We will survive the virus, especially if we learn the lessons of the pandemic

Question from the Internet:

“Will we survive COVID and 2020? This year isn’t looking so good.”

We will survive this way or another, but we can choose the “manner of our survival”.

So far we haven’t “listened” to the virus, we haven’t been willing to learn the lessons of the pandemic and the subsequent crisis. Each time the virus infection subsides we stubbornly try to return to “normal” only to see a new wave of the virus appearing again.

We are still refusing to look behind the scenes and examine if that “normal” we used to exist in is truly “normal” and worthwhile to return to.

Up to this point, Humanity has been blindly, instinctively developing, driven by an inherently egocentric, exploitative, excessively consuming, and ruthlessly competing nature. It is irrelevant what political ideology, philosophy, governing, or economic system we used, all Human systems, civilizations were built on self-service and the exploitation of others, while recklessly, endlessly depleting Nature’s resources ignoring the consequences.

This unnatural, unsustainable Human system has been in perpetual crisis already for decades. The virus pulled the carpet from underneath our feet, preventing any manipulations, false actions to cover the crisis any longer, while also showing us how much we are locked into a closed, interdependent world.

Thus we can survive only if we start scaling down to a lifestyle within the optimal parameters of natural necessities and available resources, while we rebuild Human societies based on mutually responsible and mutually complementing cooperation — above and despite all our differences, distrust, without suppressing, erasing anything.

So if at least a crucial minority, “critical mass” (usually 15–20% of any given population) is ready to learn from these lessons and apply critical self-assessment, becoming ready to change themselves — instead of changing others or the society, politicians, economy — then we have a hope to survive the virus and the crisis in a positive, hopeful, constructive way.

If we still do not have enough people to start a new, conscious development by changing themselves, then increasing blows and intolerable suffering will push us towards survival, changing against our will.