Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Corona May be The Biggest Blessing in Disguise for Humanity


As Lenin famously quoted – There are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen. The start of the year of Rat as per the Chinese Zodiac turned out to be uneventful and 2020 was supposed to bring prosperity, progress, fertility and be lucky for all other signs too.

Early-Feb 2020, Corona had just about started to grip China and the rest of the world thought it to be more or less a china problem and a handful of senior global leaders (who pretty much write the destiny of the rest of the 7.5 Billion of us) were still talking about trade wars and trade imbalances, ideological differences on the basis of religion/military and finance leading to deadly conflicts and business houses/businessmen gloating on the stock prices of their companies being at lifetime high and designated as one or the other richest in their country/region/world,numerically  and then…..

…. Before anyone could say Jack Robinson, in less than 2 weeks this little virus (now popularly called the China-Virus by the POTUS, and so will I, till the Chinese stop eating anything that moves) created havoc by spreading like a wild fire across the globe thereby bringing down the alleged edifices of financial, intellectual, scientific, military and historical supremacy over each other in less than 10 days. The global supply chains that we have been so proud of in the name of industrial/trade revolution have come to a sudden stop. And we cant do shit about it.

So much for the conflicts, divisions and havoc that we created in the name of progress – that humanity stands naked at the precipice of a bottomless abyss.

Never ever since the advent of humanity and its recorded history has the world been so genuinely secular and united just to be able to survive and save itself from this cataclysm and everyone only worrying about the most primordial need of Food, Shelter, Clothing and Procreation. And everyone is wishing well for everyone else just to ensure self-preservation.

Ask Trudeau’s wife or Tom Hanks - both would give their Power / Oscar just to be able to recover fully. Ask the top 10 richest people on this planet – would they give everything away just to be able to save their most loved one from this Virus if needed??

Industrial revolution and relentless pursuit of profit (aka capitalism or need to establish supremacy on just the metric of wealth) has successfully destroyed what took a billion + years to get created. Take fossil fuels, natural reserves, rivers, glaciers – we have sorted everything out in less than 150 odd years and now we are wondering why and from where Mr. Corona struck humanity.

It’s the mother earth taking back its lost ground from us – homo sapiens – who started believing themselves to be the most superior race. Imagine a moment that all the money and the glory and the popularity isn’t able to buy You Your next meal because You have to forage for it just like the old times.

Humbling – Isnt it?

Videos and Fotos doing rounds on the internet show that just a few days of forced restraint on us wise homo sapiens has healed the planet of its pollution, air is cleaner (thereby removing carcinogens), rivers have fish again and animals aren’t afraid anymore and above all the endangered pangolins and bats in China are heaving a sigh of relief.

All that we need to remember is, that the shriek of a fellow cohabitant (animals, resources, poor/rich, fortunate/unfortunate) is all the same in the face of adversity. We humans have been too damn lucky for too damn long and have taken advantage of our respective situations.

Corona and many such challenges will come and go but let’s not lose the lesson that mother earth had to impose upon us so brutally. Ol’Kenny’s words, as he left us just 4 days ago, will continue to resonate always -  “But in his final words I found an ace that I could keep” – Let these profound words not go waste and learn the lessons that we must.

And I believe that this reset is an opportunity for mankind to find its soul lost in the morass of greed, corruption, one-upmanship and destruction of our beautiful planet in the garb of progress.

The choice is entirely ours!

@manurishiguptha

22 comments:

  1. An excellent and thought-provoking article. Loved it.

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  2. India is a land of Rishi Munnis, Saints & Peer Babas !!! & Blessed by few thousand Gods of all faiths. Worshiping of trees plants and nature is very common. Everyone has his experiences and understanding borne out of it. What Spaniards did was introduce a new disease which natives had not been exposed to. Indians have been exposed to Corona virus earlier too and hence are likely to adapt easily and produce anti-bodies for this mutant. In routine our surroundings are not very sanitised which keeps Indians immunity high. That is why foreigners visiting India are vulnerable to infection while these bugs don't affect us. Our bodies contain as many organisms as probably own body cells and we are a resultant biome. Traditional habits of using onion, turmeric, ginger and garlic along with tulsi etc also helps. The infection rate of previous viral outbreaks was also lesser in India. On the other hand the developed countries have cleaner and relatively less infection prone environment which reduces their immunity making them more vulnerable to such infections. Increasing temperature in India also helps. But we are very connected. More than normal humans. Here no mother will think twice about being with her children or parents to serve in case of isolation. The connects are too strong to be cowed down by fear. Salute the spirit of Bharatwasis!!!

