Whenever I start getting depressed, worried, afraid, I think about the Earth.
Right now, the cars are parked. The airplanes are grounded. The cruise ships are docked. The skies are a little clearer, and the ocean looks refreshingly clean. The birds continue to sing, the flowers continue to bloom. It's springtime, and the Earth is taking a hesitant breath for perhaps the first time since the start of the industrial revolution, a couple of hundred short years ago.
Our Covid situation is filled with irony. Indigenous humans, so often exploited or ignored, lived on these lands for hundreds of thousands of years, with reverence and respect for the Earth. The path of "modern" humans, focussed on industrialization, animal agriculture, and profit, has led us to this place, collectively and globally fighting extinction.
They say it was late last year, in 2019, when the current incarnation of Corona Virus jumped from animal to human. It was also last year when a sizeable portion of Brazil's rainforests were intentionally burned, for industrialization, animal agriculture, and profit. Rainforests are often called the “Lungs of the Earth,” and now humans are struggling to survive a virus that specifically targets the human lungs.
There's a saying: “Hindsight is 2020.” We're meant to be able to look behind us and see with more clarity than we're able to muster for looking forward, or even for witnessing the present moment. The year is 2020 and while too many are xenophobicly targeting China with their fearful blame, others embrace the wisdom of Hindsight 2020 vision. We humans, focussed on industrialization, animal agriculture, and profit, we've produced this. The flagrant, flippant attitude that humans have had towards the Earth, and her beautiful creatures, that's what has led us to this place.
Scientists have confirmed that Covid19, like so many viruses and diseases before it, is of “zoonotic” origins. These are transferred from wild animals to “domesticated” species, and then infect humans through direct contact. Our insistence on destroying wild habitat, "domesticating" and mishandling nearly every creature on the Earth for the purposes of unnecessary consumption or entertainment ... it's how we got here. Socially distanced. Physically isolated. Trapped inside our cages.
What's becoming clear is that the Earth protects her innocent tortured animals. Those whose habitats are systematically destroyed, those who are forcefully bred into existence for the sole purpose of their eventual murder, they are immune to this. But the humans who have ignored the warning signs - the climate crisis, the cries of 70 billion confined land animals every year - those humans who insist on perpetuating the violence, those, and by extension ALL humans, we are subject to a different fate. We are not immune. And if/when we develop an immunity to this virus the Earth and her tortured creatures will already be working collectively, in an energy field beyond our comprehension, to manifest another stronger virus. Because, from the Earth's perspective, WE are the virus.
Covid19 is offering us an opportunity to truly evolve. We're all figuring out what's really important, what works and what doesn't, what freedom really means. Can we move forward with compassion and cooperation, rather than indifference and competition? This is our chance to restructure an economic system so fragile that it crashes and burns within a few days facing a new challenge. Now's our chance to implement a Universal Basic Income and end unnecessary poverty, homelessness, and inequality. We can transition oil and gas workers into a sustainable worker-owned energy sector, support small locally owned businesses, reject Jeff Bezos and his Amazon empire, along with every other greedy billionaire slavemaster.
This virus has helped us realize how important it is to preserve natural places, as social distancing leads us to explore parks and trails and beaches, now that the malls and shops and restaurants are all closed. Let's make a real commitment to nurture the Earth, stop the forced animal breeding/torture/murder spiral, take the climate crisis seriously and begin to live more conscientiously.
Or, we can ignore all the lessons this virus is teaching us, fall asleep again, and blunder forward with the unimaginative “business as usual,” returning to the corporate, capitalist, individualistic for-profit but “how will we pay for it” hierarchical program and forget the beautifully creative, caring, and collective imagination this global crisis has sparked.
Whatever we do, Hindsight will remain 2020. And years from now (if we survive), we and our ancestors can reflect on this time as the moment when Humans found and embraced their true purpose on this amazingly beautiful planet. Or not.
Either way, in this moment, we are awake. I pray we stay that way.
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