Mother nature has sent us to the naughty corner
First Written March 26, 2020, in the midst of Covid and lockdowns. Included here as an opportunity to reflect on the opportunity we siezed, or squandered …
A good friend, Fabian Dattner said yesterday (in the middle of the Covid-19 lockdown), that it feels like Mother nature has sent us to the naughty corner. I know of friends in my circle who would explain the increase in extreme events (fire, flood, pandemic) in metaphysical terms, a planetary intelligence, the Gaia Hypothesis. I have other friends who are scientists, who have explained to me the behaviour of our biosphere as a complex, interdependent, adaptive self-regulating system. Whether you use a more prosaic or philosophical lens, we can no longer hide from the fact that our actions in the world have consequences. Whether you call it Karma or a planetary homeostatic feedback-loop, there is no longer any doubt that the choices we make as a species have consequences.
“Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have now entered upon a period of danger … The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences. We cannot avoid this period; we are in it now.”
Winston Churchill
I believe there is an emergent opportunity appearing (on the other side of the isolation, sacrifice and suffering from Covid) to think about our new normal, the ways of working together, collaborating across boundaries (team, organisational, national), caring for each other and making difficult choices when they’re needed. We get a chance to rethink how and who we want to be (individually and collectively).
Let that percolate, over the coming weeks, well have time for that (and hasn’t it been a while since that was true for most of us?). Start talking about the world you want to emerge into and create, rather than the one we want to go back to. How do we want to live in a world that we just might not take for granted so much anymore. We have a choice, to create the future we aspire to, or inherit the future we fear, we should choose wisely. Be safe and look after each other