COVID-19 Catalyzed Disruptions to Life and Livelihood

COVID-19 is on its way to teach us that no one is safe until all are safe. Nature has stepped in harshly to enforce its cardinal rule of survival of the fittest. Therefore it is no longer imaginable that humankind can enforce its will on Nature. We are dealing with an already shuffled pack of cards. Giving it an extra shuffle will change our individual luck, but we will not know whether for better or worse. A dramatic, global, irreversible change is in the offing. The new generation will have to fend for itself because of unforeseen consequences of well-intended actions and inactions of previous generations. Of the known calamities facing the Homo sapiens, climate change will emerge as the most lethal because it will force mass migration to cooler places but resisted by those already in residence; AI will decimate those who cannot rise beyond rote education and thus fall into the dark abyss of a gig economy; and recurring pandemic waves which Nature unleashes to unburden itself of the unfittest in the Darwinian sense from an overpopulated world will sweep over us. To this we can add the predatory nature of certain man-made “-isms” (political and religious) the followers of which believe that all non-subscribers are preys to be eliminated by brute force. But there can be life only if there exist opportunities to eke out a livelihood and seek safety in numbers for procreation. The dynamics of life is a perpetual balancing act of survival between predators and preys, locked in opportunistic alliances and merciless killings. Nature is “red in tooth and claw” and there is the accelerated science-driven erosion of divinity in our times—the impersonal march of Nature without divine intervention.