Corona virus has set me thinking all over again about how the technological advances we thought would help us have actually harmed us more.
How did corona virus spread so fast around the world? It was because people travelled in such exponentially fast speed than they are physically capable of. Aeroplanes took the virus to every corner of the world. If planes and buses and ships had not existed, the virus would have traveled extremely slowly, maybe killed a lot of people where it originated, but then died out in a little corner without harming most of humanity.
Yes, I am aware that people will say that modernity has its own solutions to its problems, and that a primitive society would not be able to solve it in the same way. Granted, a primitive society may not have even understood what was causing people to die, may not have isolated the patients, and may not have means to impose lockdown, quarantines, get gowns and goggles and treat people so that most of them get well. But then again, a primitive society would not have needed them because far fewer people would have died.
Aeroplanes that spread the corona virus are a prime example of how human technological advancement have created more problems than solved them. A superb achievement of human science, technology, and capacity,, which until I recently I coveted all the moment. I wanted to travel the world and that was my biggest dream, and of course only an aeroplane could make it possible, otherwise it would takes several lifetimes. But after Greta Thunberg's New York Voyage, it is common knowledge that planes are contributing very highly to carbon emission and thus to global warming and thus to climate change, the greatest catastrophe of our times.
Another example is electricity, the very basic fiber of modernity. When electricity was invented, humankind rejoiced at the end of darkness, and as it spread across the world, the people thought themselves lucky and modern and elevated when they received. In fact, is it a good to artificially extend our daytime? Altering the rhythms of nature so drastically has done no favours to humankind, as artificial light disturbs our sleep rhythms and alters our perception and psychology permanently. Is also disturbs the sleep rhythm of birds, animals, and trees, disturbs natural phenomena and heats up the world unnecessarily at all times, obstructs the stars, and takes away the wonders of the night time. Children today don't know what an actual night time. They don't know how dusk invokes feelings of fear, a longing for home, a desire for company and human society. They don't know that dusk is a time for gatherings and storytelling, and nights are times for other adventures: for gazing at stars, for taking solitary walks, for meeting lovers. They don't know, because night and day are the same to them. And in another time, "they don't know the meaning of darkness" may be hailed as an achievement, but we know now how harmful that is.
With corona the topic of rest and break for mother earth is so much talked about, and electricity is one of the things that contribute to no break for mother earth. never ever. And that is even without counting the thousands of factories that run on electricity, emitting pollution, generating carbon, and heating up the earth.
The list goes on and on. Let's think of plastic and rubber. When plastic was invented it was thought to solve so many problems. It was cheap, it was impervious, i did not leak, it was durable, it did not imbibe the flavours of whatever it carried. And today, isn't it the biggest polluter of the world? Something that the world has found no way to safely dispose of, since it will not bio degrade and it cannot burn either. And the number of aqauatic life it has killed is another story altogether, that alone would make it humanity's biggest problem right now. But it has done so much worse.
Let's think of mass production. Again, mass production of goods was though to ease the shortage of supplies for most pepole. Earlier, with hand production, people only got to change clothes once a year. And now, most people can buy one pair of clothes a week if they want to, clothes are so cheap and easily available. But then surplus clothes have piled up so much in wastage areas that the oceans are full of them. It is the second biggest polluter of oceans after plastic. Do we really need so much clothes?
Let's think of computers and mobile and how they have made our life easy, and let's think of the piles and piles of electronic waste that cannot be reused and have nowhere to go.
And the harm is not just physical, but mental and emotional as well. Let's think of the internet, and how people are constantly connected at all times. Initially we thought it was a boon, oh wow we can talk to our near and dear ones far far away. But it is harming us in so many ways: first of all our near and dear ones are numerous and are now spread out across the world. Even if you talk to one person in Nepal, India, Australia, Us and UK every day, that is five different time zones, and someone or the other is always up. So dedicating all hours of the day to communicating is extremely unhealthy. But despite that, it is also highly addictive. You might say it makes people less lonely in strange lands, but it also prevents people from settling down in their new places, making friends and learning their own coping mechanisms. This way people are going to be tied to apron strings forever and will never make a new life! I, for one, am deeply upset to find familiar faces and names wherever I go and semi-familiar phone numbers thrust at me
And the comparison and anxiety and depression that we get from seeing perfect lives on facebook and instagram, much has been written about that already. That's even without getting into the personalised market that insulates us from real life, the personalised feeds that increase our biases, and the deluge of nonsense which people end up believing as real news, and the banking frauds and porn industries that internet has increased.
Right now the earth has lashed out and enforced a break, and most things listed above, except internet, have paused. and we can see
how good it is for nature. Pollution is less, air quality is highest
that we in our generation have seen, animals are multiplying, birds are
rejoicing and all of nature is celebrating. We know that this is good for nature.
It's good for nature, and it would be good if humans learnt to do it, because corona virus has showed us so many other ways in which the modern life is untenable. Industry assembly lines have broken down all over the world. Hubei, where corona originated, used to be a manufacturer of masks, and one of the reasons for the shortage right now is that Hubei was in lockdown. And that is just an example. China is a manufacturer of many goods, and even more, manufacturer of parts of goods. Which means that the lockdown has led to a pause in all kinds of "internationally produced and assembled goods" that are not food or medicines.
