The first of two terrifying realities rush to mind when one stops long enough to consider what the underlying revealed human and environmental truths, realities, causes and hypocrisy’s are of the COVID-19 PANDEMIC, and what those who variously argue how to resolve it have to say about the future of not only human life but the survival of all lifeforms upon the planet and what other horrors these revelations suggest may still yet come to pass in the future.
Especially terrifying is when one begins to connect all the dots between the mounting angry, violent protest movements and pronouncements emerging in America and around the world that express sentiments of rage against everything from “COVID-19 vaccinations” or “Stay-at-Home-Lockdown” directives, to “Covid-19 Truthers” and “COVID-19 Hoaxers”, to the desperate needs of Wall Street investors and corporate-business types to push through a “Re-Open America Project” and “Reconvene The World’s Business-as-Usual-At-Any-Cost” to humans or the planet.
The second terrifying reality is what all the naivety, ignorance, misunderstanding and hypocrisy is about what lies and truths exist behind such protests and longings, especially once one has viewed the film Planet of the Humans, co-produced by Jeff Gibbs, Ozzie Zehner and Michael Moore. Many critics of the film refer to it as a dystopian, Malthusian view of the future where population increases at a faster rate than the means of subsistence and available natural materials of the earth to support it. The film’s meta-message is that whether one is using renewable or fossil fuel energies, if left unchecked by sane human limits, the forces of widespread disease, famine, poverty and social degradation will naturally increase at an ever-faster, fatal rate.
Taken together as a storyline these potential scenarios suggest how and why the foibles and ignorance of the human race will, perhaps, if everything doesn’t dramatically change, simultaneously doom to extinction the human species as well as many other lifeforms on Planet Earth.
CBC Radio in Canada recently aired an interview on its programme ‘The Current’ that featured Celebrity Personality Matt Galloway’s interview of John Eastwood, Professor of Psychology at the University of Waterloo, and James Danckert, Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Waterloo, who’ve jointly authored the book “Out of My Skull”, that speaks to the widespread issue of boredom that is being widely-experienced everywhere in the world by the general public during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Yet for some people the COVID Pandemic has instead served as a gift that has afforded them with more Time and Space than they’ve ever had in their lives to just quietly think, ponder and ruminate upon the direction and meaning of their own lives and that of the world’s within the context of the Pandemic.
A thought-provoking video to be found on YouTube.com, is titled “The Great Realization/Tom Foolery/The 2020 Corona Virus Story” that one can watch with their children and family as a bedtime story that will give everyone something to dream about concerning the pandemic.
A further thought-provoking follow-up to this bedtime ‘Tom Foolery’ story is to awaken the following morning, return to You Tube.com, and then review the full-length documentary, “Planet of The Humans” (I hour and 40 minutes)that Rumble Media, and its executive producer Michael Moore, have now made available, free for viewing, by the general public.
As one ‘Friend of the Earth’, like many other fellow ‘Friends of the Earth’, we are equally terrified by what Michael Moore’s film falsely attempts to profess is the impractical realities of renewable energies, like wind and solar, as opposed to the only other available alternative, which is the so-called efficacies of fossil fuels, like oil and nuclear energy. This is an especially disconcerting message delivered in the midst of a lethal Pandemic, for which no one knows how long it will last or how severe a second or third wave still is yet to come. Especially as the virus mutates and humans become lax in following recommended safe distance practices and appropriate personal washing hands hygiene.
At any rate, as is obvious in Canada, America and everywhere else in the world, as time goes by, more and more humans are becoming increasingly restless, agitated and bored with the immediate realities and uncertainties of their lives, with a desperate desire to simply resume their lives where they left off and return to their former’ normal’ world of business in the marketplace and continued pursuit of perpetual growth, to which the entire world, like zombies, has become so addicted to expect and anticipate.
But the reality that the Malthusian-caused Pandemic is pointing out, to those who are carefully listening, is that the asymptomatic effects of so many out-of-control human lives, coupled with the careless and reckless trajectory of the world’s societies that the world’s masses mindlessly continue to pursue, will undoubtedly only endlessly lead us all back again to the point where we currently are at, but with an even more dangerous and fateful outcome, whose dangerous curve humanity will be unable to flatten.
As the world plunges ever-deeper intro the Anthropocene Era, life on Earth now has simply reached a tipping point for which, whether the majority of politicians, business leaders and their followers realize or care to admit to, is that there is no going back to the ways things were, nor should there even be a thought of ever returning back to the same ‘ old normal’ of a world whose future has been so horribly crippled and hobbled by the three central pillars of 21st century life; a dependency upon the fossil fuel industry; the continued dominant existence of the automobile, and; so many perpetual growth models fueled by human greed. All such manner of human endeavours have madly driven the world for far too long with each pillar supporting the realities that underlie the Great Pandemic of 2020.
Life, and Mother Nature herself, instead are now offering the human race a gloriously wonderful alternative, which should be taken as a gift, suggesting to our human species the fundamental, seminal, sweeping changes we need to make within ourselves and society at large if we intend to live a healthier way of life on Planet Earth for the 21st century and beyond. We’ve demonstrated with our response to the Pandemic that we can attempt to make changes when it comes to the survival of our own immediate lives and now its time to show the same determination to do it for our Mother Earth and all her life forms as a whole.
As a result of the pandemic, in a very short time span, one can already see many positive changes that have begun to happen on the planet to the climate and to the emergence of a more civil society with cleaner air, less pollution, less congested, quieter city and neighbourhood streets, with wild animals and nature already beginning to return to take up residency in areas where they haven’t been seen for many years.
The meta-message of the-COVID-19 Pandemic is clear: Either opt for a truly healthier “Planet of the Humans” or forever perpetuate the same old war between a ‘Planet of Humans’ and ‘Planet of the Apes’.
Jerome Irwin is a freelance writer and author of “The Wild Gentle Ones; A Turtle Island Odyssey” (www.turtle-island-odyssey.com), a three volume account of his travels as a spiritual sojourner, during the 1960’s, 70’s & 80’s, among Native American & First Nation peoples in North America. It encompasses the Indigenous Spiritual Renaissance & Liberation Movements that emerged throughout North America during the civil rights era. Irwin has authored over the years numerous environmental, political, cultural, spiritual articles with a special focus on Native Americans, First Nations, Australian aboriginals, Israeli, Gazan, Palestinian and Syrian peoples. Irwin also is the publisher of The Wild Gentle Press. [email protected]
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