Not Next Time
After Covid, a lot of people eventually said something you hear surprisingly often once something is over: Next time, we won’t do it like that again. We won’t let ourselves get swept up so quickly. Not by fear, not by outrage, not by enthusiasm. We’ll look first. We’ll think for ourselves. We won’t simply join in because everyone else is doing it.
It sounds reasonable. The problem is that next time never looks like last time.
Covid does not come back with the same name, the same images, and the same political arguments. Next time might be a football World Cup. An election. A scandal. Or something completely harmless. A solar eclipse, for example.
I watched this recently with some curiosity. Suddenly everyone was busy with it. People went outside, took pictures of the sky, sent each other messages and asked: “Can you see it too?” My daughter was bombarded with WhatsApp messages. Classmates posted photos. The same excitement seemed to be everywhere.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with a solar eclipse. It is rare and interesting. Anyone who wants to see it should go and see it. But I was less interested in the eclipse than in the behavior around it. Within a very short time, everyone seemed to be on the same boat.
My daughter and I were not. I think we were watching some film. She had no interest in the eclipse at all. Her reaction was roughly: Why should I look at the sun now? That just hurts your eyes.
And that was the end of it for her.
I had to laugh. Not because we were somehow smarter. We simply had no impulse to join in. And that was exactly what made it interesting to me.
Because this completely harmless situation suddenly reminded me of something I had noticed during Covid. Not the disease. Not masks. Not vaccines. Not politics. The social movement.
People watch one another. One person does something. Then ten do it. Then a hundred. And at some point, the fact that everyone is doing something becomes a reason to do it yourself.
We like to think that we make independent decisions. But other people are information to us. If a hundred people suddenly start running in the same direction, we do not begin with a philosophical investigation into whether that direction makes sense. We run too.
For much of human history, that was probably a sensible strategy. If everyone in the village suddenly starts running away, it is not a bad idea to run first and ask questions later. Perhaps that behavior sits more deeply in us than we like to admit.
And that is exactly why the resolution “Next time, I won’t go along with it” works so badly.
Because next time, we do not recognize it.
The content has changed. This time it is not a pandemic. This time it is football. Or a politician. Or a war. Or some scandal. Or the sun. And because the occasion is new, we assume our behavior must be new as well.
But perhaps something much more basic is repeating itself.
Not history.
Us.
We get excited together. We become afraid together. We become outraged together. We all look in the same direction. And afterwards we tell ourselves that next time we will be more independent.
Perhaps that will always be true to some extent. Human beings are social animals, after all. Maybe independence does not mean never joining in. That would be just as foolish. Sometimes the others are right.
Perhaps all we need is one small question whenever everyone suddenly decides that the same thing matters:
How important would this feel to me if I did not know that everyone else thought it was important?
Sometimes the answer is: Very important.
Then go and watch the eclipse.
And sometimes the answer is: Not important at all.
Then you can stay home and watch a film.
The sun will probably cope.