Just one generation ago, we were so proud of this globalisation. The world is a global village, we said. Look, a computer is made from parts manufactures in a hundred different countries, we said. Even food can be assembled, said international fast food giants like McDonalds, who processed their foods in a hundred different locations and served extremely fast food. Even service can be assembled, we said, scattering call centers all around the world to provide services to the US and UK.
With corona, not just China but other manufacturers are in lockdown as well, so there goes our global village, POOF! The world is not flat, it never was, and those who believed it were fools then and are fools now, coz what goes around comes around!
Not only the production of goods, but even the social trends at this time say that we only have our immediate community to fall back on, and nothing else. With the lockdown, health care at home providers, nurses and other staff, have stopped coming home. Even OPD service is no longer available at hospitals. If we thought we can just earn enough money and get nurses to take care of our aged, ill relatives, good luck to us. Only those with strong community ties who are going to help each other out in times of need are going to survive this, and other future lockdowns (which are sure to come).
With the international assemblages failing, what are our options? Looks
like an extremely localised system, where every society is an independent unit, is the only way to go. (Yes, I am aware that much of humanity is suffering due to the lockdown, that many wage earners survive only because the capitalistic system provides them with daily wages. That not everyone is privileged enough to do nothing and still
get enough to eat, and that daily wage labourers are suffering the most and will be relived once the capitalistic system is back on its feet. My imaginary utopia does not see them as redundant outside capitalism, but sees them re-adjusted into new forms of local employment.)
But then, we also know that we will not be doing this again unless we are forced to. Let nature go to hell, but there is no way we will go back. We all know that everything will be back to superhuman speed once the corona crisis is over.
We will not stop traveling on trains. We cannot stop using electricity. We cannot go offline. In fact, sometimes speaking against these steps of modernity may be seen as treason. Let's take, for example, roads. Roads, which were thought to be the panacea for Nepal's ills and were
thought to being great development (which here means making life
easier and people richer), are actually causing landslides left and right, because the concrete roads alter the path of rainwater. But of course that doesn't mean that we can stop making roads.
And in that case, while we still continue to use electricity and trains and big factories and all the rest of modern inventions, everything that we do in the name of "environment" and "sustainability" and "earth" and "green" is just guff. If we manage to switch off the lights in our home or shut down desktops or decide to take the bus instead of the plane once, that is just a tiny, tiny, tiny dot against the ocean of abuse we inflict on the earth. Planting a few trees, organic farming, all of these sound good on paper, but really, it is how we say in Nepali, hatti ko mukh ma jeera. A cumin in an elephant's mouth. It will no make a mark on reality. It's not enough to do things in an environment-friendly way in a small scale, because the large world is linked and it only makes a difference if everyone does it.
The only way we and the earth and humanity can be saved is if we go completely offline, eschew all travel on modern transport and do all transport by foot (or horse or bulls), and live a completely organic life where everything we eat or wear is locally produced. No electricity, no electronic equipments, no planes or buses, no mass production.
Actually, according to Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens, even this was not the best for environment. Wherever humans went, they ravaged the earth. Farming laid waste to jungles, and altered geography and weather patterns forever. and hunting was the reason for the extinction of so many animals. The current phase of extinction is not the first bu the sixth, and all previous phases happened because of humans. Mammoths, dodos, and countless other animals, the earth lost them all to humans. Harari also has a little episode about Tasmanians, people who lived on the coldest parts of earth, but did not wear clothes. They walked and ran and let fire dry them out. Clothes killed them, he said. Because it was so wet and rainy there that clothes got wet, and people died form the cold, when their naked bodies would have warmed by the fire.
The kind of utopian society which neither harms nature, nor harms humans, would be one without farming, without hunting, without clothes, without modern inventions of any kind. Everything else, ANYthing else that interferes even slightly with the cycle of nature sets humans on the track of sin and abuse and harm to nature. Here, original sin is not a woman who tempts a man to have sex, but the first man, or man, who decides to use a tool, a lever to raise things, a stone to kill, a hand to sow a seed. Yes, original sin is the first tool that a human used to alter the path of nature, the first flicker of knowledge that sneaked into his brain (yes, let's go ahead and blame man and leave the woman out since man has been so proud of these inventions all these years) and gave him a glimmer of hope that he can change thins, he can do things, he can alter the course of nature and make it yield to his needs.
So the perfect society would be where humans live in small groups, like apes do now, freely
range across the world, change locations from season to season, going
north in summer and coming south in winter, eating only what trees give
of their own volition, only the animals that drop dead of their own age.
And let's be realistic, THAT is NEVER going to happen. We may give up one or two things, but no one will give up everything, not even me. Not even Greta Thunberg.
This might sound pessimistic, but yes, I am totaly pessimistic, and I think humankind is steadily walking to its own doom. In fact, it was walking until the last century. But with the super-high speed of technological advances, it is now running and leaping to its own doom. Sorry to end on a hopeless note, but there is really nothing we can do.
