Humanity Needs to All Start Working Together

Nothing shows any better how humanity needs to start and then keep working together for all our benefit than this killing, international pandemic, worst of the last more than 100 years.  Coincidentally, I wrote this on social media, again, a week ago. Also coincidentally, an article in The Atlantic rather makes this same point now.

Credit: Getty Images

Bhutan Is the World's Unlikeliest Pandemic Success Story

On january 7, a 34-year-old man who had been admitted to a hospital in Bhutan’s capital, Thimphu, with preexisting liver and kidney problems died of COVID-19. His was the country’s first death from the coronavirus. Not the first death that day, that week, or that month: the very first coronavirus death since the pandemic began.

How is this possible? Since the novel coronavirus was first identified more than a year ago, health systems in rich and poor countries have approached collapse, economies worldwide have been devastated, millions of lives have been lost. How has Bhutan—a tiny, poor nation best known for its guiding policy of Gross National Happiness, which balances economic development with environmental conservation and cultural values—managed such a feat? And what can we in the United States, which has so tragically mismanaged the crisis, learn from its success?

In fact, what can the U.S. and other wealthy countries learn from the array of resource-starved counterparts that have better weathered the coronavirus pandemic, even if those nations haven’t achieved Bhutan’s impressive statistics? Countries such as Vietnam, which has so far logged only 35 deaths, Rwanda, with 226, Senegal, with 700, and plenty of others have negotiated the crisis far more smoothly than have Europe and North America.

These nations offer plenty of lessons, from the importance of attentive leadership, the need to ensure that people have enough provisions and financial means to follow public-health guidance, and the shared understanding that individuals and communities must sacrifice to protect the well-being of all: elements that have been sorely lacking in the U.S.

America has “the world’s best medical-rescue system—we have unbelievable ICUs,” Asaf Bitton, executive director of Ariadne Labs, a Boston-based center for health-systems innovation, told me. But, he said, we have neglected a public-health focus on prevention, which socially cohesive low- and middle-income countries have no choice but to adopt, because a runaway epidemic would quickly overwhelm them.

“People say the COVID disaster in America has been about a denial of science. But what we couldn’t agree on is the social compact we would need to make painful choices together in unity, for the collective good,” Bitton added. “I don’t know whether, right now in the U.S., we can have easy or effective conversations about a common good. But we need to start.”

But then, beyond this killing pandemic? Other things we need to all come together to work on and against.

Climate change. Global warming.  Pollution.

What Humanity Must Do to Prevent Catastrophic Climate

More.

Poverty.   Yes, poverty. Everyone, the world over, needs to recognize that poverty is a human construct.

Poverty is a social construct

3 Ways Humans Create Poverty

Poverty as a Social Problem its Causes and Solutions

And we need to start soon.

Now.

Two Quotes of the Day -- On Socialism and Capitalism

"The good things at which socialism aims can only be achieved where industry is highly developed and has sunk deep into the habits of the nation. In England or America, socialism, if it could be achieved without prolonged war and industrial dislocation, could bring a very considerable degree of material well-being to the whole population, by exacting only four or five hours of daily labour from every adult citizen. And it would not need to be a centralized bureaucratic system, because the workers, from long practice, have come to understand the industries in which they are employed, and would be thoroughly competent to manage them themselves. 

A gradual approach to these benefits is possible without a catastrophic abolition of the capitalist system, and therefore without the very grave dangers to industrialism and the whole fabric of civilization which are involved in a universal class-war. But these benefits cannot be secured in a country as yet almost un-industrial, however much it may be nominally communistic, because in such a country the total produce of labour is not very much more than is needed for subsistence, and there are not, in the general body of the population, the habits, the skill or the knowledge required for a democratic control of the processes of industrial production."

― Bertrand Russell, The Prospects of Industrial Civilization (1959), Part I, Ch. I: Causes of the Present Chaos, p. 26

"It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a 'higher standard of living than any have ever known.' It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival."

--R Buckminster Fuller, 1963

Both men were and are correct. We just aren't so bright as to put it all into place and have ti work for us all, for humankind.

