The first known and confirmed case of Corona Virus (COVID-19) was detected in December 2019, in the city of Wuhan, in China. From that moment on, we have seen the unfolding of all the darkest shades of the current human behavior.
Initially, we’ve witnessed the egoism and disinterest of those who looked at this adversity with “distant eyes”, similar to what happens when wars in other parts of the world are shown and described on TV, internet or newspapers. Soon after, the growing disaster in China spurred racism across many countries. The strongest argument used outside of China to justify what was occurring in the initial epicenter, was the stereotyped culinary habits of the inhabitants of Wuhan, and the Chinese in general.
But viruses are different from wars, they move within the air, don’t care of artificial borders and don’t discriminate against human races. They only care of reproducing themselves wherever possible, leveraging all human beings. As of today, viruses have a much better “awareness” of human species as one entity rather than people themselves.
Moreover, we live in a globalized planet, super connected through technology and means of transportation. In 2019 more than 4.5 billion passengers traveled across the sky. If we consider that during the steady years of the 2008 Great Recession the number of passengers were roughly 2.5 billion, we have almost doubled the amount of travelers in about 10 years! And the forecast – before Coronavirus – was to keep growing in the next years.
Because of the huge worldwide interconnection, soon, other infections started showing up outside China. From there, the initial “distant eyes” attitude changed into uneasiness as it begun hitting close to home. Then, racism was also soon almost forgotten as everyone started fearing contamination and being alarmed for the lives of themselves and their loved ones. It was a well-founded distress: on March 13th 2020, WHO proclaimed Coronavirus a pandemic… declaring that “COVID-19 has sickened more than 121,000 people and killed over 4,300 people”. From that moment, the geographic propagation and the human deaths has amplified dramatically, on a daily basis, and no one knows when it will be resolved.
Despite the increasing cases, many countries continued to disregard and/or minimize the worldwide emergency. Slowly – at the speed of a snail – consciousness disembarked, and at last the whole world – sluggishly and un-fluidly; started sharing information, best practices, medical advice and scientific studies. We don’t know yet how the pandemic will evolve, but hopefully someone will find a solution rapidly. Scientists are working hard to find a cure and a vaccine, but as of this moment, we are still empty handed.
What is our main reflection looking at the dynamics briefly summarized above?
The time wasted, the lack of cooperation, the uncoordinated efforts, the unnecessary spreading of the Coronavirus are just vibrant examples of how current society’s predominant values DO NOT WORK!
In a world where human beings don’t see themselves as a whole, this is exactly what happens.
If we don’t start thinking and acting as one and if we don’t dissolve the economic, social, ethnic, cultural barriers built by our ancestors, we could become extinct from Earth very quickly! This could happen precipitously, as soon as we might have to face anything unpredictable and unfavorable that requires coordination, common-thinking, sense of unity, solidarity, cohesion and clear organization: in short, consciousness of being a holistic interconnected community. Hopefully, COVID-19 won’t be one of those circumstances.
We believe that, sooner or later, a holistic approach will replace today’s self-centered society, because it’s the right thing to happen from an evolutionary standpoint. A world where catastrophes, like Coronavirus, can still happen, but can be faced with the utmost sense of community, coordination and effectiveness.
Project Humanity 7.0 strives to help people accelerate the mental jump from the current system – dominated by selfishness and un-constructive rivalry –, to a universal system – that looks at the human species as a whole and is based on a constructive competition. A concrete model, not utopian.
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