The world feels fragile, but we can recover from the blows we’ve suffered | Rowan Williams

Science, art - and religion - can all help us build towards a new conception of humanity in the wake of the pandemic

• Rowan Williams is a former archbishop of Canterbury

Rather more than half of the population of Afghanistan is facing levels of food shortage not seen for decades. Just under 1,500 people died in the Mediterranean during 2021, attempting to flee to a safer environment. The likelihood of wildfires is predicted as a risk comparable to severe flooding in parts of the UK in the coming decades. About one person in 1,000 in the Democratic Republic of Congo has received full vaccination against Covid-19. And the challenge of the pandemic worldwide, the continuing background of loss and fear, still casts an enormous shadow.

Statistics - not simply unconnected - that give a little flesh to the overall sense of 2021 having been a sombre year - on top of the low-level anxiety, the unexpected personal losses and the sheer confusion experienced by everyone caught up in the pandemic. The human story is not looking much like a smooth record of upward progress just now. We are more fragile than we had been led to assume. And this means that we are also less different from our ancestors than we normally like to think - and that the more secure and prosperous members of the human race are less different from their fellow-human beings than they find comfortable.

Rowan Williams is a former archbishop of Canterbury