THE DAY AFTER

HAVE WE WITNESSED THE GENERAL REHEARSAL OF ONE OF THE SCENARIOS OF THE POSSIBLE APOCALIPTIC END OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION ON THE PLANET EARTH, OR WILL THIS PANDEMIC UNITE THE HUMAN RACE IN THE EFFORT TO COMBAT THE INVISIBLE CORONA VIRUS IN ORDER TO FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE THE ATTITUTIDE TOWARD NATURE AND OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH IT AND WITH LIFE IN GENERAL, WHICH ALSO SUGGESTS REJECTING EGO-MOTIVATED EXCESSES OF THE 20TH AND 21ST CENTURIES, AND DIRECT THEM TOWARD SUSTAINABLE, SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE AND ECO-FRIENDLY INTEGRATED ACTIVITIES, WHICH ESSENTIALLY IMPLIES THAT HUMANKIND HAS THE PRIMARY MISSION TO TURN ITS ACTIONS FROM EGO-CENTRIC TO ECO-CENTRIC.

The great scientific and technical improvement, which brought about the technological revolution and prosperity of the 20th century, has obviously turned its Faustian side, showing us that our activities were a global ecological and climate experiment with unforseen consequences on the environment and the survival of mankind on the Earth. Has nature responded in the most ruthless way ever, the way only the nature itself knows of, warning the mankind that nothing will ever be the same in the future, and the humanity has realised, possibly for the first time - at least I hope so - that an individual could only survive if united and connected with others in order to preserve personal integrity, without jeopardizing other people’s integrity at the same time.

I believe that this pandemic will cut deeply into our individual and collective memory and create awareness of how vulnerable human civilization actually is. A profound emptiness and grief will remain for those we have not known, those who have left us ignorant of their names, existing only as figures, without even a proper send-off. Countless questions will remain – about what we have failed to do or ought not to have done, but also about what we have not done, but we should have.

This time, I will not mention buildings, the unabated development and the growth of cities, their importance to people's health, the fact that, on the global level, large quantities of conventional energy sources are being consumed uncontrollably in order to keep them function, nor the fact that the filthy energy and technological processes emit, at untamed pace, enormous amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, resulting in environmental pollution and global climate changes with unprecedented harmful impact on flora and fauna, and now, direclty and indirecly, on the survival of mankind on the planet.

Is vision of our future the life in the cities with abandoned streets or the one in green cities where we want our children to play safely?

I believe that by opting for and following obligatory ecological orientation and education, we will build eco-friendly, carbon-neutral and people-oriented buildings with green facades and roofs and create sustainable cities of the future with huge green and water areas and promenades enriched by human encounters, simply put – cities for people.

Modern civilization has won, reached and revealed many scientific secrets and opened new roads toward the universe and the celestial space, but it has lost its own path in which it had repressed, through collective acceleration and networking of life, individuality of man and his right to a safe and natural way of living. Unnatural relation with nature has led to unnatural life and has broken all the universal connections on the man-nature level.

Coronavirus is certainly not welcome, but its outbreak seems to be the incentive for the mankind to return, at the time of pandemic, to the origins of its genesis and to redefine all aspects of its existence in the past, throughout the modern era and the concept of a sustainable future.

Would it be possible to return, at least for a moment, to the period of 'golden age', approximately 600 BC, with Lao-Tze and Confucius in China, the Buddha in India, the last Zarathustra in Persia, Heraclitus in Asia Minor, the last Thoth in Egypt, Pythagoras in Greece, when the forces of war and inequality of all forms were supressed throughout the world, and when spiritual peace and flourishing made it possible for every individual and all nations on the planet to develop. Is this the moment when people of different corners of the world have come to know the universal values that had led them along the path of spiritual peace and general welfare to a life in accordance with nature, in which mankind, nature and God were one?

Could we bring back such an era and replace the catastrophic, Orwellian avalanche of distressing news about climate change, air and water pollution, earthquakes, floods, huge forest fires that have devoured billions of living beings, news that is flashing by at the speed of ligth as disasters occur day by day, and it doesn't matter where they happen, whether it is us who suffer or it is someone else, because the next day the situation may change and affect anyone. Only then will we realize that all we need is the blue sky, green flower meadows, murmur of a clear stream, birdsong and nothing else.

It is important for the whole mankind to realize that the apocalypse is possible, since the day after the pandemic is harnessed, we will have to seek new paths and ways to unite the visible and the invisible – Earth and Sky, Man and God. It is the accomplishment of the universal triad man-nature-god. It is the Big Community that could make life on the Planet whole, complete and unique. Without such unity, people would distant themselves from the ideals of the ‘golden age’ and from a life in harmony with nature. An individual would remain isolated to wriggle in a shard of this whole and to continue toward life on their own in the era of the apocalypse.

The living world, along with the atmosphere and the oceans, makes a unique and complete system that had been able to regulate and sustain itself until the moment men dared to conquer nature.

For thousands of years, our beautiful planet Gea has been providing resources for the development of mankind. Cherishing that heritage is perhaps the greatest obligation a man has toward nature, and toward himself.