The lessons world overlooks

The ongoing rampage of the novel coronavirus, as all major events in history, is going to leave long-term and far-reaching lessons for humankind to contemplate on and learn from

Picture source - Getty Images

The novel coronavirus is playing havoc with the global socioeconomic, political, and intellectual fabric and outcomes that were made possible by humankind in the last century. Along with a huge and growing human cost around the world, the pandemic is badly challenging the viability the world is wired in. From political manoeuvring to economic transactions, and from societal activities to interpersonal interactions, everything seems to be paralyzed on an utterly unprecedented level.

This pandemic led cessation of most of the day-to-day activities calls for a pause and to ponder, holistically, on the status quo and the very tenets of globalisation. It begs to revisit all our existing beliefs, interpretations, and rhetoric, inherently characterizing the world today at its very elemental level. The ongoing rampage of the novel coronavirus, as all major events in history, is going to leave long-term and far-reaching, though hardly attended, lessons for humankind to contemplate on and learn from.

Firstly, development as viewed today is an arbitrary concept and does not necessarily guard and guarantee security and sustainability. Defined exclusively on monetary terms and directing mainly to homo sapiens, it may shield humans from humans but may not essentially from forces and activities man is desperately trying to conquer and control. It may provide us with lots of possible material ease but is incapable to halt and counter calamities and direct our destinies on the course of actions of choice in the long run.

Secondly, human orders and systems are inherently ephemeral. All social, economic, and political systems and models, since primitive times, boasted, at some point, to be at the climax of development, faced decay and a subsequent death. The primitive political orders of band, tribal organizations and chiefdom, and the economic systems of foraging, horticulture, and pastoralism, which once formed base to the socioeconomic order and status quo, have become the stories of the past. This implies that all human orders are sustainably unsustainable. It also connotes that humans cannot define the direction of the world altogether, and hence the existing world system is bound to radically change into a completely unforeseen order in the coming future.

This is essentially because though humans can utilize natural forces, phenomena, or resources for their benefit, they cannot hold primacy on them and regulate them altogether. Henceforth, it’s not human strategy or activities that define humans’ destinies, but it’s the forces beyond mankind’s control that in reality direct and define the courses of human actions since time immemorial. All forms of social, political, economic systems and activities, since primitive times, were not of humans own liking but the ones shaped by subsistence availability, resources, and climatic conditions.

Thirdly, the apocalyptic outbreak and rapid spread of the novel coronavirus in almost all countries, regardless of their advanced status or global primacy, speaks of an inherently natural equality of humanity. All forms of stratification, divisions, and classifications-ethnocentrism, racism, ethnicity, and class status are arbitrary and whimsical in nature. All are equal when it comes to the inherent system of the world. Even the so-called superpowers and architects of the world are more drastically afflicted due to their own callings of greed. The plight of the USA, Italy, and South Korea, amid the pandemic, is a wakeup call for these nations particularly and the whole world generally that the existing course of action and status quo is untenable and contrary to human belief and can crumble under its own weight.

Fourthly, the natural built-up and ecosystem forms the very foundation of life on earth. A balanced life demands living close to the nature. The more one divorces from the natural mode of life and becomes artificial, the more one suffers socially and psychologically. Modern lives today are so overwhelmed with fabrications and artificiality that we have lost respect of what supports and sustains us. In a world characterized by a hasty life, concentration of resources and gluttony, our definition of success, exclusively in terms of money and an ultra-materialistic approach to social institutions and activities, has done great damage to all that nature had inherently offered us.

Subsequently, despite all our advancements and material things of comfort, we are the most thankless generation of all times and the most the alienated of all species on earth. Stress, anxiety, frustrations, depression, psychological traumas, fractured social lives and relations, greed, exorbitant and irrational desires, and paucity of genuine respect and care for fellow beings keep feeding on and haunting us from within.

Fifthly, nature is intrinsically balancing. It is fashioned with an inbuilt capability of repairing itself of all bruises and damages. For this purpose, it uses natural forces to halt or warn of the detrimental activities being carried out against its constituents. At this point of time, the natural carrying capacity of earth was badly damaged due to various anthropogenic activities like climate change, ozone depletion, mass deforestation, species extinctions, heightened urbanization, and burgeoning human population. This pandemic, though taking a heavy toll on man and material, has, at the same time, afforded the world time to heal and auto-repair unhindered.

Lastly, money is not everything, as wrongly presumed by man today. Though it can buy us medicines it may not afford us health. It may secure one from a belligerent man, but not from natural eventualities and catastrophes. Today the pandemic is infecting rich and poor alike or perhaps the former worst. The affluent of the advanced countries are more badly affected than the poor residents of the third world. Amid the pandemic, agonies and the mental trauma of the advanced world are seeing no bound. This bursts the oft-quoted myth that a moneyed man outweighs life qualitatively and quantitatively than the one without, a fact calling for an equitable resource distribution and egalitarianism.

The novel coronavirus is badly afflicting all aspects of life the world over, on one hand, and on the other, it’s been exposing and questioning, in holism, the viability and sustainability of the very course of action being undertaken by humanity today. The post-pandemic world would afford us an opportunity to do some soul searching and introspect the meanings, values, beliefs, and rhetoric associated with the Anthropocene.