Beware The “Shock Market”: How To Think And Act During The Pandemic

How optimism resilience in modes of communication are shaping future leaders

In my line of work — writing and consulting for purpose-driven organizations — I’ve learned to respect that strong “ideas have consequences,” a phrase I’ll return to shortly. First, I ask if the idea, to me, is illuminating, something that makes me see things in an entirely new way. Next, I ask if the idea has captured the imagination of many others, whether or not they are like me. Finally, I ask, years later, if the idea has endured, regardless of whether the originator is known or forgotten. These three tests adhere to an idea first shared by the Canadian media theorist Harold Innis, the less famous teacher of Marshall Luhan (“the medium is the message”). Innis argued that there are two kinds of media: stories that bring people together across geographical boundaries, and stories that bring people together with a common past. The second is more powerful. It requires people who are willing and capable of creating a shared narrative.

Focus

I thought about Innis when a few weeks ago I realized that it was time to reconsider the power of an idea that was first widely shared in 2007. Weaving together older ideas and creating a new pattern, the originator was Naomi Klein, author of the George W-era classic, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. She described how modern disasters, from Argentina to Hurricane Katrina, demonstrated the special powers that state actors can exercise to enact new policies that have little to do with the disasters themselves. 

According to Klein, during times of crisis the public is distracted much like the way patients respond to shock therapy. They stop thinking as well and cede control to authorities they believe know better. And in the case of civil disasters, said Klein, the authorities swiftly and stealthily move to enact policies that reward powerful capitalists. At economist Milton Friedman’s 90th birthday in 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld honored Friedman as the “embodiment of the truth that ideas have consequences.” Friedman, who was perhaps the strongest champion of free-market capitalism, was one of Klein’s foremost villains in The Shock Doctrine. In some academic circles, Klein has been dismissed as sensational and non-academic. Her answer: her endurance as a leader among progressives and an endowed chair at Rutgers. University. I connected with her in late March after a virtual event sponsored by Haymarket books that replaced a physical gathering because of the COVID-19 lockdowns. I made note of an interesting fact: the physical gathering would have accommodated only a few hundred people. The audience for the virtual event — on YouTube Live — peaked a little above 14,000.

“To put this in perspective, Joe Biden’s got only two thousand,” referring to the candidate’s mid-March virtual town hall that was panned for the failed medium and the message. As a filmmaker and instructor, Klein has the tech and media savvy to connect with wide audiences during the pandemic. But, as always, she is focusing on “crisis capitalism,” which today has reared its face as “corona capitalism.” Writing for the Intercept, she observed, “this crisis — like earlier ones — could well be the catalyst to shower aid on the wealthiest interests in society, including those most responsible for our current vulnerabilities, while offering next to nothing to the most workers, wiping out small family savings and shuttering small businesses. But … many are already pushing back — and that story hasn’t been written yet.”

It’s a perspective that’s consistent with more mainstream progressive thinkers like former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, another great believer in modern methods of communication. After spending a third of his adult life in Washington, he’s learned that the “great seachange over the last half century has been the enormous power of large corporations and Wall Street to get what they want. There is no longer any countervailing power.”

Reich is quick to point out that he worked “under three administrations, one of them Republican,” before arriving at this conclusion. He spares no administration from his analysis, including Obama’s and Trump’s which executed the 2008 “bailout of Wall Street, the Republican tax cut of December 2017, and now, in the Coronavirus bill, where big corporations are always first in line to get taxpayer support, promising whatever politicians want them to promise but delivering largesse for big investors and top executives. Nothing trickles down.” He added that the $2 trillion package  — which passed in late March — “includes $500 billion in subsidized loans for big corporations, with almost no constraints. The Secretary of the Treasury can waive the minimal conditions should he wish. This sum doesn’t even include all sorts of tax breaks and other supports for big business.” 

And what’s left for the common man? “By contrast, the bill provides just $1,200 per adult — which is nothing compared to what people who are doing their public duty by staying home will need. Even its unemployment benefits are small relative to the need. Why is this? Because average Americans don’t have platoons of lobbyists in Washington. Democrats are less dependent on big corporations and Wall Street than are Republicans, but corporate Democrats in Washington tend to view the world in similar ways to Senate and House Republicans.”

