ON THE OTHER SIDE

Much has been suffered, tens of thousands have paid the ultimate price for our inhumanity, and many thousands more, sadly, will still pay the price. The pestilence that is Sars-CoV-2 has brought, into sharp focus, the grotesquely dysfunctional nature of modern day human existence and co-existence. Yes, the affliction is truly global, but those at the sharper end of this distention have borne, and are still bearing, the brunt of this incongruity are the poorest of the poor the whole world over.

Politics and political affiliations be damned at this point in human evolution! Politics will not save humanity; humanity, in essence, must save itself from the nonsensicality of politics. The drawstring that is politics (be it Left, Right or Centrist) must be set aside if humanity is to emerge healthier at the end of these debilitating times. To beat this pandemic, endemics would need to be banished; unity of purpose and oneness of direction are what would pull humanity out of this dungeon of hopelessness, despair, disease and forlornness.

It is a great deal disheartening to see the so-called leader of the free world and his conjoiners further destabilising the already wonky world order in these perilous times. What sort of human being, never mind a leader, would elevate political survival above the common good at a time like this? People are dying in their thousands every single day all over the world, and right now, most especially in America. Still Donald Trump is beating the drums of disobedience, affray, donnybrooks and disarray (even evoking the 2^nd Amendment!) by being the cheerleader of the hellions and cat’s-paws who are determined to break the chain of common-sense that says staying at home is the surest way to abate the chain of transmission. Yes, we’re all hurting by being restricted like never before in most of our lifetimes. Yes, tens of millions of people are going hungry (the disproportionate percentage of which are in 3^rd World countries!). Yes, the world economy is in doldrums, and millions of jobs are imperilled. What exactly is the alternative to our short-term pain? ‘Roaring’ world economy without the brains and brawn to power it? Not a care for those extremely poor countries whose healthcare systems are simply non-existent? The West, and many other countries in the so-called civilized world, spend trillions of dollars per annum on defence, yet spending a few billions in a collaborative effort to beat this dreadful disease is too much of a stretch for them! Where, then, is their humanity? Bust economies will recover, lost livelihoods can be restored over time, but lost lives are gone for good. There is, ergo, a clamant necessity for the nihilistic weltanschauung of Trump, and his army of rhapsodic, and corybantic agitpropists, to be defenestrated. An American President encouraging anarchy in the United States of America? I haven’t the vaguest what the world did to deserve this! If there ever was an epiphanous moment, or aperçu, in our evolution as a species, this is it.

Moving on, however. What is very clear now is that the world will never be the same again after this mayhem. What the world would look like post-CoV-19 is anybody’s guess. Would we emerge into a more equitable and peaceful world? Would the clamour of the West to recoup the financial losses occasioned by CoV-19 drive it to be, even more than ever before, aggressive in its policies, in monetary, humanitarian and ecological terms? Would inequality of means, incomes and opportunity remain a pesty barnacle? It’s a toss-up of the coin at this point in time, but the omens are not that great with Trump and his like-minded sidekicks like Brazil’s Bolsonaro, Hungary’s Orban, Philippine’s Duterte, and a few others of similar ilk, in positions of authority and influence. Not to mention Russia’s Putin, and even China’s Xi. The world is in a bind! Is it really too much to ask these people to err on the side of prudence, compassion, humanity, humility and sapience?

Then again, we can all huff, puff and bombinate to our collective heart’s content, but without paying heed to the ways and means by which we live our individual lives, the prospects for our revival and rebirth are going south by the minute. One hopes that we’d be kinder to nature so that nature gets to be kinder to us; the effects of climate change are real and we must not be held captive by the cris de coeur of the denialists. We must strive to save the planet to save our species. It doesn’t get much starker than that. To take better care, and cognizance, of our planet is simply not facultative. 

We may even be kinder to one another. What a world that would be!

Maybe, just maybe, 3^rd world countries’ leaders, like mine, in Nigeria, would finally wake up and smell the coffee. What is the point of impoverishing your people when, no matter how much you got stashed away in safe havens and banks all over the world, when death comes knocking they amount to zilch?

This pandemic may yet be a turning point in the affairs of the world, but whether it’s for better or for worse, only time will tell.