Is this it? Is this the time to hit the Factory Reset Button? Is this just when we finally say enough is enough?

"We have to admit the idea of mother-nature, with her hands on her hips, sternly saying “enough is enough” has a certain ring of truth about it, right?"

Every major religion has its own version of a Prophesy for some sort of Apocalyptic Event that will herald a new era. Whether it be Ragnarok (Of the Norse Gods) or the End of Days (Of Christians) or a Deity returning as a final Incarnation on a White Horse (Of Hinduism), they all agree that a major event or series of cataclysmic events will be the trigger for a new dawn of our species on Earth. Likewise anyone who adheres to the tenets of Gaia Theory and the idea that the planet is a living organism will understand that under the constant onslaught of man as a parasite then at some point the organism will fight back.

The Corona Virus is just one of many that have plagued us this century. Transferred from the animal kingdom by the hubris and greed of mankind. It has then mutated to adapt organically to an ever changing environment and spread like wildfire in a tinder-dry forest.

For the Preppers and Doomsayer’s among us this all feels a bit like a great big “I told you so” in which we now don’t look so crazy and so like conspiracy theory nuts as we did last year. Personally I feel like I have been preparing for and training for an event like this for most of my adult life, hoping it won’t come but also secretly hoping a bit that all the money I’ve spent on rations and survival gear won’t be entirely wasted in my lifetime. Does that sound selfish? Sure, perhaps, but it also feels a lot like Darwinism in practice (Natural Selection). Maybe the planet is fighting back, telling us enough is enough and thinning out our ranks in an attempt to reduce the negative impact we are having on her. I know I’m personifying and in a matriarchal way but we have to admit the idea of Mother Nature, with her hands on her hips, sternly saying “enough is enough” has a certain ring of truth about it, right?

At some point the tide has to turn or we will literally destroy the planet on which we live. That realization won’t come in an era of mega corporations and stakeholder greed where the bottom line is always profit. It can only come about through a paradigm shift in the realest sense of the word. We need a radical change in the way the World operates and interacts with each other and the environment around us.

“Already, the Corona-virus (Covid-19) has achieved something that government policies and moral awakening couldn’t: it is pushing us into green living.”

(Simon Kuper – Financial Times)

We need a new approach that minimizes our parasitic impact and maximizes our symbiotic relationships. I have two children, 2 and 5 (a girl and a boy) and I want them to grow up understanding that their actions have an impact on the World. They need to realize at a young age that they can’t go on making the same mistakes that my generation and my parent’s generation have made and are making, they need to take responsibility for what happens in the future and not just sit back and blame their parents (us), and as responsible parents we need to take a stand now as well. It’s almost too late to reverse the damage that has been done, but that being said it is never too late to start as Gandhi said,

“being that change that we want to see in the World.”

Almost every, programmable, electronic device available in the shops has a function by which we can “Reset” back to the factory default settings. It’s a “Get out of Jail Free” card that allows us to erase any mistakes or viruses and go back to a time when the blueprint of the device was simply to work properly and function as it should. What we are facing now feels a lot like Mother Nature is about to hit that “reset” button on us. Reduce the over population and reduce the impact we are having on her surface and in her atmosphere. It’s an apocalyptic event that could go either way. It’s hard to call it when we are in it. Where I live there are only 31 confirmed cases and no deaths so far and nobody really seems to feel like anything is happening enough to take it seriously. But if you live in the heart of New York or Palmero right now then you will rightly think the end of the World is coming. It might all diffuse suddenly, a vaccine could miraculously appear just at the height of the Pandemic from China riding in on a white horse to save the World and then the majority of us who were never exposed to it will be left wondering what all the fuss was about whilst we get back to our busy lives ignoring the cries for help from our long suffering host planet Earth. OR the worst could happen and 2% of the World could be wiped out by the end of the year in which case everyone on the planet would feel the effects in some way. The World’s economies would fall into crisis and unemployment would reach an all-time high. It could take a decade to recover and as we do so we will be faced with the ever present danger of a new virus coming out and putting us all on the brink of disaster again, and again, and again and now we could very well be seeing the beginning of a new war. A war in which mankind is no longer pitted against mankind, in which the body armor becomes face masks and surgical gloves and the bio weapons become vaccines and antibiotics. A war in which we are fighting for our very existence and survival as a species, fighting against the place that till now we have called home. The enemy is microscopic and like the War of The Worlds the final thing that could wipe us out is the common cold.

“That’s particularly true since climate change makes pandemics more likely. It expands the natural habitat of infectious insects such as mosquitoes, while reducing the habitat of animals, with the effect of pushing both into closer contact with humans.”

(Simon Kuper – Financial Times)

Now is the time for us to realize what is happening. Now is the time for us to rise up against…ourselves. Now is the time to take a stand and say “enough is enough.” No more crimes against the Natural World, No more 1 % ers sharing 99% of the wealth and "50 percent living on less than $5 a day" (World Bank 2018). We all can live on enough to get by, sharing resources and living in harmony with our planet instead of in opposition with her. Does this sound like an extremist viewpoint now? Do I sound like I have been radicalized by the “Environmental Movement?” Whatever your personal beliefs are it would surely be very hard now for anyone to say that there are not big changes going on, on our planet? Forest fires that sweep across whole continents and "Viral Pandemics that mean a third of the population on our planet have to go into self-isolation for extended periods of time" (Business Insider 2020 Report on Covid-19). If people weren’t ready to make a change before, then they should be now, right?

I originally trained in Outdoor and Environmental Education and a big part of that was Geology, I often thought 25 years ago that I’d like to work in the Oil and Gas Industry, 3 weeks on and 3 weeks off with a huge paycheck and tons of benefits and you get to travel the World…what’s not to like? Except that now I hope my children won’t be motivated by money when they choose their future careers and I hope they won’t work in Oil and Gas, I hope their dreams will be based on a new mindset in which they aspire to save this planet, this Earthship (Steve Van Ma?tre – Sunship Earth) that we are flying through space on that is our home. I will encourage my kids to see themselves as symbiotes living in harmony with the planet and doing everything in their lives to avoid having a negative impact. One day I hope we will have a colony on Mars and the Moon, I sincerely hope that the adventurous spirit that we all share will drive us to explore outside our own planet but I also hope that our intention will not be to find other places to exploit and destroy.

Covid-19 is a terrible thing to happen to People and our economies, but for the Earth it is a breath of fresh air if it becomes the wake-up call that people need to recognize the impact we have had so far and to finally do something about it.

Students all over the World are rising up in protest against what we as adults are failing to recognize or do anything about. My children will one day ask me why I did nothing and allowed everyone around me to do nothing too whilst Governments and mega corporations destroyed their future in the name of personal profits and greed. I want to be able to look my children in the eye and tell them that I did do something, I did speak out and I changed the way I live to become a role model for how they can live with a consciously reduced impact on their Earthship that we all call home. So come on, let’s reach out and hit that RESET button…

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