A Clever Story?

April 9th/2020

Where do I begin?

Today is my sixty first birthday and I am trying to come to terms with the world in complete and utter chaos!

I felt 2020 would be my best year in decades.

So much so that in January I proudly announced on Facebook and to family and friends, my plan to make it happen in the self guise-titled theme of “Rise Up 2020.”

A year to which the promise of finally publishing my first book would come to fruition after ten painstaking years of plodding along in quest of its eventual completion.

I also started the year in the transformation of prioritizing my life to better reflect what I wanted rather than what I have plainly always accepted.

I examined ways to improve my health, improve my finances, and to change some of my existing habits that contributed to the looming global warming crisis.

Having six children and ten grandchildren that will inherit the planet after my peers and myself have become worm lunch, made me realize of how selfish we as mankind had become during only one generation. My generation.

I understood that the small steps made by me or others were not the solution entirely. It did make me feel better that at least I was trying to tread in my remaining walk on earth in a softer manner and having less of a negative impact on this beautiful planet’s environment.

Making far easier decisions now might help prevent my loved ones from having to make the harder ones later. It could also limit the severity of life changes they would face for my generation’s myopic failures to listen and then act accordingly and decisively.

Now it looks like my attempts were a laughable joke compared to what the world is facing in the awakenings after the Covid-19 virus.

Within a very short time period, a few infected random molecular droplets scattered from one person to another, and brought our entire planet to a grinding stop!

No military weapons were used to do it, no aliens invading, no zombies walking down the streets. Just a very nasty corona virus that reached every corner of the world in a blink of an eye, and has changed our world vastly, and possibly forever.

“We live in a global village”, world leaders preached to us.

“we do not need borders. We do not need protective legislation for each country to ensure we are not depending on one source for the things that are necessities to sustain our basic needs of medical treatment or survival of our citizens during a crisis event.”

Those are the words of globalists trying to unite everyone to tackling common problems with common solutions.

In its wake, this version of a pandemic virus tidal wave has left world markets and countries on the verge of economic collapse across all versions of political systems and in every region of the world.

We are a giant reset step away from the normalcy that I and others rose to on the day before the news of the first cases of the virus leaked out of China.

I have zero clue how it really started, and truly I don’t think anyone else does either.

What does that matter now how it started?

In fact, as I sit here contemplating the fallout of all of this, a few thoughts come to mind of how it possibly came about.

It was an intervening act of God.

It’s like God said to us, “Over many years I have sent the greatest minds of science, and commerce and human relations to warn you of the perils you would face if you didn’t turn away from the destruction you were causing to the planet its creatures, including yourselves. Since you refused to accept the alarming truths and recommendations my counsel tried to give to you, it left me with no other choice.”

“You are the caretakers I bestowed to steward this planet and all of its living things in it, and some of you took more than you cared.”

“You were not listening!”

Well, I think we are all listening now!

He didn’t even have to mention the breakdown in families, or the disintegration of communication between people, or the lack of human decency towards others that our civilization had reached to the bottom of.

That is why I am still up tonight, worried about the health outcome of people I love if they get infected with this blasted virus. I pray passionately that it doesn’t come about.

I am also up because the writer in me knows that we are in a shift in our world that will never possibly occur again in our lifetime.

Yesterday we were on the cusp of artificial intelligence becoming our generation’s equivalent to the industrial era.

That can not happen now, right? The damage to our world economies would not support moving in that direction, would it?

Robots however do not require social distance. They don't need to be isolated if they come in contact with a virus. They can simply be wiped down with a strong disinfectant like a grocery store conveyor belt in a cashier checkout, and there is no risk of infection spreading to customers or downtime for sickness of staff contracting it.

In fact, I go one step further and instead of shopping for myself and family, I will program my shopping list into my robot and send it into the store to pick up the items I need.

Based on some recent reporting, the computer in the robot’s mind might be a little confused by my list requiring one hundred rolls of toilet paper for a family of four for a week. Those might be some of the small programming details to be still worked to allow for the stupidity factors of select robot owners and users.

In reality, we do not even have to lose our jobs as a result of robots replacing us. We could operate the robots remotely from home, still in our batman pyjamas, and no one would be the wiser. No commuting, no pollution from fossil fuels, the endless gains to the earth and society are boundless, right?

Then again, who pays back all the money spent on assisting people through this crisis both medically and economically?

Also, having robots doing the jobs where human contact was trying to be avoided might serve a greater purpose if another crisis were to happen again?

If humans were already replaced and did other jobs in the economy that could be created, then it would have less of an impact financially when the next wave hit.

How many blacksmiths are there still employed? Or how many repair shops do you see fixing VCR’S or TV’S anymore?

The world adapts. Then people adapt.

Medical experts say that when not if this will happen again, the virus strains of the future may become even harder to resist, more devastating if contracted, or take even longer to find a cure for.

