A World Remade

Many are characterizing 2020 as a kairos year, the forces of a global pandemic and a long-simmering disease of the soul forging an opening for change. As everyone scrambles to make sense of a rapidly changing context, it is natural to revert to a survival mode characterized by reactive thinking, short-term analysis, and feel-good meaning-making. Comment neither condemns these instincts nor feels exempt from their temptations. Still, we sense a momentous opportunity for big questions to be considered. There is a new, pandemic-inspired social realization that we need a reset, one shaped by (1) a sober-minded, clear-eyed view of the present, (2) a discerning, rigorous study of the past, and (3) a pragmatic yet creative reimagining of the future as we face it together and build anew.