By Dawn M. Sanders
It is absolutely everywhere and spreading like fear itself. If one doesn’t actually have the virus or symptoms, we are affected by it anyway, so we all, in effect have it.
Going out with a friend for dinner tonight for my birthday got cancelled as my friend is on quarantine from just a cough and cold, so out of action for 2 weeks. My short story writing course was suspended until later dates, as was the course I was excepted on for Empowering Women via the Labour party.
I’m of course not worried about any inconveniences, if anything as I’m behind on my story it will give me more time to thrash out the storyline, develop the characters and coggle together a middle and ending.
I live alone, so social isolation is nothing new. However, I’m desperate to visit my son in Sheffield and am toying with the idea of just getting on a nice empty train, spending the little I have and just going up before there’s an actual travel ban – I’ve never known a more weird and wild state of affairs in my life!
A Case for Socialism
This article has come out and mirrored exactly what I’ve been thinking the last few days – it’s times like these that capitalism shows its true cracks and how the whole system isn’t fit-for-purpose.
I’m no expert on the world economy or how it’s wired up, but a world pandemic, a war or big natural disaster affecting movement and Wall Street and the western countries panic over the thought of a looming recession.
Socialism is a system that places services and production in the hands of the community to better the whole of society, yet every time a leader emerges to attempt to put Socialism into practice for a more equal society, they are halted in their tracks or stifled before reaching power altogether as lately with the likes of Jeremy Corbyn or possibly Bernie Sanders in the US as the primary season is underway for this year’s election and bid for the top prise of the presidency.
Countless Socialist leaders have been toppled and replaced with ruthless dictators in non-western countries such as Salvador Allende of Chile in 1973 in a coup backed by the US.
Capitalism has run much of the show since the preindustrial 17th century.
The beginning of the 80s brought the greed mentality and heightened individualism and with crime, social decline and moral decay spreading fear among people everywhere, communities or community spirit has become a thing of the past, even in smaller towns.
Only during natural hardship, such as a bad storm, heavy snow or earthquake in some poor third world country, does humanity take a turn for the better or worse.
Now with this global pandemic, communities are coming together and help is out there for especially elderly people who are at risk and are told to self-isolate.
The Environment and Wildlife
I watched a news segment on channel 4 the other night which showed how there were tropical fish swimming near the surface of the Grand Canal, due to the lack of steady flow in boat traffic which is popular with tourists in Venice, Italy.
Just think of the reduction of airplane fuel which permeates the skys above the earth on a constant basis, due to flights being grounded to prevent the spread of the virus. It will be a small but temporary relief for the stratosphere. Yet, will people and governments go straight back to the environmentally destructive habits when the virus finally subsides – one can only hope.
As the above article points out, it shouldn’t take a global crisis for humanity to take stock of its destruction of itself and the planet, but often that is just the human mentality being brought to its knees.
A child might change her selfish behaviour if all her toys and privileges are taken away and she is exposed to the less fortunate. But if all her things are given straight back to her and she goes back to be a self-centred brat, what lesson would be learnt?
The same applies to the human race on a mass scale.
Of course, emissions are only a part of environmental degradation. With even heavier use of the internet as people work from home or engage in virtual conferences, the mass of energy used and the threat of heightened frequencies such as 5G are equally detrimental to human health and environmental wellbeing.
It is worth questioning – when draconian measures are eventually lifted, cafes, schools and businesses reopen and the world recovers, can it ever be back to business as usual? After governments such as ours implement the proposed minimal working wage or back-up measures for working people, especially those in the gig economy, due strictly to the coronavirus crisis, it will be interesting to watch how society reacts when all the niceties and socialist strategies put in place are then stripped away with a return to job insecurity, people going back to work and getting back into their cars in blitz-like stiff-upper-lip resolve.
I don’t think the coronavirus will be the serendipity to save our pre-apocalyptic dystopia – I think it’s just the beginning.