Tom DiGrazia, who is a member of Conflict Resolution Alliance (CRA), wrote the following essay, and thought it may be useful to share with the rest of the CRA membership. Please note that the views and opinions expressed in Tom’s essay are exclusively his own, and do not necessarily reflect a policy or position of the Conflict Resolution Alliance (CRA) membership, or the Board of Directors and Officers of CRA. That being said, we appreciate Tom’s thought-provoking ideas in response to the turbulent times we are all facing. Thank you, Tom!
THE CORONA VIRUS (COVID-19) PANDEMIC: CHAOS OR OPPORTUNITY?
Some Background
A formidable enemy has invaded our world. It is a pathogen called the Corona Virus. The Virus first appeared in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where nine million Chinese reside. It is believed that the Virus was developed in bats and passed on to small mammals that are considered delicacies, and sold in open-air food markets for human consumption.
The Chinese government suppressed news of the outbreak of the Virus for weeks, thereby allowing the Virus to spread throughout Wuhan, and then to the rest of China. Given the commercial and travel interconnections between citizens of different countries, the Virus has turned into a pandemic, spreading to almost every nation on the Planet.
Thousands of people have died in China, Italy and France, and soon in the US. The world’s response to the pandemic has been mostly slow, especially in the US, where the present administration has through inadvertence, incompetence and design hidden the Virus truth and its potentially dire implications from Americans. NY, California and Washington State have been particularly hard hit with thousands already dead. The present occupant of the White House has early on in his administration dismantled a key Center for Disease Control medical component that had previously been charged with preparing for and monitoring viral disasters and pandemics in this country and the globe. We are lacking protective gear for frontline medical personnel such as gowns and masks, as well as adequate numbers of hospital beds, respirators, Corona viral test kits and medical personnel to handle the expectant onslaught of sick patients with serious and life threatening respiratory Virus related illness.
In the absence of federal government preparation and leadership, our nation is slowly locking down medically, culturally and economically. Restaurants, bars, theaters, and consumer retail outlets have closed. States are now ordering their citizens to shelter in place, avoid social gatherings and distance themselves from physical contact with others. We are told to continuously and thoroughly wash our hands and hydrate in order to avoid contamination and viral infection. Elders and those with preexisting medical conditions that impair their immune systems are particularly vulnerable to Corona. We humans around the world show our love, compassion, empathy, kindness, and sympathy for others through physical touching—handshakes, kissing and hugging. Physical touching is one of our cognitive brain portals, where our prana—or life force, joins with the spirit and soul of another. This is the sweet spot of human existence: That place of union between and among human beings and all sentient creatures. We are now bereft of this essential oxytocin producing human outlet for our emotional response to others.
The Stock Market has crashed. Great numbers of people are now, or will shortly be, unemployed. Schools are closed and will be closed for undetermined periods of time. Sporting and recreational events are now cancelled. Those who can or must work are hard pressed to figure out what to do with their children with schools closed and daycare either unavailable or unaffordable.
Overnight, we have become a world and nation who are isolated in their homes, where people conflict over purchasing toilet paper and face masks–while stressing over how to pay the rent or mortgage, and we are incredibly dependent on social media, smart phones and the Internet for human connection. Unemployment in America has reached epic proportions not experienced since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Correctional facilities are viral time bombs, with overcrowding and preexisting negative health conditions creating extensive traps for disease and death among inmates.
National leadership to combat this disease is either totally absent, lacking intelligence and compassion, ad hoc, or stumbling from one propagandized presidential press conference to another. Our country’s vast arsenal of the most destructive weapons ever assembled is hapless, useless in the face of this invisible adversary. Inadequate numbers of first medical and other supportive responders, lacking sufficient personal protective gear, are at high risk of infection and death. If first responders become sick themselves, who will respond to the potential thousands of people calling out for assistance?
Hospitals will soon be overwhelmed for lack of available beds for the ballooning number of Corona virus patients, especially patients needing critical intensive care. If our hospitals and first responders are unable to remain on the front lines of treating the growing tsunami of sick and critically ill Corona patients, we will experience a pandemic rivaling the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 that killed over 675,000 Americans (more than the combined US fatalities of WW I and II and the Vietnam War) and fifty million people worldwide. As our farmers become sick, who will produce our food?
Our Opportunity?
One could easily rattle on about the dire human challenge we face from this disease, assigning blame and judgments for perceived leadership, political, social, economic and spiritual failures both individual and collective. Or we can spin the ever multi-faceted crystal of human perspective and balance the above disastrous algorithm. To put it another way: Is the pandemic health crisis we face our human descent into chaos and permanent lack of human ease in the body, mind and spirit or an opportunity for much needed social, environmental, economic, political change on the individual, national and world levels?
To begin, let’s paraphrase an interesting thought floating in the Internet universe ether: We Humans are really the virus and Corona the antidote.
For instance, for decades scientists and others have shouted warnings that we humans are overpopulating Mother Earth and recklessly consuming dwindling natural resources. We are fast approaching a world population of eight billion earthlings. Perhaps the Corona virus social and economic timeout will allow all of us time to reflect on the existential threat posed by overpopulation and, most importantly, take more effective action to reduce population growth and greedy, environmentally dangerous consumption of resources.
This period of national and world-enforced contemplation will help us to see that we humans –and indeed, all life on our Planet, are really one evolving and connected living organism. The decades old metaphoric concept swept away from the ever-busy forefront of our daily human consciousness that the beating of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil effects the environment, and hence human activity, around the globe has new experiential relevance for us. Compare this metaphor with the fact that it is believed a non-symptomatic Corona Virus bat carrier, bit a small mammal culturally prized by the Chinese living on the other side of the world from us, that was consumed by a human from a Wuhan open air food market has now spread a deadly viral infection to tens of thousands of people, and potentially millions, in almost every country on the Planet. This CV-19 reality-metaphor is not a random butterfly flapping its wings; it is our new everyday norm.
Perhaps with this opportunity for reflection and more focused mindfulness—more space between our ever-cascading thoughts, we can more effectively consider the multitude of issues we face in our nation and world. Issues such as economic inequality among people, addressing the climate crisis, fashioning a more environmentally sensitive world, gender inequality, our nation’s slave past and present lingering racism, gun violence, immigration, justice and correctional reform, homelessness, medical health (insurance) insecurity and, existentially for us humans (and the other sentient creatures that we hold dominion over and are evolutionarily and environmentally interdependent with), our inability to realize and become Un Solo Popolo or All One People—connected together in time and space, as we zoom through our Universe with our rendezvous with destiny.
Finally, we just may have an opportunity to parse out what’s really important to us humans as the 21st century rages by us: like family, children, friends, music, dance, art, creative work, food and home security, health and well-being, peace, love, and the hallmark of human survival through the eons—human connection and reciprocal kindness. As the I Ching-The Chinese Book of Changes has always wisely maintained: Crisis is another word for opportunity.
Tom DiGrazia
March 22,2020
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