With COVID-19 on one hand, and swarms of locusts on the other, nature seems to have served us a double whammy this year, and we’ve only gone through half of it. As though ground by millstones, nature has stripped humanity of its wealth. We knew we were exploiting nature; we knew we were destroying our own planet, and we knew that we have been abusive and exploitative toward each other. We knew, but we didn’t really do much to stop it, so nature tumbled civilization like a deck of cards.
Now, just over six months into the year, nothing is left standing but Amazon. But as jobs vanish, so will online retail, and we’ll be left with nothing but the basics.
And this is the whole purpose. Call it nature, call it God, or call it life; whatever the title, reality is teaching us that we must build a society that tends to everyone’s needs. There is enough food and water for everyone, and there will enough be in the future, too, but civilization will survive only if it sees that everyone has access to these basics.
We have built a civilization based on exploitation, where nations, races, religions, and rulers vie for hegemony, and the winner takes all. We justified our depravity by saying that nature’s way is the survival of the fittest. But we have misunderstood the concept. It is not those who are the most fit who survive; it is those who most fit into their environment. To fit into the environment means to contribute to it, strengthen it, enrich and sustain it, rather than exploit it. We didn’t only misunderstand; we completely reversed the meaning of the term “to fit.”
Now nature will force us to start over. It will leave nothing of the old economy, the capitalism we so idealized. Nature will teach us how to build a society based on caring, sharing, and tending to each other. It will teach us to treat strangers like family, to give of ourselves not because we must, or because we want others’ to be indebted to us. We will give because giving will feel like living, and taking will be an embarrassment. Once our self-entitlement is ground thin, a new humanity will rise.
Posted on Facebook