Is Our Survival Instinct Failing Us?

From Darwin’s Theory of age-old days when our ancestors rose from all fours to walk upright to mythology theory of four cyclic age (Yugas), human’s basic survival instinct guides him to fight and have battles to survive rather than collaborate and co-operate. Our instincts and response surely benefited us in evolving from cave people to millennial. However, it also increased the complexity of life as we become more civilized with borders and as technological advancement, concrete jungles, luxurious infrastructure and brands changed our individual, social and work life fabric. Not only we take pride in our achievements but we truly enjoy these complexities without reflecting upon the realities. Our functioning and processors are so hard-wired that we don’t want to give even tiniest of thought to how it can be counterproductive to our survival.

Then comes the pause in life when unimaginable things are on mainstream like pandemics, epidemics, major recessions or act of God, which shakes us and makes us reflect upon our thought process. It hits our haughty pride and makes us realise how small and insignificant we are in this cosmic arrangement. We start seeing things on macro level and reset our gears to Health systems, economies and environment! We strive, pledge and wait for gates to re-open and then again become forgetful with time. I really hope that we recognise our humanity this time and change our instincts from fights and battles to collaboration and support. A Global threat COVID -19 is a major warning sign for whole mankind and globe. It’s really important for us that we reset ourselves at many levels and learn some very important lessons as we truly own a bright future to our coming generations.

Focus on more equality – This pandemic has stopped inequality, a stark reality! Rich and poor all are treated equally in terms of mortality rate. The virus is not discriminating in terms of class, segment or religion. It’s time we learn that unless we care who are stuck behind, we will not move forward. Since we didn’t look after those who left behind in past, we need to reset our way forward and stick by the law of equality. A society and culture which is more egalitarian than status driven.

Ensuring community health and welfare– I hope that we recognize how important it is to learn to cooperate and be collaborative. We could use this opportunity to reflect what makes humanity and our lives precious. Health should be our top priority! We can be healthy and prosper not only by filling our house with good food, exercise equipment’s and filling our pockets with more money and parking those niche cars but by supporting people and community around us to be healthier and prosperous. Our small contributions in our daily life can make difference. I do believe that this terrible time can lead to a better world. Its unto us.

Designing ours Cities to avoid future pandemics and having better climate – It’s imperative that we try to re design our system and cities to avoid future pandemics. Right from regenerating, schools, hospitals, public places like community centers, parks and green landscape to conversion of car parking lots to vegetable and food farming, right sanitisation, preventing water logging, choosing walks for shorter routes, adopting vegetarian lifestyle can be some of the immediate steps that can rebuild our cities and make them cleaner and safer for our future generations.

Forming new institutions and supporting WHO – We may keep arguing and fretting around by saying that WHO is not effective. Or we try and understand that it’s not allowed to be effective. WHO is not only fighting COVID-19. It is fighting eradication of cholera, polio, small pox, tuberculosis, swine flu, cancer, heart diseases and many other communicable diseases. Is this a time to distrust and withdraw funding from WHO? I feel it’s time to have a completely revitalized WHO. Countries and government should strife to spare funds not only for WHO but for forming more such institutions so this never happens again to mankind. We have wrong priorities! We are ready to invest on tight securities and armed men to protect our nation but we are not prioritizing to have healthy nations with established and revitalized health organisations.

 Avoid Politics of Nationalism & Communalism

These are times to test solidarity of people, businesses, countries and government. It’s a global test of how much we care for each other and for this planet. Rather than playing blame game at country, religion or segment level, let’s hold hands together in fighting the global virus. Playing it dirty has never paid off! There are many more important aspects to focus on for countrymen to restart the halted lives of their community, businesses, country and economy rather than judging and forming opinions on who did what and what could have been done better.

We surely can’t undo what has happened. But what we can ensure is that this never happens again. We owe our youth and coming generations bright future, better climate, better jobs, better living and a healthy life otherwise what is this sacrifice for? Our instinct of fighting and having battles needs to be replaced by collaboration and cooperation so that both humanity and the planet breathe.