Why did covid-19 emerge now, at this particular point in history?

Rational mind might start to argue about the possibilities – the wet markets in Wuhan, an escaped virus experiment from the nearby Chinese research facility, an act of sabotage in the US/China economic war…?

I suggest the real reason lies in the world of meaning, not in the world of facts. In bringing the whole world to varying degrees of lockdown the virus has choked off economic activity and forced a slowdown in the consumption of fossil fuels, those same fossil fuels that are bringing about climate breakdown, which we know represents an existential threat to current human ways of life across the globe.

This is synchronicity, not coincidence, it has meaning. The warnings are getting louder and louder, the floods, wildfires, refugees, collapsing countries. And now covid-19.

The message is quite clear. Humanity has to change the way it lives on the planet. Globalisation, excessive travel and movement of goods, excessive inequality, squeezing out of nature, focus on competition and war at the expense of cooperation and peace – all must change. Or there will be more, and worse…

The answer cannot be that coming from the siren voices who call to get back to ‘business as usual’ exploitation of the planet and each other as soon as possible.

So what is the message for all of us? Again, the response to covid-19 has made that clear. We are each isolated, forced back onto our own resources, rather than being forever distracted by the next wonder of shopping, technology, travel, entertainment, sport, political drama…

We need to look within, ponder, meditate… Are we being the best that we can be, listening to the earth and the world around for what it is telling us. Maybe we need to seek to re-engage with our soul or inner self, remember why it is we came here on earth, what is it that we uniquely have to offer. This is after all the true task we take on in coming to be born here, it was not to work at some unfulfilling job, to earn shed loads of money, to shop, to be entertained, to visit as many places as possible, nice as they have all been along the way…

We are being told that this going within is a necessary process, because our systems, paradigms and ways of living are no longer sustainable. Humanity needs to change, so we all do.

The call for a New Renaissance is now coming not only from the advanced thinkers of today and yesterday, but from nature herself.

This will be a revolution, you might say. But then, covid-19 is forcing revolutionary change. We need to make sure that it goes in the right direction, the alternative is the slide into a new dark age of trial and tribulation.

For me, this would mean political change, such as the recently much touted ‘green new deal’, such as fundamentally addressing the inequality in societies through means such as a universal basic income, such as more effective world co-operation and governance, such as banning all weapons of mass destruction, such as an education systems focusing on personal and spiritual development, not just training to do jobs. Thus will our societies, and individuals be fulfilled.

Then together we’ll keep a handle on climate breakdown and nature will flourish again. Then can we say that we heard the message of covid-19.

Graphs from worldometers.info.