How a futurist thinks about our pandemic moment

As a professional futurist, I’m often thinking ahead. Sometimes, I read history instead. The past and the future are two lenses on time. Let me offer you another.

Did you know that the Greeks had two words for time? Kronos and kairos.

Kronos refers to chronological time: the years, months, days, hours, and minutes we use to schedule meetings, observe rituals like holidays and anniversaries, and measure progress. Westerners are so enmeshed with chronological time that we hardly notice it. Like our bodies, its usefulness is so reliable and ever-present that it becomes invisible to us. We just assume it is— until that changes.

My friend Jan asked me over the summer, “Is it Wednesday or is it July?” That’s what something like a pandemic does to us: it messes with our sense of kronos. Now, time feels fluid, dilated.

The Greeks’ second word for time, kairos, means something else entirely. I prefer the Sophists’ definition: “a passing instant when an opening appears which must be driven through with force if success is to be achieved.”

It’s helpful to pull these two definitions of time apart. Because no matter how long the pandemic lasts in chronological time, it and its economic maelstrom, coupled with our country’s racial justice reckoning, are creating an opening. This is a supreme opportunity to wrestle with deeper questions about what it means to serve the public.

I must have sensed this. Recently I was reviewing my last few months’ journals. In March, I’d written, “How will I let this pandemic change me?” I knew—and maybe you did, too—that this moment would change me, and us. There would be the “before times,” and there would be the “after times,” but first, we were going to have to get through this opportune moment when everything changed.

What is possible now that wasn’t possible before?

In public policy, there’s a concept called the Overton Window that is used to grade ideas on a scale from “Unthinkable” to “Popular” (see “Opening Moves,” at left). During a period of kairos, the window moves; what was once considered radical is now considered sensible.

As our communities move through our current crises, there will be plenty of room for ideas that were once unthinkable. This is an opportunity to help our communities move beyond “back to normal” and into something more appropriate for our context. We all recognize that going back to normal is insufficient, because “normal” was broken: Inequality was growing. The educational achievement gap was expanding. The middle class was shrinking.

This moment of kairos is a supreme moment, a gift that calls us to a greater purpose: to make our communities work better for more people.

Rebecca Ryan, APF is a professional futurist and economist who has been named one of the Top 50 (Female) Futurists in the World. She is the author of ReGeneration: A Manifesto for America’s Future Leaders and has served as the Resident Futurist for several national and local organizations.

For more information: rebeccaryan.com