Covid-19’s Agathokakological emodiversity was
universal.
It ranged from paranoia to pronoia
with too many prescriptions and pastimes.
For some persons every dawn was a matutolypea
and for some others it was unending extensions of Dolce far niente.
The lockdown
of COVID-19 not only took many away from various busy activities and grueling
routines
which ranged from extremely vital, useful, entertaining and meaningful to the band
wagon of boondoggles.
It
also took in many to look farther using Bayesian reasoning and be ready to make
reasonable adjustment in terms of priorities, post covid-19 possibilities, personal
life of pleasant and leisurely time with family, parleys into proverbial
Russell’s In Praise of Idleness [1] pronouncements which were prevalent all
over social media with everyone displaying and sharing their hidden talents,
new skills, creativity etc.
However, it also pushed some into deep worry
about, at least their near future livelihood, worries about shattering
disruption with cascading effects on the lives of many dependents of these
people. Though most governments and organizations have pitched into help them
tide over the difficulties to some extent possible.
There
were two stark realities: -
1. The
nature of the pandemic and its impact which took the entire medical fraternity
by surprise and Paul Romer’s concept of conditional optimism was the only
probable answer without any concrete cause or remedy in site for some time.
2. Its impact
was near universal wherein it gave an important message that evolution
[especially evolutionary biology -either with zoonotic adaptations or
otherwise- is a very important subject to be studied and human race has to
primarily know at least a bit of evolution
of everything à la Matt Ridley’s way-
his book Evolution of Everything] moves on unmindful of any of our definitions
and explanations and the best tools to deal with the emerging
world are rational, scientific [
be extension all advanced technologies], humanitarian and environmental friendly
approaches to encounter life à la
Steven Pinker [ his work Enlightenment Now].
The beauty of life consists
in the unknowns and the unending searches and researches –the unending process
of evolutionary trends in everything.
Growing up and growing out
of certain things are natural process of evolutionary metamorphosis both
biologically and psychologically.
The
ideology peddlers [ from religious and political outfits] and media sprayed some of the following negative
attitudes like dystopian rhetoric zeal, immature emotional doomsday
resignations, advocacy of outdated, unscientific (by which I mean not
empirically tested documented, proven and universally accessible methods of
remedy) methods hovering around in the name of much accepted conventional
wisdom, preening of one-upmanship in crisis, radical responses, fanatical
fights and many other irrelevant or irresponsible outbursts.
However, pandemic
taught that there is no panacea and we cannot deny or defy the importance of
anything and everything has to be prioritized according to contextual relevance.
Universe
was vociferous in its sentimental outpourings and also whispered some sane perspective
for everyone to involve in at least some amount of self introspection.
Talk
of value of art, science, literature, philosophy, compassion, family values and
health care, all resurfaced, in some cases merely as an academic outlook and in
some others it gushed forth suddenly from a pipe burst.
If ‘Death was a leveller’ as per James Shirley, Pandemic
was a silent universal philosopher who made everyone to relook into many
subjects and activities and what they must be viz à viz one’s life.
It
revealed the lust for life, longing for relationships and value of togetherness
[ironically when the wrong word was coined as ‘Social Distancing’ instead of
mere ‘Physical distancing’].
Universe is UNI+VERSE.
The
romance of this verse manifests through many broad subjects of study and
multitudes of activities. Ultimately, this
VERSE teaches us that there are no
more ‘this versus that’ demarcation or divisions but ' this and that' or '
these and those' interconnectedness, interdependence and interrelationships.
We
must realize that the following versions have become too redundant i.e.
Science versus religion; Materialism versus spirituality;
Tradition versus Modernity; Technology versus Humanity;
Most
of us are ambivalent and ambiverts,
now, with Covid-19 we are also ambi-digital
using palm and phalanx as well as knuckles and opisthenar.
From young
students to successful professionals were reconnecting with fundamental
subjects, debating about their importance, relevance and so on. I drafted a few
sentences to convey to all how every subject is or can always be of importance
and be part of our life.
Art must be part of our life so that we look at
things with sensitivity to grasp their aesthetic aspects;
Science must be interred in our sub- conscience to
guide our perspectives;
Compassion must be in our emotion to guide our attitude
with humanitarian values;
Philosophy must be in the trenches of our psychology so
that we have rational approaches towards most things;
Environment must be felt as part of our tissue and not
an issue apart and away from us;
History must carry the story of our pride of ancestry
and bring us maturity to bury the blunders;
Geography must sketch the photographic sketch of the
splendors of topography of our wonderful planet;
Mathematics must
reveal the tricks of underlying patterns of everything and enable us to revel
in wonder;
Literature must capture the inner nature and intrinsic
features of anything that it touches on;
Language must engage in eternal romance with increasing:- number of users, geographical areas,
the wide range and variegated vocabulary to communicate and express as many
ideas or events as possible in as many fields of human activity. It must have
the syntactic plasticity; flamboyant flexibility suited to both simple and
complex modes of expression, and an enormously evolved derivational morphology
and also must entice people involved in various domains of activities to use
that language. It must visit the harem of other languages add variety
and spice;
Sports must bring out all sorts of human
enthusiasm;
Music must bring out the intrinsic vibrations of
as many nice frequencies and create memorable melodies and hubristic
harmonies;
Religions and cultures must nurture ventures to
enhance a heuristic syncretism bringing out the interrelationships keeping intact
individual identities;
Professions of all hues must be combinations of passions
and/or trade off involving compensations useful for life/one wants and some
freedom in terms of individual space and time ;
Social life of all hues preferably imbues with
values of humanitarianism starting from firm foundation of family to further
extended inhabitants all around and everywhere without any superficial and
unreasonable discrimination;
Life is formed out of all these and not merely
funded by the world of commerce and trade or engineered by social engineering
of political ideologies or doctored to perfection through any doctrines, though
they too play their part in our life.
When
we become aware that everything is/was/will be within us, then,
we enjoy the world around us without any inhibition but with a sense of
belonging, sense of balance with sensible attitude without hurting the
sensitivities of others and thus we can become better person with less ego but
willingness to learn more.
Life's journey
when it sails with awareness in the oceans of all the above then it is a
journey of synergy between the composed inner self and comprehensive outer
world.
[1] Above all, there will be
happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia.
The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to
produce exhaustion. Since men will not be tired in their spare time, they will
not demand only such amusements as are passive and vapid. At least one percent
will probably devote the time not spent in professional work to pursuits of
some public importance, and, since they will not depend upon these pursuits for
their livelihood, their originality will be unhampered, and there will be no
need to conform to the standards set by elderly pundits. But it is not only in
these exceptional cases that the advantages of leisure will appear. Ordinary
men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly
and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste
for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will
involve long and severe work for all. Good nature is, of all moral qualities,
the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and
security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have
given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead,
to have overwork for some and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued
to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been
foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish forever.
