Humanity still lives in ignorance of its self-destruction.
I am still shocked when I hear people say that they can’t wait to “get back to normal” after this COVID-19 pandemic. I suppose it was a normal thing to say one year ago when we were still naive about where it was taking us. But it’s been a long time, and I assumed that like me, the rest of humanity had woken up. I must have assumed wrong.
We are a collective. Humanity isn’t some random phenomenon that is separate from the rest of the universe. I know it’s hard. I know that everywhere you turn, messages come at you telling you that you’re disconnected and nothing is meaningful, but this just isn’t the case. Even if you’re a materialist, you have to admit that humanity is one with nature.
So, why on God’s green Earth are we still acting like this pandemic is just a mishap, and we have to get rid of it to go back to our old lives? Surely, something in your subconscious by now has been whispering: “We did this to ourselves.” And sometimes it isn’t a whisper because every now and then, this message makes it to mainstream media.
Earth produced this. Humanity collectively produced this. We were destroying this planet. We were destroying ourselves. Those days need to be in our past now. This is not the time to try to get back to being mindless consumers who are helping to dismantle life on Earth. If you’re not getting this message loud and clear, I am shocked, honestly. You’re living in a twisted reality.
“Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming whether you like it or not.”
Greta Thunberg
Science isn’t the solution
In my opinion, this pandemic was Earth’s nudge to us to say, “Hey, if you don’t change the way you’re treating this planet right now then worse stuff is going to happen.” Some of us who are awake heard this message in March 2020 and understood. Some of us hung onto hope that it was just a blip in our meaningless lives and we could ignore it. We could forget it ever happened. And those people quickly became the people who put their faith in science to come up with some solution so that they could “go back to normal” as soon as possible.
Science isn’t our biggest solution here. Maybe it’ll get us part of the way.
Science is really good at creating technology that can help us ignore all the messages from nature — from our bodies, from our minds, from the environment. Science helps us live above nature, which in my opinion, is what led us to this pandemic. No matter what science does, it will keep taking us further and further away from real solutions.
What’s the real solution? You already know. It just isn’t widely talked about. The real solution is to radically alter our habits and allow humanity to change its course.
Let’s look at some ways to do this.
Mindful consuming
We need to be mindful of the consequences of our actions for a start. When you go to the convenience store and buy a plastic bottle full of water that you throw in the trash after five minutes and it eventually makes its way to a landfill where it will live for thousands of years, think about that deeply. When you go to the mall and buy a t-shirt made by a 10-year-old in a sweatshop in Cambodia where they dump the toxic waste from the fabric machines into the waterways, this creates your karma. There are consequences for every single one of your actions. Your first task is to become mindful of those actions.
Connection with self
Knowing yourself is crucial. We need to understand our place in this world in order to change it. Meditate and live mindfully, understanding your purpose in this world. Go into yourself. You can’t feel connected to your body and the planet unless you know who you truly are.
I’ll tell you what I found when I did this. I found that I am a part of a whole and this thing called humanity is a collective. There is oneness, despite all the attempts from modern society to try to make me forget that. We’re constantly told to ignore cues from our bodies and from the environment, and taught to look for quick fixes for anything that happens to either of them. But once you regain your deep connection to the self, you understand that pushing your problems away like this causes all forms of pandemics to occur — in your individual life and collectively.
Compassion
Humans love to hate. It’s part of the disconnection I just described. When you don’t see yourself as part of a collective, or you start to see strangers as totally “other”, this is when compassion is lost. Stop being consumed by fear all the time. Connect with love.
We simply must regain our compassion for each other. This is going to open doors toward realizing that we don’t live in a country, we live in a world. Problems happening across the globe are our problem. Other people’s trauma is our trauma. When we understand this, it becomes effortless to change our behavior.
Change your ways today
We shouldn’t be trying to go “back to normal”, we should be trying to change our actions fundamentally. Let’s stop looking to science and technology to be our savior all the time and look within. Become aware. Be mindful. Understand that every action has a consequence, and our collective actions for many years have brought us here. In honesty, it should be no surprise. The pandemic is our warning.
You aren’t a helpless cog in a system, you are a vital part of a whole and we need you to wake up and understand what’s really going on.
