With the current state of the world due to the COVID-19 situation and environmental crisis (global warming, sea level rising, animals extinction and etc), I guess what the world needs now besides love, is commonsense.
The world needs leaders who have commonsense, compassion, empathetic yet with courage and bold enough to make radical changes to turn over the earth's fate from self-destruction by human beings.
The earth needs leaders who dare to challenge our existing belief systems of consumption model - consuming, producing, buying, spending to sustain economic growth at the expense of the earth. This is because, in order to support this consumption model and belief, countries encouraged population growth as more people means more consumption and more consumption means multiplier effects which ultimately brings to GDP growth and good looking numbers.
Commonsense tells us that higher population growth means the world needs to produce more food, more infrastructure, more houses and more energy to sustain the population. That will means more forests need to be clear for land to build houses, infrastructure, and food. More oil need to be extracted to produce energy to sustain the infrastructure and utilities. More seas need to be combed for fishing. The high demand for resources from our mother earth due to excessive consumption had severely strained our ecosystems, causing disruptions to weather, global warming, ice cap melting and sea level rising which threatened human species survival. The virus outbreak was also due to the transmission of virus from exotic animals to human beings due to the consumption of wildlife animals which is a result of this consumption model and belief. Human beings are consuming way beyond our needs due to the need to consume to support the delusion of growth and wealth.
Commonsense tells us that this consumption model is not sustainable because the earth resources are finite. Consumption model also drives anxiety and fear into people's psychology as we are too used to consume and loss our ability to create and creation is the key to survival. Thus as the virus outbreak progressed, many people exhibited anxiety and fearful behaviour of buying and hoarding food and supplies because deep inside, everyone knows that the earth resources are finite and can run out someday. Thus people resorted to hoard the supplies for survival because we are too used to consuming and loss the ability to create for self-sufficiency and survival. We are all the end product of this consumption model.
Commonsense tells us that if we don't change our belief system, living habits and lifestyle, human beings are headed to self-destruction which many scientists and researchers been warning us through the decades and the dooms day scenario was also depicted in many movies though the years too. However we are too entrenched in group thinking and loss our ability for critical and independent thinking for commonsense.
Commonsense tells us that this COVID-19 virus could be air-borne due to the evidence of China had to resort to locking down one of its main city to prevent the virus spreading out to affect other parts of the country, wide spreading of the virus within the cruises and to many more countries. Yet the first thing our country leaders did was to tell people not to wear masks if not sick and not even a cloth mask as the cloth mask has 0 effects of blocking virus. Which in my humble opinion was not true as it depends on the cloth mask material. Instead of putting efforts to think of ways to create and invent reusable cloth masks with suitable material which may help, they disregarded people who suggested the need for wearing mask and shamed people who wear mask (evidence of one high profile minister leaked audio of mocking HK leader of wearing mask).
They continued to maintain this mantra even after some doctors came out to strongly recommend wearing masks to prevent spreading of the virus. They can attribute it to some reputable organisation advise, but the question is why countries like Taiwan, Macau are able to do things differently which help to prevent the virus from spreading in their countries? When the outbreak first started, their countries' leaders advise their people to wear mask and even ration them to buy mask and did not follow that organisation advise fully. They are able to exercise their commonsense to identify the problem accurately and dare to take bold action swiftly and proactively.
Whereas for our country, what we witnessed are reactive measures which they took actions progressively as things got worse... This showed how our country leaders are getting out of touch with the reality and unable to identify the problem early and accurately to take actions swiftly. But well, one thing positive is that they had the courage to own up their mistakes to reverse their previous flawed position. Hopefully it is not too late. Perhaps getting another minister with a good track record of handling crisis with commonsense thinking and bold to take proactive actions to take over heading the taskforce will help to put it back on track.
This COVID-19 situation had reflected that nations which have the ability to create is the key for survival in this new era. It is only through the ability to create basic needs (e.g. food, water, energy) then we can self-sustain during trying times to survive. Because when such epidemic outbreak, all countries will want to protect their own interest first and countries which relied heavily on imports and foreign workers will be the first to be affected.
For nations and human beings to survive, I believe that there need to have radical change in belief systems to shift from consumption to creation model. Creation could means growing plants and vegetation in a sustainable manner which could provide food to humans and greenery to the earth. Creation by using amino acids and vegetables to create healthy, meat-alike food so as not to adopt cruel practice of rearing and killing livestocks excessively to satisfy humans' wants. Creation by finding ways to tap on existing free and clean energy (E.g. solar power) to power up utilities to reduce air pollution. Creation to reuse and recycle our existing resources into something new. Creation with compassion and empathy towards fellow human beings, other living species and mother earth. That will be the key to survive in this era, if not within the next 20 years, we may be the last species to witness the end of human, flora and fauna on planet earth, if mother earth decided that enough is enough.
Reflecting on a post I made few years back about a children book review. It is very relevant at this time.
https://tingtingtimecapsule.blogspot.com/2015/11/children-book-review.html
最后只剩下钱，可是钱又不能吃。
只剩下金子，可是金子又不能用来呼吸。
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