Case for 'Exuberance' in the times of Uncertainty and Fear

As we see the world rummaging thru the stores scampering for toilet paper its amazing to see how soon the irrational exuberance as late as Jan 2020 has turned to unreasonable fear and collectively, majority of the people become less confident of the future and forget/ignore the resilience and the intelligence of human race.

We Humans aren’t Gods gift to the planet and no different from the virus/es that are attacking us and trying to push us out/away either. But one thing that sets us apart is the refinement in the way we communicate in multitude of languages and the way we have devised languages to talk to machines and vice versa and analyse information/data.

While a billion other species are only struggling to survive and remain fit to procreate, Homo Sapiens have ‘almost’ moved up the value chain as we have been able to push back the concept of natural mortality and nature’s purgatory forces thru dramatic advances in medicine. We can travel faster than our own natural speeds and above all have put another billion species in peril by uncontrolled procreation and taking over the space of others.

Introspection can continue to happen to reflect on our alleged pace of futile progress, the fact also remains that Corona is just a blip in the history of mankind. The planet has been plagued by multitude of vicissitudes over centuries and the fittest have always survived. The Malthusian Theory of Population and food growth is likely to self-correct the populations over long period of time and while we may continue to call this China Virus or whatever, the humanity has brought this upon itself and this is likely to disappear as rapidly as it emerged and created a havoc.

Not only are some of our nations dogmatic and doctrinated – the ones that have taken it upon themselves to cleanse this planet on basis of ethnicity starting from Hitler or Saddam etc but even Homo Sapiens are being cleansed by the planet and its forces – Call it God, Nature or whatever and that’s how time will be reset and excesses in the name of progress will be deflated to maintain the equilibrium of this planet. In economic terms it’s called reversion to mean.

So while everyone around us is calling out this outlier event to be a doomsday, and hypothetically even if it was to wipe out majority of the entire human race, it would still be a blip in the 4 billion years of the planets probable history.

So whats the point….

1. We have very little control on how the planet / mother earth operates and reacts
2. The fittest will survive and thrive
3. Momentary setbacks cannot be allowed to convert temporary pain - permanent
4. The economic sudden stop is brutal but is still temporary
5. The naysayers will be taken by surprise and trapped the moment Mr. Corona disappears – which it will
6. Progress is the only constant – Keep moving, learning and improvising
7. The old processes, traditions and beliefs will become irrelevant – humans and corporations will be required to be more nimble and dextrous.
8. As we see that everything self-corrects, excesses by us humans will stand corrected and everything will revert to mean
9. If adversity strikes and kills you – you are lucky – but if you survive – make sure You definitely emerge a winner on the other side (the meaning of winning will differ for different people)
10. The lockdown is a God-sent opportunity to appreciate silence, chirping of birds, respect the things that you wouldn’t / couldn’t give a damn about
11. Acknowledge that you really need very little for a contended life
12. Be conscious of an apocalypse to make you humble – but be hopeful that that might never happen
13. Treat your employer as your God – remember he is underwriting all risks
14. Step out into Ur balcony and breathe consciously- appreciate that Oxygen available isn’t to be taken for granted
15. Find time to forgive or seek forgiveness – its liberating
16. Opportunities to learn, invest, evolve only show up in adverse times – don’t miss these
17. At the end of each day try and be a shade wiser thru personal experiences or learnings from others – so Read Read and Read even more
18. Be soft on yourself by judging yourself on the measure of your intent, conduct and character and not the car you drive or the 'zeroes' in your bank accounts
19. Treat others as you would like yourself to be treated
20. Believe in “This too shall pass”

And lastly

Remember that all the successes and failures of yesterday concern us no more and all the unknowns of tomorrow concern us not yet. So….

Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’

Because this Corona is temporary but the power of human resilience and resolve is permanent.

twitter @manurishiguptha

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