by Max Gould-Meisel

3.16.2020

For more technical information on the Covid-19 Virus, please research updates from trusted medical institutions like the World Health Organization and Federal/Civic agencies for real time news. What follows below, instead, is a new, non-scientific perspective:

This is truly a people over profit time in history. For many, this is a stressful time: those with kids and elderly in their care have many variables and worries to consider. Many consolations will take place in people’s careers and pass-times. The whole world has been forced to reconsider how to pass the time; no longer are sport events, amusement parks and travel a reliable outlet to pass the time in this fragile reality. The common areas of modernity have been placed on lockdown. For what seems like the first time in modern history, there is less to do available to the masses. Those in power are reprioritizing their measurements of success by having to adapt to the current market. When our health is at risk, it is fascinating to think that money can be re-evaluated to hold different energetic worth, that large institutions can adjust the value of commodities with the flick of a pen, and that when our lifespan on Earth is threatened, the priority doesn’t need to be the stock market or the national basketball association, but the wellbeing of the citizenry.

Now that humans are being quarantined, what do we do with this time? Do we take many, many poops to justify the toilet paper we bought? Sure, but we can also eat less and make those dead tree sheets last a little longer. We don’t have to use so much. We now have time to reflect on our health, mentally and physically. We can practice both effective hand washing and brain washing. Face it, we are programmed to live in this world. Society is a maze and our free will is sold to us as the comfort within the laws upheld by taxation. Have you ever stopped while walking in a store and asked “so this is life?” Well, now this is life. Now we get to face our mortality with a feedback loop of bravery and spiritedness. Now, new thoughts can permeate. Less is sometimes more, and we can take mental stock of the amount of ‘less’ happening in every facet of life. Perhaps during this Viral Environment, the next great book will be written and those words will inspire and save millions through its message of love and care. Perhaps relationships that are toxic will be forced to deal with each other and those liberated souls will then interact in empathy to the world once the Coronavirus vaccination is discovered. Perhaps the elder generations will finally see that the youth have been yelling about: that the systems which run the world are prioritizing the wrong expenditures of our finite resources, and that a revolution of mind, culture and planet is needed to ensure the health of our species.

What we are experiencing can be described in my term, “illness realization”: the understanding that we are all on this planet together, what affects one person affects another, and that lifestyle changes towards prevention will slow the spread of the unknown. We have to also face the fact that this “illness realization” is akin to the climate crisis. Put another way, the reaction to the Coronavirus is the reaction to the Climate Crisis that we all need to take. The same response that government and state agencies have taken is EXACTLY what protesters have been calling for: to realize that we are in a climate crisis (the virus will spread), that we are all affected by this (the virus knows no borders), that it will happen to everyone (we are all human), and that mobilizing to massively uproot business as usual and change our habits ensures preventative measures are implemented (reduce our emissions on a global scale and prevent global temperature increase).

Let’s take time to ask ourselves: where can I improve my behaviors to ensure the health and wellbeing of the planet? What policies are not serving my physical and mental prosperity? If there are groups of people telling me the system is broken, what are they actually talking about? We can increase our curiosity to engage and interact with all groups who have a platform, and we can reconsider our societal tranquility in the hopes of preventing more DIS-ease between us. So take a breath. Meditate for yourself and for the world. Be easy but inquisitive about your health and how you can live a prosperous life. Certainly we aren’t living that now, half the world seems shut down. That must mean something is wrong. What might be off about the state of the world, and your internal state? What new behaviors - like washing your hands more - can become part of your daily life to ensure that no more illness, negative energy, or hate is spread through the touching of one soul to another?

Many will not be fortunate to work remotely, but certainly by working from home we are driving and polluting less and this saves on gas consumption. Our monies are now being spent in different ways and this provides fresh insights into what we truly value as a species when push comes to shove. (Hopefully there is no shoving.) It is easy to imagine that there is a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions globally. Businesses are reducing usual practices: large events have been cancelled, and markets and trade have begun to decline. Practically, the normality of beers being sold at bars, food being sold at Disneyland, and services of all kinds being sold to customers is now a surreal memory. Priorities are shifting. Understandings are happening in all sectors of life. It’s ironic how the normal arguments against medicare for all and debt forgiveness, for example, seem ludicrous once humanity is faced with an overwhelming viral crisis. Our human race is facing en-mass the need for doctors, providers, and medical facilities, and only when those who can’t pay their way out of risk realize they too are fallible to illness does the need for universal healthcare become a reasonable policy choice/shift. In other words, those in charge of Big Pharma and Big Medicine are just as fragile to illness as anyone else alive. The difference, now with Coronavirus, is that those same people can’t rest assured they can pay their way out of harm; the spread of this virus as an inevitable wave of probability coming their way reminds them they are human too, and their health is actually their wealth.

This is a strange, unknown time in our collective story. We can’t pay our way out of a crisis. Humans are relying on federal institutions staffed with both competent experts and idiotic representatives attempting to fix global issues. And yet through the systemic edifice, people are really what matter. The time we spend with love ones, in good health, is an antidote to despair. The system feels too big to tackle, like a swollen network with complications beyond cognitive grasp, but the fact remains: the system is run by people and they are human, we are human, and we all need each other. We have built this society, these pathways of thought, and these modalities of conversation and culture. Yet they are falling short of the deeper, existential questions and topic we need to be discussing. At least now, once we are secure in health and find the time to do it, we can breath and know the Earth is taking a breath with us. How can we reset…?

So drink alkaline water, get more rest, keep your surroundings clean, eat whole plant foods, and take care of each other by understating we are all the same.