The Disease is a cure!
By: Jyotika Dhawan
Tags: Empathy, Covid 19 Crisis, Human Behavior, Spirituality, Corona

When you cant go out, go in ! Seems very apt considering the current situation. While the millennial's are happy trying new recipes or playing games with their kids, the not so fortunate are figuring out which line to stand in, to get the next meal or a way to pay a plethora of bills without a job in hand. Is this not perhaps the time for all of us to go in? Spiritually, and morally? Human greed has manifested itself in new ways, causing irreparable damage to the environment, to others and inequality has increased to mammoth proportions.

I read this somewhere recently ‘There is nothing else to do here except live. Now its upto us what we make of it. What kind of world do we want to see in a decade, or even earlier? What kind of people do we identify ourselves as? How are we nurturing the next generation?

Today as the world struggles with falling economy and meals and shelter for the marginalized in the phase of a lockdown, you see many organizations and individuals coming out of their bubble and contributing in many ways. But unless there is a shift in the mindset, a shift in our values and vision, this will also become as one of our achievements during difficult times. Empathy, is a very simple word. In dictionary terms, it means the capacity to understand , or feel, to sensitize. In reality, most of times we feel sympathy as you land up putting yourself on a pedestal and feel sorry or pity someone’s misfortune and extend your wealth or network

We can’t say that we don’t know what is going on, and timescale of the changes needed. This pandemic is perhaps an opportunity for the human race to save the world, to understand that life is sacred, to make ‘collective good’ a way of life, to love one another and that nature deserves a certain reverence.

People across the globe are becoming more Narcissistic. Infact, the top environmental issues today are Human greed, selfishness and insensitivity. Globally, nature is declining at unprecedented rates in human history, with up to 1 million species at risk, forest fires , loss of more than half of the world’s coral reefs , greenhouse gas, intentional slaughter, toxic waters intensifying extreme weather events and nature loss .The greed of mankind has led to grave danger causing natural calamities, climate change, global warming, regeneration of infectious diseases and great damages to the environment.

Pollution levels have lessened today as the lockdowns has trapped billions of people at home, birds are seeing chirping. In what is seen as humorous memes across social media animals seem to be roaming around on streets taking pictures of caged humans, and the irony is that while the skies look brighter and the air is clear, humans are wearing masks. Trees and oceans must be hoping for a lockdown extension without having to forcefully eat sludge, plastic and fertilizers.

While on one hand human’s are destroying biodiversity and ecosystem, on the other hand despite gains in global economic output, there is increased inequalities, human right exploitation, mindless consumption, wars, social and economic exclusion of people and the refugee crises.

Privilege is a very dangerous feeling. The fact that we have a certain amount of money, or belong to a certain caste, class, position religion, gender, sexuality, have physical or mental fitness automatically makes people high up on society’s hierarchy, and therefore an increased inequality is leading to more violence, racism, and extremism. In reality this privilege is not a right, but an injustice to those without. We owe to our next generations to shun this privilege and work for collective good. In this day and age of machine learning and AI, if we dont pass this key skill of emotions quotient and social intelligence to our kids, and keep running after marks and IQ, then perhaps very soon we will be doing programs and coding humans on Artificial empathy that is able to detect and respond to human emotions. It is critical that not just us, but our kids develop a moral identity. Empathy has never ever been more critical than it is today and it can be nurtured.

The disease is a cure. For nature, environment and the human race. It is an opportunity to reduce suffering, inequalities, increase interaction of our hearts and souls. It is a platform to work inwards on ideas, works of art, causes of passion and not just create, but act on a vision for a better world, which cant end at tokenism like ‘say no to plastic’ or ‘breaking the glass ceiling’ or waste composting.

At a moment when everyone seems distant, it is time that the world needs to unite, to cure the world, and more importantly ourselves. Let’s see the stars through our closed doors. The pandemic has told you what needs to be done. Now it is time for us to implement it!