashes the loss of the culture of his youth and his experiences as a world traveler on the state. His results are not happy. Europe, that once most ambitious and hopeful project, is deeply disrupting that. The US, that inward-looking superpower, has lost its moral wariness for good. The Arab world is torn and desperate. Major countries like China, India and Russia (and to a lesser extent Turkey and Brazil) are pursuing a renaissance of their former grandeur, driven by strong men and the law of the fittest. Maalouf predicts a new arms race and conflicts over international climate and health instead of international solidarity.
This gloom is contagious. I too feel that I am surrounded by pessimism more than ever. Of the Dutch, of course, residents of a country where the rule of law is of course not perfect, but still well executed, although the implementation is reported daily. Where the problems of social planning are spatial but nevertheless solvable. There is no starving of being homeless, nor being persecuted for one’s thoughts, mode of formed. Something we should not ignore this week, of all weeks in the year. Gloom, I repeat, is a luxury we cannot afford. The converse, the opinion is on the positive and the solutions, the assignment.
Short term first. Anyway the war in Ukraine only at the negotiating table. That striving on both sides, however inconceivable it may seem now. A first step towards a ceasefire could be enforced by appealing to the necessity and destabilization in Africa, parts of the UN to prevent: UN-supervised shipment of Ukrainian (and Russian!) grain via Odessa and the Black Sea must be resumed as soon as possible, if necessary preceded by minesweepers.
Second, close the gap between the losers and the winners of globalization. In France, in particular, this is helping the inhabitants of the hopeless suburbs and the poorer countryside. Invest in jobs and education and IT skills for all, provide free access to culture and libraries. Also here.
Third: build crisis resilience. Resilience is not a characteristic of the Netherlands, where every accident, every moment of bad luck can lead to unreasonable indignation and the cry for compensation. Unfortunately, life is not fair. People who are nevertheless able to get through the traumatic events of injustice not only live longer and happier, they also contribute more to the public interest. You can learn resilience, as an individual and as a society, psychologically but also in terms of crisis preparedness: see the Finnish public defence.
In his grief for the world, Maalouf is left with only one wish: that we still have the collective strength to turn the bow and not be shipwrecked like the Titanic. We have that power, right?
A version of this article also in the newspaper of 2 May 2022