Coronavirus crisis: What really brings value to our lives?

Coronavirus crisis: What really brings value to our lives?

Starting a month-long series blog posts about the Coronavirus crisis that is taking over the world, for whoever wants to read it. My focus is on social behaviour, environment, human morality, financial perspectives and basically everything else that is wrong with us (at the moment and in general)!

My first post about the coronavirus crisis (The Coronavirus crisis is showing us everything that is wrong with our society) seemed to have had a bigger success than I had anticipated, so I will continue my rants, in writing, over the course of the next month. My motivation is simple! I am practising my writing, and I have nothing else to do since the world “travel” seems to have vanished from the world’s vocabulary (and I just got fired yesterday).

Coronavirus crisis: Let’s ask some questions

The way I see the problem, today, is mainly about the environment, and how we are harming it (we too, are part of the environment, and therefore we are harming ourselves) and the financial crisis that is happening under our eyes.

I have no idea what the humankind is fighting, what is the deal with this virus because all I know is what I’ve been told: “It’s not that dangerous, but it can be, but we don’t know so let’s all stay indoors!”.

The problem is that we can’t stop the globe from revolving around the Sun and we can’t stop living our lives. It’s just not an alternative, and we are indeed fighting an invisible enemy. It might be real, or it might not be!

I am a strong believer that if I make a mess, it’s up to me to clean it up afterwards. This virus, the coronavirus outbreak (covid-19 to be exact) happened because we let it happen. An accident or a man-made virus, it makes no difference at the moment, for millions of people who live the nightmare of a different reality.

Governments thought they are ready, but they are not. People are being ushered into their homes, as that is the most convenient and cheap prison there is and we only see and tend to believe what we read and hear online and on the TV. There is nobody out there to see anything that’s happening and we’re all brainwashed to believe what we are told to believe.

This is no rant about a conspiracy theory nor about the existence of a virus or secret group manipulating the planet. This is just what I am questioning today. Questions are good. Paranoia is bad. So let’s ask some questions.

How dangerous is this Coronavirus covid-19 compared to the annual flu?

How bad are some individuals and entities are trying to get some attention?

Why is the recent financial crash so tied to the coronavirus crisis (yes, the stock market crashed yesterday, and some countries shut it down entirely since last week)?

If more companies shut down, what will happen to the staff that are laid off?

Once more, we came to the realization that the economy is a fragile thing, and once the weakest link breaks, it can all collapse. It happened before, and it’s happening today. How can we continue to live like this? The last crisis was only a decade ago and we didn’t change our ways. We continue on the old blueprint, which hasn’t been changed since the industrial revolution.

A short history lesson: The industrial revolution happened when oil was discovered and engines starting using that oil to fuel factories. It all got automated. Almost instantaneously, industries were producing far more than the world needed to consume. The response of the industrialization: consumerism! That was in the 19th century! Because that a temporarily fix, we find ourselves, 200 years later, trying to fix the same problem, on a large grater scale, knowing that oil isn’t the answer, having to feed a population of over 7 billion. My take on this matter is that humankind has still to learn how to populate Earth in a sustainable way. We are nowhere near that, and that’s why we live in bubbles that burst every few decades.

How is all of this connected to the current Coronavirus crisis, you ask?

The coronavirus crisis is so deeply connected to the current economic situation because the world economy depends on each country’s ability to produce and consume. The moment someone says “stay at home”, we start to realize what’s truly necessary to live a good life and we get to see all the unnecessary crap that was created for us to buy.

The issue is that few things have or bring value to our lives and that most businesses aim for immediate profit. There’s nothing sustainable about it, and it’s also killing the planet.

I might not know a lot about the economy as I am a simple individual, but I know this: I will always pay the price for a product that makes my life better and I will spend not more than 1 second discarding everything else, especially in times of crisis. That’s why businesses disappear, people get fired. What drives me crazy is that this cycle resumes every few months. It’s like we don’t want to learn or understand what went wrong before, with those who have already tried it.

My thought of today is about sustainability, about work that matters and about how to bring value to other people’s lives. That’s the path to the future. Everything else is just running around in circles.

Let’s ask ourselves, in these times of crisis, What really brings value to our lives?

Iulia Vasile

Iulia is a travel expert, blogger, engineer, freelance copywriter, and a curiosity-driven personality. She sees travel as the ultimate tool for self-improvement and personal growth, and that's the main topic of her blog, Juliasomething.com.

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