And suddenly, it's not money that's important, but health.
Thanks to the fears of corona virus, the world is standing still, or almost. And likely to stay this way for a while. And then we should get back to normal.
Yeah right! During this pandemic, production of all non-essentials has stopped. And we'll survive that - we are an ingenious creature which always finds a way through. Except when we don't.
I doubt if everything will go back to the way it was before the pandemic. All of us will have learnt that we can get by with a lot less than we believed possible. Whole industries have stopped working - the focus is on essentials - our health and food and water and sleep, and to keep the population peaceful, give them entertainment (Bread and Games, as the Romans said). The rest is nice to have. How can we think everything should be the same? Because we are creatures of habit and hate change, we desperately want to go back to what we knew, rather than face the unknown. And that's why this article is in the Illusion bit - everything is constantly changing, including us and the illusion is that we can stop that process. Well, you can, by dying, although the process of change continues anyway with the left-overs.
Maybe we'll notice, that it's not money that makes the world go around, but effort. Effort in the form of work and using and obtaining energy. My partner has often said, if we got paid in pigs, we'd soon have enough. I've never really understood why one person with a maximum of 24 hours in day available should be paid 1000 times what another person who also only has 24 hours available to them is paid. Ah, you say, that's because they studied. So what, I say, they had 24 hours to fill as students and others worked to ensure studying is possible. Now, a studied person can contribute with their learning. What is so special about that? The amount of responsibility, I hear you say. Rubbish, I say. In the first instance, what happens when a person on a huge salary screws up? Nothing - s/he is paid more to go away. No responsibility there. What about doctor's you say? What about them, say I? They have the same responsibility as everyone else has, i.e. to do the best they possibly can using their learning and experience. What happens when they don't do that? That probably depends where in the world, but so far I have seen very few instances where Doctors admit to screwing up and even less often that they have to carry the consequences.
So, right now, we have lock down going on in the Northern Hemisphere. And the main concern is on Industry. We are already moving away from health to wealth. As mentioned before, Work has to be there so we can live, but we have turned that around to where we see us as having to love to work. I have another article in mind, around the theme of Bertrand Russel's "In praise of Idleness" essay on this subject.
I sincerely hope that this current crisis lasts long enough for humanity to be able to reset their life priorities. We need to get away from this paper demon called money and get back to remembering the purpose of life.
Comments powered by CComment