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  3. The World will not be same again....... We got to learn to co-exist OR mother earth shall find ways to teach us our lessons. We humans need the earth, Earth does not need us. It has existed for billions of years without humans & shall exist billions without us greedy selfish Humans & governments driven by greedy humans. URGENT & Immediate shift to 100% Solar use & Electric mobility, saving wild bees, sparrow's, dolphins etc is not a choice but a necessity to reduce deadly air, water & noise pollution directly effecting mother earth and killing many other species who are equal stake holders on the planet. 14 million different species of which we humans are one. Rissala Polo

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  4. What's a virus ?? Its basically the excretions of toxic cells. When a cell is poisioned by air, water, noise, fertilizers, radation pollutions it expels poisonous waste.5G is basically 20,000 satellites around the planet 24x7 radating power waves. We humans are electrical beings. Thus get effected directly. First 5G city of the world was Wuhan withing 6 mths to a year. Look at the unprecedented disaster. 5G is going to be disastrous for the earth. Wr need to understand and go back to get full perspective. In 1918 radiowaves were introduced. Same time the flu killed 50 million people. One fifth of earths population was wiped out. During WW2 radars came into extensive usage, Cholera, bubonic plague, smallpox, and influenza are some of the most brutal killers after WW2, about 200 million people perished due to the viruses. 1968 radio frequencies & electeomagnetic fields were introduced followed by The Hong Kong flu, a category 2 flu pandemic whose outbreak in 1968 & 1969 killed an estimated one million people all over the world. Huge concidences. Intro of these various electromagnetic, radio waves & radations bring out very powerful reactions specially in today's times as thwy get multiplied many folds due to heavily poluted air, water, noise and extensive use of Bayer fertilizers & Mosanto seeds for food is perfect concoction for disastor which are unprecedented & going to increase if we dont stop this race & allow earth to heal & plant trees & live minimally & close to nature. First and foremost we have to shift completely stop use of fossil fuels and internal combustion engines (ICE) vehicles We have to shift to use of power from solar, sustinable farmings, increase forest cover & electic mobility on top priority. 70% of pollution will be take care of by just doing this. We mend our ways or we suffer drastically.

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  5. Every word of this wonderful piece is so damn true and hardhitting! What was in the mind of perhaps millions has come out in words abundance on this blog! I am gonna make sure i forward this to raise as much awareness as is possible! Its time we learn and lead rather than sit back and suffer!

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  6. Superbly written and how true. This is one share of will delight in sharing..

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  7. Completely agree with you Manu ji. Like some one asked - "What if we humans are the virus to this earth and corona is the vaccine"

    While we pray that we overcome the corona crisis without any further loss of life, it is also time that humans start living life more meaningfully.

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  8. Hope there is an end to this pandemic in the near future....
    more importantly....
    hope we have learnt the lessons for our future !

    Thank you for this Manu

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  9. Well said Manu. Time to find answers within ourselves.

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  10. Excellent and nice thought shared by you sir!! Hope the world learn and follow the examples set by the nature!!

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  11. Very well said, Sir. This is indeed a great opportunity to take a step back, introspect and do what's right.

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  12. Feel enlightened to read and understand.. Yes we need to learn as well as unlearn a lot..

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  13. Very very true eye opener Manu Ji. Need to learn a lot as well need to unlearn a lot more

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  14. Very true Manu Ji.. We need to learn a lot but unlearning process needs to be more rigorous

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  15. That famous quote from the movie Matrix: "Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague...."

    We are destined not to learn from our mistakes, many will continue to believe 'greed is good'. Trouble is, except for religion to some extent, nothing else has so far worked to sway large numbers of human beings towards a truly collective goal.... despite our grand notions of being a superior species, we are still far away from the ability to think in global terms. Unless a large enough number of our species can think on that scale, the global problems of pollution, resource scarcity and alternative energy etc will never have enough traction to mean anything to most of us.

    Are we going to get there? Unlikely it seems. Just look around, half the world is in a state of war, hunger and displacement of millions grows, half the earnings of most millions goes to rent and mortgage, value of savings diminish by the day....

    Our previous generation talked about the wonder that would be 20th century. We talked in excited voices of hope about the 21st....how many now talks of the 22nd century? Futurism is long dead. Most human beings do not think their children or grandchildren will have a better future than what they inherited; how does that reflect on us!

    Life, sure footed, goes on towards the next RESET...and then the next.... inevitable

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  16. Manu sir .
    Good post my opinion is . India like nations need to stop funds for weapons and atomic bombs . And same funds can utilise for anti viruses and small world visitors 😌

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  17. Here is another "Icing on the Cake"

    http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf

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  18. Loved the article bro. Very thought provoking. Corona will be a blessing for us humans if we can reclaim our soul. Compulsory lockdowns have given us the opportunity to introspect and decide for ourselves the path that we intend to follow post corona (if we survive).

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  19. Can't agree more. Very well written, thought provoking piece..

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  20. Manu ji, excellent article. How can the world find a solution to this problem in future? One country can easily create global devastation. Unbelievable, unprecedented and unacceptable.

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  21. It is an opportunity to those who survive. For a lot many this crisis just resets all the gains they made during the entire lifetime..?

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  22. A good thought provoking article

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Your comment is immensely appreciated and will be published for a discussion - soonest. Thanks. manu