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Now, the Open Moment

Georgia NeSmith
5 min readApr 9, 2020

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In conversation with “When It Comes to Hunger, the Worst Is Yet to Come: unless we demand a change from the current system” by Heated Editors

Photo by Andrea Bellucci @andreabellucci in Unsplash

We are at an open moment in our economic and social history — a crossroads where, depending on which values we wish to emphasize and which old ones, if any, we are prepared to drop because they have become outdated and dangerous to ourselves and to humanity.

I wrote earlier about a potential positive future resulting from the current challenges we face and will soon be facing as our economy collapses because of the COVID19 shutdown…

Or…This is How Civilization Finally Changes for the Better

…which I wrote in conversation with “This is How Our Civilization Ends … A Brief, Scary History of the Next Three Decades” by umair haque, whose description of a quite scary dystopia reflects a quite plausible, though opposite direction from the one I construct. Truthfully I see no reason at the moment why the darker vision won’t become reality. I’m just one of those people always trying to look “at the bright side,” because focusing on the dark side leaves me blind.

Nonetheless, I know we have far worse ahead of us than most of the living generations have been through, save the few surviving WWII soldiers and those who fought in Korea and Vietnam and other wars since.

The USA has had the benefit of not having had a war fought on our soil since the Civil War. The overwhelming majority of us have no idea what it’s like to live at a moment in time when there are few to any social supports provided by governments. In some ways I think The Great Pandemic of 2020 [we really need to have a good name for this moment] may turn out to offer very important lessons about the importance of a strong government involvement in protecting Americans as they go about living their daily lives.

This pandemic is far beyond the ability of most to imagine, much less comprehend.

In some ways I am lucky because for the past 25 years I’ve had to struggle to survive economically [as well as emotionally] since I became too disabled to work full…

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Georgia NeSmith
Georgia NeSmith

Written by Georgia NeSmith

Retired professor, feminist, writer, photographer, activist, grandmother of 5, overall Wise Woman. Phd UIA School of Journalism & Mass Communication, 1994.

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