Fantastic, Even Important Article on Covid-19 and All of Us

I just ran across this today, a bit ago, on a friend's Facebonkers page, from CNN. Not only is it, I think, an excellent, brief piece but I'm also proud it was written by someone from our own, my own generation. Here it is in it's entirety.

Covid-19 will change us 

as a species

Opinion by Marcelo Gleiser

I turned 61 last week, and am now, along with millions of others across the globe, within the higher risk group for Covid-19. Before this turn of events, ours had been the generation that had, along with billions of others younger and slightly older than me, avoided a major global crisis.

Unlike our parents and grandparents, we didn't face the tragedy of living through two World Wars; we avoided nuclear warfare during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the Cold War. Now, our luck has run out.

With the Covid-19 pandemic striking full force across the globe, it's easy to stare in disbelief at the growing number of deaths. But the pandemic is here, and it will get worse before it gets better. How much worse depends on all of us. That's where the good news comes in.
The year 2020 will be remembered as a turnaround point in human history. Not just because many will die, but because the Covid-19 pandemic is offering us a chance to reinvent ourselves.
Wars force citizens of a nation to respond as one. When a country's citizens are under attack, they mobilize to face the common enemy. After the US joined World War II, towns ripped apart iron fences and collected scrap metal for tanks and armored cars; intent on beating the enemy, communities competed with each other in fierce collection drives. Fear galvanized action.

We now face a global enemy, one that doesn't identify its targets by religious, racial, gender or political choice; a virus doesn't care about maps and boundaries. What matters is that we are all potential hosts, irrespective of who we are or where we live. Under the cold lens of natural selection, the drama of life unfolds without moral judgment: it all boils down to living and reproducing.
The perversity of a virulent pandemic is that the affected hosts propagate the disease, accelerating the demise of members of their own species. Once infected, we can kill all who unwittingly cross our paths including family and friends.

Covid-19 will change us as a species. We must respond not just as nations fighting an enemy, but as a species fighting for survival. The virus will not wipe us out. But it is causing untold pain and loss, destabilizing global markets, and turning our daily lives into a surreal dreamscape. Our vulnerability and co-dependence are openly exposed.

Nature doesn't care about our arrogance. A tiny organism is forcing us to revisit our values, our divisions, our choices as we barricade within our homes with our closest family members and consider what will come next. We can taste the anxiety in our mouths, imagining what will happen if we lose internet connectivity, or run out of food and resources or worse, contract the virus.

We would be foolish not to embrace the central message of our predicament: that we must come together to survive, that we are fragile despite our capacity to create and destroy, that the tribal divisions that have defined our moral choices over the past millennia must be tossed aside for our own good.

We are entering the age of tribal override, the time when our species will begin to operate as one, as a human hive, working across the planet as a member of a living community of species and not as a destructive parasite. One tribe that embraces diversity and the common good.
We can already see the signs of an awakening. In Italy, a country devastated by loss, people sing together from their balconies, celebrating life and community. The internet helps, even as we distance from each other socially. Our children will miss school, their friends and teachers. We will miss our workplace, night life, distant family members, hanging out with friends.

Our global co-dependence is essential for our survival and for the stability of society, emotionally and practically. Where would we be without our health-care providers, and those who supply our homes with energy and heat, who keep the supermarket shelves full and the streets safe?

We must think collectively as a human hive, each of us playing an essential role. The first steps are simple: to be humble in the face of what we don't know, to be respectful of nature and its powers, and to work together to preserve not just our lives and those of our loved ones, but the lives of all of us in the hive, young and old, celebrating the gift of being alive.

So there you are, folks.  There we all are. Let's all be bigger and stronger than this pandemic. Let's work together. Let's come out on the "other side" of this bigger, better, stronger and smarter than we were, all across the state, all across the nation, all across the world.  Let's do this.

Here's hoping we're smart enough, wise enough to learn and grow from this situation, these events and this pandemic.

Be safe, be careful out there. Do well. And stay at home. For now.

