Coronavirus: "Play with fads, work with trends and live by principles"

NY Week 9 and the talk has turned to re-entry.  I don't know about you, but I am just getting used to managed retreat.  I have great new hobbies and so many things happening in the zoom-o-sphere that I can enjoy!  There's a huge national med school graduation with all the people who play doctors on TV, a production of "King Lear" by Theater of War, and UofO Digital Campus which is growing everyday.  So I'm set for a while -- no matter, re-entry is coming.

But re-entry to what?  Going "back" is a fiction, as we know that much has changed, including each of us.  The naming buffs will surely get on that, although I'm still waiting to learn what to call the first decade of the century -- "oughts" seems not to have caught on.  Let's call it "not-back" for the moment.

The main characteristic of not-back, as far as I can tell, is uncertainty and this is just not attractive.  There is nobody in the whole world who knows what's next.  That's always been true, but the relatively slow pace of change has allowed us to think that we knew what was next.  So what can help us feel our way forward?

I had the good fortune to serve on the National Board of the American Institute of Architects with Futurist David Zach.  He never talked about the future as "a thing."  He always presented wildly evocative pictures and talked about "might," as in, what might happen.  He has pointed out that we should "play with fads, work with trends and live by principles."  Here's how he defined those terms. 

Fads are "all about being in the moment."  Baking is a fad of this moment, and a very pleasant one, at that.  [I made shortbread cookies last night--Mark Bittman's recipe, but next time I'm trying Melissa Clark.]  

Trends are about movement -- "they are like the current that moves the boat."  Trends are very important for the future, because they are enduring and leave their mark.  We can, with attention, discern trends, which can serve us like channel guides.  A trend in this moment is for new diseases to arise because of human abuse of the ecosystem.  This is a trend that will continue and might accelerate.  

"Principles," Zach noted, "are about the eternal. Things that don't change, shouldn't change, can't change." [He loves to be silly, so he quotes Groucho Marx on this point: "Those are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others."]  Principles, therefore, are like the stars, the constants of our navigation.  "Respect for all living beings" is a principle that we can use in planning for a future that is just and sustainable.  

In the Zachian future, we enjoy fads, forecast trends and stand by our principles.  We do this, for the most part, in small increments of time -- this moment, this day -- because we can manage what's in front of us.  I think this is powerful advice for moving forward.