None of this should have come as a shock. What is surprising, and frankly heartening, is that, after decades of frontal attacks on the idea that we live in a society, a critical mass of us had held on to enough of a civic and community spirit that we went along with these new rules for the better part of two years, and, moreover, that so many of us rejoiced at the sudden apparition of a social state. Yes, when our governments abandoned their Covid policies, we lapsed back to the crisis called “normal”—but for a time, we glimpsed another world, another kind of collective flip.

QUESTION: What conditions made this civic spirit persist despite decades of individualism? Could it recur?

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 771