COVID-19 has been a planetary crisis. And though the subjective experience of COVID has differed wildly depending on geography, culture, class, race, and belief system, at least a small part of the experience of COVID has been shared by all humans. This is unique in world history, though as commentators point out it is only the first of many such a globe encompassing trials. Given this inevitable future of planetary crisis (and I don’t just mean near-term global warming, I also refer to other existential risks such as pandemics, asteroids, and AI), I wonder if we can find a silver lining in this first experience of planetary crisis.  It is well known to anyone with a bad boss or who has gone on a difficult journey that suffering is a powerful means of creating group cohesion. ‘The trial’ is one of the most ancient means of forging the social bond through rituals and rites of passage that reduce all members of society to a common substance. Anthropological thinkers argue that the pe...