Three themes to meditate on during the pause of pandemic

For much of last two weeks, as COVID-19 raged on, a P-word dominated the front page of China Daily－no, not "pandemic" but "poverty", thanks to President Xi Jinping's four-day inspection tour of Shaanxi province.

Events before and after his tour also spotlighted not just the pandemic but the earthly priorities that should shape the post-pandemic world. To wit: poverty alleviation, protection of nature, planting trees, ecology, public health and education. Of course, economy, technology and other-worldly pursuits like space continued to receive attention.

In billion-plus India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi underlined the need for self-reliant villages. In France, President Emmanuel Macron sought to wrest an initiative for global truce. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for 10 percent of global GDP to be set aside for the virus fight.

All this is a telling comment on humanity's muddled priorities until now, the fundamental flaws in our pursuits, or in the way we determine and pursue them. While we grew into a global village, have our goals acquired not only a life, momentum and resources of their own but a self-destructive imbalance?

Consider unthinkable economic inequalities between nations, and unimaginable wealth gap among individuals: doctors, nurses, medical facility staff, and deliverymen are underpaid, over-worked, while investment bankers, market punters and their ilk rake it in. Despite decades of dire warnings, epidemics and pandemics still break out at an alarming frequency.

COVID-19 has forced upon us an unprecedented, hitherto inconceivable months-long pause. Much of the response has been at the governmental, institutional, industry, or individual expert level.

Intellectual giants such as Zhang Wenhong, Zhong Nanshan, Ian Lipkin, Michael Sandel, Yuval Noah Harari, Palagummi Sainath, Raghuram Rajan, Arundhati Roy, Fareed Zakaria, and Larry Brilliant have all shared profound insights and lessons. Their wise words are no different from the injunctions in ancient wisdom.

Witness this admonition by biologist Thomas Lovejoy: "This (COVID-19) is not nature's revenge, we did it to ourselves. The solution is to have a much more respectful approach to nature…" It's a view echoed by Inger Andersen, the UN's environment chief.

But, are such lessons only for governments, institutions, businesses, or NGOs? People's pandemic-time behavior has been characterized by consumers scrambling for toilet rolls, groceries, cosmetics or liquor; wilful defiance, or ignorant, dangerous, idiotic or shockingly violent flouting of lockdown orders; racism, intolerance, hoarding, black-marketing, rumor-mongering, scams or frauds.

Much has been said of mankind's resilience, an ability to bounce back and "flourish". But not much light has been shone on how we as individuals and communities have to deal with humanity's dark side, that incorrigible streak or recalcitrant attitude toward nature, never mind our utter dependency on it as well as our utter helplessness against it.

Talk of a gathering "perfect storm" has been greeted with indifference, a business-as-usual approach, or restlessness to return to "normalcy"－the great rat race, the profligate, reckless ways that bring us to the cliff edge over and over again. Are we in some trance, cockily imagining real life is no different from a fantasy film, fiction, or some adventure video game, as if our triumph or escape from the jaws of death is a foregone conclusion, a scripted destiny? What if such conduct, instead, gives nature the last laugh and us the last breath?

How, then, to make use of the pause? I propose meditation on the following three themes: "Part and whole", "individual and community", and "selfishness and selflessness". Each of these three themes is like an aphorism, a zip file, if you will, pregnant with intuitable petabytes of potentially game-changing, life-transforming, planet-preserving knowledge.