The Covid-19 situation is EXACTLY what the doctor ordered

…for the earth.

Doctor Mother Nature.

Those of you who think this is a sadist post by a sadist mind, perhaps it is. But who cares about the definitions and perceptions anyway. They are human-made. And humans are dying. That’s the great thing.

Hurt your sensibilities? Drop off. Awoken your curiosity? Read on.

7.6 billion. That’s the number of us on this planet. We are spilling off, we are fighting for space. Well, why only for space? There’s not a thing we’re not fighting for, or against, and sometimes; we are fighting without knowing what we’re fighting for, or against.

We have been blessed with Covid-19 at just about the right time. The earth needed this pandemic at this time. Let’s travel a little back in time to understand why this, and such pandemics, are, contrary to popular thought, absolutely critical for the survival of human life on this planet. Sometimes we need to go back in history to assimilate how the present might affect the future.

7.6 billion.

That’s 23% more than the world’s population of 1918, when the Spanish flu took the lives of anything between 17 million and 100 million people (based on different estimates, the numbers are not accurately determinable for obvious reasons). So many people died, and yet we are so many right now. Just imagine if great pandemics, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and more such, don’t happen right now, how many many more of us there will be in 20 years from now. In 30 years. (According to UN estimates, World population is projected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100).

We will fight for resources, for clean water, for money, for clean air, and obviously just because we are humans. We fight and kill each other. If pandemics don’t occur, we will anyways nuke one another.

What will you do if someone encroaches upon your dwelling, pushed you out, attacks and kills you, makes you suffer? You’d fight back, you’d try to reclaim your lost space.

And that’s what Nature is doing. It’s reclaiming its space, it’s fighting the Homo sapiens, who have destroyed it, who, though Nature is absolutely essential to their own survival, continue to demolish their very Mother, their giver, with impunity. As goes a Spanish proverb, God always forgives, man sometimes forgives but nature never forgives. It’s the wrath of the Mother unleashed upon our species, and our species needs much more of this wrath, rather than love, of our Mother. For our own survival. For the survival of humankind.

Finally, the earth is getting to breathe. Animals and birds are reclaiming their spaces humans have encroached. Sightings around the world have been made of animals walking across airport tarmacs, on city streets, in the waters of Venice. The rivers have cleaned themselves up (the key word being themselves, for we humans have been unable to do so). It’s great to be able to see the bright blue sky during the day, and the stars in the night sky in a place like Delhi (counted 25 one night, when in normal times barely 2-3 are visible). Nature is resplendent and pure if only humans do not interfere with it. But we cannot live in conjunction with it, without harming it.

We might be Nature’s children, but we are its worst children. Just look at what we have done to our siblings. The cages the poultry industry confines its hens to are so small that the birds are often unable to flap their wings or stand fully erect. Many dairy cows live almost all their lives inside a small enclosure; standing, sitting, and sleeping in their own urine and excrement. We are so ungrateful as a species that we cut the very forests that keep us alive!

What do humans have to be so arrogant about anyways? Why do we go about treading on the planet as if it belongs only to us, as if we are the supreme masters of it? As Sadhguru points out, if tomorrow all the worms on this planet died, in about 12 to 18 months all life on this planet would cease. Suppose all the insects die today, in around 2.5 to 4 years, all life would cease. But if all humans died today, the planet would flourish.

And as Avi Loeb discusses, life as we know it is merely an afterthought in the global scheme of the cosmos.

You, dear reader, might think this piece is against humanity. But why are we kidding ourselves; we humans are ourselves already against humanity.

No, dear reader, this post is not against humanity. It’s for humankind. It’s against inhumanity.

I’m not thinking short term. I’m not thinking our generation, Me. I’m not selfish like that. I’m thinking of the wider good of humankind, of the survival of Homo sapiens. We can survive only if, at this stage of human presence on the planet, we face more such events of mass extinction. We have led ourselves to this point. We need to pay Nature back for our transgressions. That, or Nature will get back her due however she can.

Ecological turmoil might endanger the survival of Homo sapiens itself. Global warming, rising oceans and widespread pollution could make the earth less hospitable to our kin, and the future might consequently see a spiralling race between human power and human-induced natural disasters. [Borrowed from Sapiens; Part 4: The Scientific Revolution; Page 393].

We exist in Nature. We can’t fight it. Humans’ gross stupidity has got us here. And now, it’s payback time. I’m presenting a grim situation, yes, but the situation has been grim for a long while now. The situation is not grim because of the Corona pandemic; it’s grim because of Homo sapiens. We are the disease, not Covid-19. We are the virus, and Corona is Nature’s cure against it.

We should be thankful for this time we have been given, locked inside our homes, many of us with our loved ones, getting time off offices, getting time to pursue our long-forgotten hobbies and reviving those passions. This is a great opportunity. We won’t get this time back again. Cherish it while it lasts. I, for one, know I don’t want this to end. There’s nothing to complain or fret about; indeed, everything to cheer during this time.

We are treating Covid-19 as a health situation, people say it is bad for our health. On the contrary, it is good for our health. We are taking in purer air, we are eating healthy and less junk, our ears are getting a respite from all the noise the humdrum of daily normal life makes, and we are not stressing ourselves out getting stuck in traffic.

So, I say, buck up, sit back, and let the catastrophes begin. It’s the win of good over evil, something we all root for, don’t we?

Hail Doctor Mother Nature!

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