We need to be better prepared to handle more sickness, and the industries around that would thrive from companies manufacturing those products.

How many households in the world had a TV when they were first invented?

How many have one now?

In fact, some households today, if not most, have even four and five sets. This came about as a result of the relative cost came down to make them, as the manufacturing technology advanced, and the demand to own more of them went up.

We may say this about respirators tomorrow. People with respiratory illnesses already own or rent the equipment that helps them breathe. 

 During this virus the demand for the ventilators was far greater than the supply that hospitals and medical could provide. That shortage combines with the need to quarantine patients from others and provide protective masks and gowns to staff treating them to prevent the spread would be better served if the patient could stay at home. 

The demand for production of these devices could explode dramatically to fill a market for those who want to keep one on hand just in case they contracted a virus and need it to help them or their family members breathe and survive the next pandemic.

Our global structure, as it was prior to Covid-19, relied on mostly one country in China to supply the vast amount of consumer products that we all engaged in purchasing.  Purchases made with revolving credit and incurring huge personal amounts of debt. Payment of that debt requires higher wages to be able to make ends meet and keeps the system of our economy in full cycle.

Higher wages have pushed jobs out of the countries that could afford to purchase the products to countries that couldn’t afford them as much.

China was one of those countries and with their initial cheap labour they fuelled all of our needs and wants for convenience, and entertainment, and diversity of choice. A majority of all other jobs and businesses were connected to that basic truth and thus fell like dominoes once China shut down its factories to prevent the spread of the virus to other parts of their country. They also stopped or decreased the demand for fuel and raw material shipments from other countries until they got it under control.

It didn’t help that the continuously recycled 24 hour news of the devastating effects of the illness in China sent the rest of the world into a tailspin of panic to the point of over-reaction. It also brought misinformation, and feelings of false outrage for anyone who didn’t react enough to its potential consequences.

It also created new buzzwords for the talking heads to proliferate repeatedly ad nauseam over all social and media outlets. Flattening of the curve, self isolation, social distancing to name a few.

Social distancing?

Social distancing in the past was something you did if you passed wind or forgot to put deodorant on.

Now it borders on becoming social out-casting if your behaviours do not measure up to how people think you should act during a widespread pandemic illness.

I am up tonight because the world I woke up to this morning, as I knew it, truly each day this lasts, becomes further away compared to one that which no longer exists from the day before.

I am up tonight because I have no clue what kind of world I will get up to face tomorrow morning, or even the morning after that.

The pessimist in me says it will get worse,

The optimist in me says it has to get better.

The realist in me says, the world will be what the world will be with me in or out of it, as it always has, and always will.

I am here but for a fleeting moment in time, sharing my thoughts on paper in this journal and realizing that there is nothing I can really do to change any of this personally.

The realization of my goal for this to be my best year to “rise up”, for 2020, might better describe one that this world needs more to the point than anything I might see in a personal result.

Like the Phoenix in the Greek mythology, our world can be born again, rising up from the ashes smouldering in the aftermath of Covid-19.

Ashes that are the leftovers from an unsustainable world that was built on greed, and envy, and insincerity and lack of kindness, lack of tolerance and ignorance and denial of the truth of the planet’s sickness.

With the sickness came the needed healing finally, and only after we unintentionally removed ourselves from the outside world and each other, as a measure of safety in preventing further spread of the virus.

What kind of delusions were we telling ourselves and believing that the drastic limits we have imposed on our societies in light of the pandemic were not the at least some of the same ones we needed to act upon to save our planet from the impending crisis forewarned about global warming?

To our planet earth we humans and our behaviours became a virus to it.

The same contagious spit we would avoid now, that flies from the lying words of politicians in lofty speeches telling us that there is no crisis, or telling us there is a crisis and they have set up plans to fix it, eventually. 

Their solution?

A global tax on working people set forth in the Paris Accord, brought forth by jet setters with false promises, healthy appetites for traveling to, and dining and drinking at conferences on climate change.

Even they had to stop and notice what the planet was able to do or undo in the damages that we humans contributed to once we were no longer part of the equation.

Going forward I guess it is all up to us all together to decide if we are going to be part of the problem or part of the solution that nurtures our mother earth back to complete health once this corona virus has been finally defeated.

We humans are capable of such fantastic things and are only limited by the power of our minds to conceive it.

We are also in the habit of adapting to things once we have experienced it and the shock factor usually only has one life cycle in it. We may not have another time when everyone is paying attention and adjusting simultaneously to a new “normal.”

We have a big decision to make between distinctly different paths to choose from.

One can always hope we choose correctly this time around, right?

On that note, good night, I’m going back to bed, to fall asleep and hope that when I wake up that this was all a bizarre dream caused by some bad salami or mushrooms on the pizza I had for dinner.

Or perhaps it was just a cleverly made up story written by a guy who couldn’t fall asleep one night?

Nah, no one would ever believe it.