What Does the Future Have in Store for Us?
Op-Ed
This might be the nastiest of questions one could have come up with at this time of our shattered existence. For me personally, the physical virus is not that big a problem. What bothers me most is the unpredictability of future developments. I have not lived without a planned morrow since my first day in kindergarten, and now, nearing eighty, I am without any chart of forthcoming moves.
The tiny invisible pest has turned out so nimble and noxious that its threat has already made this the worst experience we have ever had to go through, at least in the most recent past. In the beginning, it was a mere minor test of our health, but it fast turned into a major fitness trial, dragging us through a medicinal ordeal. Will we endure this and keep our heads above the surface of the earth? I don’t know, and the dilemma is that nobody, not even the strongest medical scholars of the world, can provide us with a confident scientific answer to the question.
The world is open to an extensive, fierce and expensive fight against the overwhelming viral disaster, but we are not prepared enough to make even a prediction to help us plan for the future as wisely as possible. In my case, I don’t know if I will have to relocate to the countryside anytime soon to start tilling land so as to have my own fruits and veg, and thus prevent my hunger-induced demise; I have no idea if my overall qualifications will continue translating into my wellbeing; I don’t have the faintest clue if in the near future I will be allowed to shop when my current stock of medication starts running out; I can’t make even the flimsiest guess if I will ever need the books of my beloved library, sitting calm and inert on my old-fashioned shelves in expectation of my feisty shuffling through them in consideration of ceding them to the country’s public reading facilities while there is time to do so; it is not known to me either how functional my current shelter will be for me to be able to continue life in there doing some good to Mankind.
But this is not the only rhetorical curiosity that currently burdens the mind! How about my bank savings? Would they keep their regular purchasing power, remaining as intact as they are right now? They might or they might not: a well-versed economist would say cautiously. Again, the deadly uncertainty of guesswork!
But I have my own helpful inferences: in the short run, a shortage of production as well as productivity may cripple the economic process; oil prices fluctuating against any educated logic and fearful expectations driving the unwelcome level of inflation. But I am not very nervous about the short-run predictions. What bothers me is the long-run prognosis, which is politically-based because it is politics that defines the principal configurations of our thinking and carves the moods of the electorate, along with the market ups and downs. And if it is in our hands, we have to keep the inflation from running away. Currently, the likelihood of higher inflation is luring us into the belief that the monetary tissue of our economy might waste away. The creators of such moods should bridle their belligerent attitude towards the current rulers of the country, thus reinforcing the National Bank’s fiscal skills and responsibilities.
The remaining questions are just as sharp and scary, the mildest of which would be this: How long are we going to be locked up in the privacy of our family abodes, where the compulsory confinement wrecks our nerves and deprives us of a chance to strengthen the national GDP? No, I am not panicking. I am just joining the interrogative torrent in the country. Panic makes no sense, because the cruel bug is utterly nonchalant to human dread. Moreover, it is desperately looking for cowards and scaremongers to hit their immune system.
By Nugzar B. Ruhadze
Image source: romania-insider.com