Widening the lens for the total Shock Market

As I said, the focus on the inequities of corporate relief is resonating with thinkers closer to the middle of the progressive spectrum. But in parallel, the shock to global health and the economy — by some estimates, unemployment is expected to reach double digits — has set many people on edge, on the left and on the right, about government encroachments on liberty. 

Perhaps the greatest fear, documented in the media, is the implementation of various forms of martial law to enforce lockdowns. Early reports came from abroad, with stories about police and military action in Venezuela, Italy, and Israel. Here at home, the fear has forced government leaders — e.g., in New York, Michigan, and Texas — to deny there will be martial law. But it’s a fear that’s shared by proponents of civil liberty as well as ardent defenders of the 2nd amendment. And announcements by other leaders may have made matters worse. For example, there is NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio’s threat to permanently close churches that defy the lockdown, and Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s decision to call in the National Guard to mitigate the impact of COVID-19. Massachusetts law permits the governor to mobilize the Guard “in the case of public catastrophe or natural disaster.”

 And there are other things people have expressed concerns about. Dismissing the watchdog group tasked with overseeing implementation of the Coronavirus law. Suspending the EPA’s enforcement of environmental laws, and lowering fuel economy standards. Raising the specter of voter fraud to postpone the 2020. Floating the idea of suspending constitutional rights, allowing any chief judge of a district court to pause court proceedings “whenever the district court is fully or partially closed by virtue of any natural disaster, civil disobedience, or other emergency situation.” There are other examples, but they all have one thing in common: with the exception of the firing of the watchdog group, none of them have anything to do with the virus itself. There’s a large market for shock, but very few institutional controls for the quality of the products.

Resilience, online and offline

But to some observers, the most serious threat of the Corona shock is our ability to protect democracy itself. 

In a recent opinion piece for the Hill, Ryan P. Burke asked if “[a]ll of this rhetoric about ‘combating’ the virus and ‘winning the war’ plays on the subconscious. As citizens, we listen and conjure images of the military arresting moms with babies who are jogging and ignoring San Francisco’s lockdown order. But is this actually where we are headed in the ‘war’ on the coronavirus? Or are wartime metaphors sensationalist and unwarranted?” My answer: it depends on the response from citizens, who may be at a temporary disadvantage. We do have a self-declared “wartime president,” marshaling forces to take down “the invisible enemy.”

Many people have surmised that this might be the first act of the transformation of the American narrative, from liberal democracy to an authoritarian state. Others believe that we’re already in Act II, with a fear-debilitated electorate for the common good. As global reporter Max Fisher wrote earlier this week in The New York Times, rumors and “patently unbelievable claims are spread by everyday people whose critical faculties have simply been overwhelmed, psychologists say, by feelings of confusion and helplessness.” Let’s rewrite the FDR adage that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. I prefer saying that the only thing we have to fear is helplessness. In the end, the shock that Klein has opined about is the shock to our critical faculties.

I decided to speak with the one psychologist who can most take most credit for the concept of “learned helplessness”: Martin Seligman, the renowned professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has been recognized as the “father of positive psychology.” In lockdown, along with most of academia, he was enjoying some of the perks and freedoms of teaching online. He suggested that I audit an online class held the day after our interview. But as with Klein, it was not just the tech that was keeping Seligman feeling so positive.

Seligman summarized the work of a colleague, Sheldon Cohen, professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon. In two separate studies, Cohen found that the participants with higher “positive emotional style” — which Seligman beautifully summarized as “joyous” — were less likely to develop a cold after being partly exposed safely to rhinoviruses and influenza. That might be as good an excuse for “laughing it up” now, before you are exposed to the Coronavirus; it might protect you. “Dancing, eating, sex, gardening … these are all things you want to do now.” But quoting President Lincoln — hardly the portrait of a happy leader — “this too shall pass.” Being joyous in the aftermath “will not matter,” said Seligman. What will matter then is a resilience fortified by optimism and hope. 

Seligman remains optimistic that our future leaders are emerging in response to the Coronavirus. Today they will need to do most of their communications and organizing online, but that’s just another example of resilience. 

I am mostly with him. I am three parts optimist, one part pessimist. And I am not easily shocked nor distracted.