Quote of the Day -- Sunday Edition

Entertainment Overnight -- Happy Birthday, John

I hope one day we'll join up,

and the world will live in peace

Hasn't the Time Finally, Finally Come When Humankind Realizes We Must Work Together?

Look at all that's happened, weather-wise, in the last few weeks, around the world.  Consider all that has taken place recently and that is still, just now, occurring. This was at the end of August.

Sierra Leone mudslides 

'kill more than 1,000'

We all know what happened in Southeast Texas and Western Louisiana at about that same time.

Harvey crashes into Texas and Louisiana

This took place last night.

Mexico Earthquake, Strongest in a Century, 

Kills Dozens

Mexico rocked by one of the 

most powerful earthquakes recorded

This, in fact, is what's going on now as most of us know.

Hurricane Irma destroys St. Maarten

Hurricane Irma hit Barbuda like a 'bomb,' 

prime minister says

Hurricane Irma: 

A Practically Impossible Storm 

Major Hurricane Irma to deliver 

destructive blow to Florida this weekend

But this is also going on now, as too many, I think, aren't aware.

South Asia floods: Estimated 40 million across India, Bangladesh, Nepal affected

Then check this out. This is what's coming up, for pity's sake, in the next week or so.

Hurricane Jose looms for Barbuda 

and other Irma-damaged islands

Not to be done there, with all the hurricanes and flooding and all that water, the world over, we can't forget the parts of our own nation, whole sections, over states, that are so dry and hot and what that's doing to them.

Pacific Northwest Fires 

Smother Region in Smoke and Ash

Rare heat wave bakes San Francisco; fires rage through West

San Francisco sets all-time heat record downtown at 106 degrees

Pacific Northwest Wildfires Severe 

in Intensity | NASA

Smoke from British Columbia fires 

shrouds Northwest with poor air

Ash covers Oregon cities, 

wildfire smoke chokes West

It's not just the US, either.

Seattle chokes as wildfire smoke 

from Canada blankets the Northwest

Keep in mind, too, this is only the last few weeks, up to now. It's only a partial list. It's not everything, like this, that has taken place this year. It's my contention we can't, right now, keep up with all the really large, jarring, killing and home destroying weather and Earth events on the planet presently.

So this is my question.

Isn't it time we all, here on this rock, here on planet Earth, all we humans, started realizing we really are all "in this together"? That we need one another? Rich, poor, old, young, everyone?

Isn't it long, long overdue?

Up to now, it seems this has, too much, almost singularly, guided us.

Link:

Disaster Recovery Should Heal, Not Divide, Our Communities

You Know What Takes Guts?

Guts is throwing off your hand-me-down, 2000 year old religion you inherited from your parents, and they from theirs, ad infinitum, and realizing and accepting that we're all there is and we're all there ever was and there is no Heaven, no Hell, no "God" and that we just have to and ought to do what's right and good and beautiful and fair, just because it's the right thing to do and because this is all there is. Not because if you do anything bad you'll be punished, not at all.

Guts is accepting this is all there is.  Nothing to run to. Nothing further, bigger, better to hope or plan or work for.

Guts is realizing and accepting that this, the here and the now, the way it is now is what there is to work for. The people that are around you now, the people that are around all of us now.

That nothing else matters because there is nothing else.

The staring oblivion and the abyss in the eye.

The realizing and accepting and facing this is all there is.


But that's too much for too many people.

Most people.

Far too many.


Do you have that much guts?

Do you have that much courage?

We Are One

From Carl Sagan, Nov. 9, 1934 - Dec. 20, 1996

Links:

The Carl Sagan Portal

Carl Sagan - Wikipedia

Quote of the Day -- Sunday Edition

“Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different road, so long as we reach the same goal. Wherein is the cause for quarreling?”

―Mahatma Gandhi

Link:  List of religions and spiritual traditions

For a Little Window of Time There, America....

For a little window of time there, these past nearly full 8 years, we had intelligence and calm and lucidity and rationality and strength and a lot of things good and right in the country. Not perfect, no, not by a long shot. But we had it good and right.


The first of humanity to declare "Nothing lasts forever" had it so right.

It was great while it lasted.