For some time now, the world has been getting smaller, in the sense that, persons all over the world are more interconnected in more ways than one, and advancements in communication and means of transportation have made it possible to know what is going on at the other side of the world as fast as we would know that our neighbor’s house is on fire. In pre-Covid pandemic times, a lot of people would not even think twice about flying a long distance just to meet a friend or see some exciting tourist spot. It was that easy, and we are hoping that the vaccines will soon do their magic and allow us to travel as much as we used to before.

At the same time, it’s not only all about knowing what is happening “over there” but also being significantly affected by something that is occurring or has occurred so many miles, rivers and land masses away. The world is truly getting smaller not just speculatively, but also practically. Isolation, which is good for keeping a virus away, is not good in terms of many other aspects of human life that are infinitely relevant to our survival and flourishing

It thus becomes very interesting to know what is really happening and what we are supposed to do about it. In this light, we in the Faculty of Philosophy of the Widya Mandala Catholic University Surabaya have thought that it would be quite enlightening to have an international symposium in order to take a look at the various issues related to this interlaced global situation and to determine how important global solidarity is at this specific moment in human history.

A quick look into the various areas connected with this topic already shows us that we cannot really neatly separate them into independent phenomena for study because they intersect and dovetail with one another. But analysis requires that we at least learn how to identify its facets and differentiate them from one another. An initial review gives us the following main areas where global solidarity issues have cropped up: Health and Medical research, Business and Economics, Socio-Political Issues, Educational Issues, Socio-Cultural Issues and Ethical-Anthropological Issues.

Global solidarity was needed in order to: (1) stem the spread of infection and; (2) to find the vaccine that could create herd immunity and prevent further infections and deaths. This area is fraught with problems that cannot be resolved one nation alone but rather all the nations together. It brought about questions on freedom and autonomy as regards receiving the vaccine. Does the common good require governments to force their citizens to receive it? What is the best means of making sure that this happens? The vaccines have been shown efficient in stemming the infection tide, but these vaccines are produced primarily in some rich nations. Is it reasonable for those nations to give priority to their citizens first in receiving the vaccine or should they have given a proportional number of vaccines to the poorer nations at the same time as an act of solidarity?

Should patent restrictions be lifted sooner and technology shared faster? Is there any credibility in blaming certain nations for this pandemic? Are some nations really more responsible than others in finding the solution? Is it true that a lot of health workers in the frontline of fighting the pandemic in rich nations from other nations rather than citizens of that nation itself? Is this ethical? Are there other solutions?

The reduced mobility and interaction among people have caused the ruin of many businesses and industries, although some have been favored because what they produce were in high demand during the pandemic. Jobs were lost; establishments were closed. People had to rethink their way of earning money in order to move from businesses and jobs that had to be reduced to businesses and jobs that were favored by the pandemic.

People ask: Will these changes remain even after the pandemic or will everything return to the same state as before? Will there be, instead, a new dynamic in world economics and the economics of nations? How will this impact human beings in general? It is said that women were especially affected by the shift in economic activity since they are largely employed in professions that require close proximity with others. How will the future be for them after the pandemic?

The need to mitigate the bad effects of the pandemic has led governments to constrain the activities and the choices of their citizens to a drastic degree. People and leaders started to experience a relationship dynamic that they had never experience before. Emotions and suspicions have run high, and there always seemed to have a never-ending debate on what was the right thing to do.

These events produce sometimes frightening, sometimes interesting effects. For example, an IMF working paper indicates that disasters like epidemics slows down social unrest. At the same time, however, after the disaster has passed, there is a danger of a renewed and more violent resurrection of the feelings of anger that had been temporarily repressed.

The socio-political history of the world has also been colored by the election of two leaders of nations who did not follow after the reconciliatory attitudes of previous leaders but have chosen a more high-handed and controlling approach. These two are Donald Trump in the United States and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. It is true that as a nation the Philippines is dwarfed by many more other considerably significant democracies. But there are a few signs that show that that example of leadership calls more world attention than initially meets the eye. We only have to mention the reaction of world leaders and civic groups in the face of his supposed no holds-barred anti-drug trafficking campaign. Many look at it as violence and injustice disguised as good government. This idea is further upheld by the recent awarding of the Nobel Peace prize to Maria Angelita Ressa, a Filipino-American journalist and author, the co-founder and CEO of Rappler, who was openly a critic of the Duterte administration.

Capping it all is the recent retreat of the US Army from Afghanistan which has stressed the entire world and had gotten so many countries moving in order to lighten the shock that the fleeing Afghans will have to go through as they are uprooted from the land of their birth.

We therefore ask ourselves: are the socio-political factors in the different countries going to remain the same after the pandemic? What will all this recent experience mean for the political balance among nations in the near future? What impact will these have on the everyday lives of ordinary people?

