Sparks of 2019-2020 Coronavirus Pandemic : Passport to Change the Mindset of Humanity
-Uttam Poudel
This is the horrible time, in which the entire humanity is pessimistically leading their life in isolation amidst the fear of the grip of coronavirus that was first reported in the city of Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The domestic and international movement is almost suspended due to lock-down declared by most of the countries for safety measure, leading to the economic activities and the State’s mechanisms in a paralyzed position. Ironically, human beings are the hostile forces to each other. Since there is no any antidote to this virus so far, there is no other option to people but to remain aloof from public life. This time, the sense of hopelessness has ruled the mind of the people across the globe.
At this juncture, host of serious questions are being raised. Why is this virus trying to rule this planet? Why is so-called advanced medical science failure to avert this curse of humanity? Where will this virus lead the entire world to? Multitude of questions beside these, are coming in our mind. The sickness and death caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, undoubtedly, is the product of greed of humanity and exploitation of the natural world. It can be said that this mentioned virus is not other than one of the germs of civilization.
This traumatic situation will help change the mindset of people that the material resources and human labor must be directed not to collect capital for handful of people but rather towards the provision of basic needs and a good, healthy quality of life. It is because the plight of even the so-called rich countries before this virus is not so far from us.
This pandemic might have taught the so-called urbane people more particularly that of South Asian locations, a great lesson about the importance of village life. The influx of urbanized people of South Asia to village shows this fact. Although the coronavirus leaves no one either from city or from village, the psychic response of the mass is that village is safer than city. The so-called planners of Nepal can take this hostile situation as an opportunity to change their mindset that infrastructures of development should not be centralized in city to maintain ideal population size. The risk factor of virus is more in such locations where population density is high. Things would have been easier for Nepal government to manage the mob of city at this insecure time, if they had assimilated the idea of decentralizing the developmental works.
Along with the outbreak of coronavirus, the mindset of anthropocentrism also needs to be revisited. Anthropocentrism holds the belief that human beings basically are more valuable than other species in ecosystems, which is simply contributing for hostile relationship between nature and civilization. It is the anthropocentric attitude of humanity that has driven them to perform eco-inimical activities just to welcome to natural calamities, weather extreme and outbreak of epidemic\ pandemic. It is, therefore, imperative to understand that we are a part of nature but not apart. Nature is not something to be vanquished rather to be valued to maintain ecological harmony and to avoid modern maladies like the coronavirus. These poetic lines of Sophia E. Valdez, an American environment campaigner, tell a lot about the present condition of the world—
It’s time to wake up and see Mother Earth’s pain.
Humanity’s selfishness is becoming insane.
Soon her cries will turn to gloom,
And man will cause its own doom.
Mahatma Gandhi’s statement, “there is sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed” is also relevant at present. It is, therefore, imperative to give up the idea of reaching to the glory of advanced state of development being unaware to the nexus-between-nature and culture by so–called advanced human beings. It is because during this corona crisis, all the tall claims of super power countries are turned out to be a great fiasco. And all the visible material prosperities of the entire world are the sublime failure in this time of adversities caused by invisible virus. What can be more ironical than this?
Similarly, 2019-2020 coronavirus pandemic has brought Eurocentric attitude to the fore. Western and European people from the colonial period onwards have been expressing their deeply rooted sense of superiority in different occasions. This so-called superiority has recently been surfaced due to ever increasing prejudice, xenophobia, and discrimination against Chinese people and people of East Asian and Southeast Asian descent and appearance around the Western and European worlds. This is not only condemnable act but it also exposes the dark side of Western-European mindset, that tends to impose the prose of otherness for eastern people as “uncivilized”, “sick”, “infectious”, “barbaric”, etc. The great irony, however, is that China itself is being proactive to help European and Western world to mitigate the impacts of coronavirus while they are still under the illusion and deception as to what to do to tackle this dreadful situation.
This can be the right time for Western and European countries to think that this is the era of interdependence. During the global crisis, a give-and-take relationship must be maintained by the entire countries of the world to save this planet. The so-called tall claims, self-actualization and sense of superiority do not work at this moment, which they are expected to realize and understand to fight this evil.
To separate the healthy from the sick to mitigate the influence of coronavirus, the government of Nepal has enforced the weeklong national lockdown starting from March 24 and has further extended. During these lockdowns, people are supposed to spend time at home with their family members doing creative activities. However, some are violating the rules of the government exposing themselves into the public places. People should take this wonderful opportunity to serve the nation because we are undergoing with incredible situation in human history, where without doing anything, we are serving the nation. But people are hesitant to do even that.
Some people, more particularly, in Nepal and India, are found to be poking fun of this corona crisis through the ill-use of social media. It has double implications: first, people are being workaholic and are not habituated to enjoy leisure doing something creative and fun-filled. Second, when there is nothing to do, the evil rules the mind of people. As the dictum goes “empty mind is devil’s workshop”. This is the time, which we rarely get to enjoy the quality time with family members because we are driven by hectic routine life in normal time. So, we need to change our mindset being cooperative to government rules at this time by maintaining familial harmony spending a quality time with family members, doing funny, fabulous and fantastic things.
By the same token, these days, people are found to be pungently critical against migrant workers and those Nepali living abroad in the capacity of permanent residents. I have become aware of even educated people of my locality making comments that the PR holders and those, who had left the country for better and bright future in the foreign lands without serving the nation, are bringing the contagious virus from outside. This is an extremist idea indeed! It is disastrous to say so to Nepali brothers and sisters. It is their fundamental rights to come to their country. However, we should tell the government to systematically manage them to put in quarantine to stop spreading virus. The so-called blame-game will not help at this difficult time.
Now is also the time to change our mindset that government is exclusively responsible to fight coronavirus. Each and every Nepali should help and support the government through different ways. This is the right time to support the members of non-affluent community by the members of affluent community with basic needs. An American television and radio personality, Peter Marshall’s statement “the measure of life is not its duration, but its donation” is quite pertinent here. Almost all religions be it Hinduism, Christianity, Islam or Buddhism have highlighted that the people from privileged position must donate the people form underprivileged position. We, therefore, should come up with our golden heart to support the needy ones in this unfavorable situation.
Finally, the new coronavirus has been declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization, as the outbreak continues to spread outside China. The whole world needs to be on alert and the virus needs to be neutralized by the collective efforts of the entire world communities. The powerful country should take urgent initiation to counterblast the virus strengthening the basic research project, which is likely to enhance the capacity to detect, to respond, and to ultimately prevent or at least mitigate this pandemics. Aside from that, the world community should take this tragic moment as a lesson-learning opportunity. Certain behaviors and attitudes of human beings need to be revisited. The greed to material prosperity must be put aside by human beings and in the name of civilization; we should not be indifferent to natural world and the species who share it. The enterprises of development must not be the causes of the threat to natural course of action. The ecological harmony must be at the center of development policies. Social, political, economic and environmental justice across the globe should be the mindset of the entire world community.
*The writer is an Assistant Professor at Nepal Sanskrit University, Balmeeki Campus, Kathmandu, Nepal
