looking forward & looking back – vol. x

In his parable Before the Law, Kafka recounts how a man comes across a guarded gate. As he enquires, the guard explains that behind the gate is the Law. However, if the man wishes to enter, he must first wait his turn. Though his whole life passes by, the man waits but never enters. Dying, he asks the guard why in all this time no one else has ever gone through. The guard replies: “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.” The man dies; the gate is sealed.

This limbo should feel quite familiar to us all. With the last two years dominated by a deadly pandemic, the whole world has been thrown off course. Even now, as vaccination rates improve, other crises loom on the horizon. The climate emergency, an increasing wealth gap, growing tensions between the United States and China – existential threats abound. After all this wait, normalcy – Kafka’s Law behind the gate – still feels a long way off.

As the COVID-19 pandemic recedes, people are starting to wonder where we may go from here. What is being proposed? What was proposed in the past when things looked as dire as they do now? What has changed in the meantime? Now is the perfect time to reflect not on only what to do, but also on how we think about what can and should be done.