While the pandemic has hastened the desired development of online schooling that may be beneficial to students who are geographically far from good schools, at the same time, however, studies show that those who had been victims of a lack of good educational opportunities and discrimination have entered into more exacerbated situations. Therefore, in the area of education, too, the world has had to adjust, and we ask ourselves whether this required adjustment will be temporary or permanent.

The standardization all over world would be beneficial from the point of view, for example, of immigrants getting better access to good-paying jobs in their new country because the standardized expectations from education will make them competitive with other persons the world over. However, standardization of education may result in the loss of a good part of the cultural heritage of nations when, in the process of picking one subject matter as more important than the other, a cultural trait may go down the drain together with the rejected topic and create a loss of cultural heritage just because the item has not been taught in school.

So, our question would be: What are the main benefits of the global standardization of education? What are its other pros and cons? Will the standardization process really endanger the cultural heritage of some nations?

Hadi Saba Ayon talks about a new virtual urbanism that has created a relatively new environment where may has to develop socially and culturally:

Sars-Cov-2 has disrupted our society and lives, abruptly and brutally. It dictated a new way for everything, including a "new normal", and we are still struggling to understand how, and why. Our physical world evolves around digital traceability. The latter is not a dysfunction, but rather "the irrevocable condition of an economic model and a form of sociability" (Arnaud, Merzeau, 2009, p. 10). The slightest activity produces digital traces which makes it possible to observe and analyse in real-time the interactions and movements of users and to derive predictive analysis of their needs and behaviours for commercial, strategic, malicious, or public purposes.

According to the OECD, the cultural sector has been one of the hardest hit, together with the tourism industry, by the negative consequences of the the COVID-19 pandemic:

Along with the tourism sector, cultural and creative sectors (CCS)1 are among the most affected by the current crisis, with jobs at risk ranging from 0.8 to 5.5% of employment across OECD regions…

The venue-based sectors (such as museums, performing arts, live music, festivals, cinema, etc.) are the hardest hit by social distancing measures. The abrupt drop in revenues puts their financial sustainability at risk and has resulted in reduced wage earnings and lay-offs with repercussions for the value chain of their suppliers, from creative and non-creative sectors alike. Some cultural and creative sectors, such as online content platforms, have profited from the increased demand for cultural content streaming during lockdown, but the benefits from this extra demand have largely accrued to the largest firms in the industry.

…and the effects will be long lasting due to a combination of several factors.

At the same time, we can see that the cultural heritage of nations is becoming more and more inseparably linked with the tourism industry. This is logical from the economic point of view: the effort to preserve our cultural treasures requires financial support, and financial support more easily comes when awareness of the existence of these cultural treasures is raised through tourism.

We then ask ourselves: Will the globalization of the appreciation of cultural treasure eventually take on a stronger economic aspect such that it may endanger the authentic preservation of these cultural treasures themselves? What is the intrinsic value of a national cultural heritage and is a national cultural heritage at odds with cultural globalization?

From the anthropological point of view, Berghs observes some paradigm shifts as regards our understanding of certain aspects of illness and human interaction:

In this opinion piece, I argue that a sociology and anthropology of cure is accelerated by various features of the scientific and social responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. I illustrate how the pandemic has made the general public rethink popular notions of “cure,” foregrounded ethical dilemmas and inequalities in who has access to “cures” and also revealed deep uncertainties correlated to a future where there is no such thing as cure anymore. Such developments in the pandemic response illustrate the need for a critical interdisciplinary agenda to interrogate the social, ethical, cultural, economic, political and technological innovations of cures nationally and internationally.

Ennis-McMillan and Hedges indicate some areas that we need to pay attention to as the pandemic progresses as our appropriate response to the challenges that may force changes in the way that we live. Among these important anthropological aspects affected are: the cultural construction of illness and inequality; stigma and “othering” in epidemics; social determinants of health and hotspots; political responses, boundaries and community health; syndemics; communication, misinformation and compliance; and preparation for the later phases of the pandemic when society attempt to return to normal or tries to enter into a new normal.

Precisely because the above topics will require a global discussion, and the implementation of the conclusions of those discussions will require a coordinated worldwide effort, the local scene should not feel itself exempted from participating. All voices should be heard. Everyone –if possible, down to the last citizen of each country— should feel implicated and be driven to be involved in the universal discourse of these issues.

For this reason, we find small symposia like the one we intend to organize in April of 2022 completely useful to the completion of the global picture that we should have of a global situation.

In this regard, we invite those who can to participate in the dialogue, to enlighten others and be enlightened themselves on the different issues that are very important for our life in the near future.

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