Back to Basic

Moments of crisis and challenges always pull us back to the basics of life. Developing simple attitudes like strengthening relationships, gratitude, care, appreciation and respect, help us feel better and aware of the vulnerable situation. Considering the most serious crises in the world, easily we can confirm the importance of basics to overcome the adversities that we face in life.. A back to history, happened the most profounds changes on these times of crisis like monetization of labor, strong growth in trade, politic opening and others  achievements

After all those pandemics lived in the past and now in the present, an epistemology of the current scenario would be relevant. Certainly similarities and parallels of human behavior in the face of a virus and its consequences seem so close and current that, despite the tragedy that the world is experiencing, there is perplexity as history repeats itself. Humanity has been going through so many repetitive crises, as if the future would repeat the past: the same problems seem to accompany progress, but progress seems not capable of stagnating social, economic and health problems. Basically, these events already lived before should be minimized always happen because we’re experienced already but the reality shows are different. 

Pandemics are often presented as casualties, as random movements that arise from human interaction in society and with nature. This at best, when they are not understood as divine punishment or as a trial for paradise. However, when we look historically, we realize that the great pandemics are part of a systemic crisis that involves the unsustainability of social reproduction in its current form. The plague in the great crisis of feudalism in the 14th century and the Spanish flu at the end of the First World War are great examples of this systemic crisis. The gravity dimension of Covid-19 is still open, but the crisis picture of the current form of capitalist society can be taken for granted. Societies only collapse with epidemics, like Covid-19, when they are already very sick. 

By the way, the scientists have demonstrated that viruses are the most numerous biological entities on earth and perhaps there are trillions of differents viruses species waiting to be found, so the world belongs to the viruses. Welcome to the Virosphere! One more highlight to the community. How many pandemics will the world get to learn how to fight against? Or the purpose is, a continuous learning with the pandemics issues?

The reality has never sounded so desperate for imperialist policies. Faced with an alarming pandemic situation, not having the basic prevention instruments to protect the world population was at the very least embarrassing. Something so basic, essential products like disposable masks and gloves have become rare in the business market facing an eminently alarming pandemic. The basics of administration is the ABC inventory should have been applied and made in any level of management. Plainly the stocks of those basics íiems weren´t attended to anywhere in the world. We can see making  the basics would make all the difference.

An old sermon given by Frederick Lewis Donaldson in Westminster Abbey, in London city, on March 20, 1925 is so significant for these days: 

“The Seven Social Sins are”:

Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Worship without sacrifice.
Politics without principle.

How this current crisis will develop and what its long-term consequences will be remains open, despite the certainty of the much greater impact on the poorest populations and in countries without universal health care. With all the unpredictability, the year 2020, with a pandemic and economic collapse, will be key to future developments. The extent to which the Covid-19 crisis will influence states to close themselves in new competitive disputes or in the creation of multilateral democratic institutions is not yet defined, much less in what conditions workers and large economies will find themselves after this catastrophe. Despite the increase in uncertainties, a new period of major social transformations and permanent combat to its darkest forms seems inevitable.

As the Covid-19 pandemic itself has shown, the economy and people have never been more connected and connected than in today’s globalized world. On the other hand, this strong global connection does not occur through global and democratic mechanisms and institutions, but through diffuse means of power relations of the great world economies, with the great decisions and movements being dictated by the speculative and strategic games of the global financial markets. This form of capitalist relationship, on the one hand, apparently fragmented in financial markets and on the other, centralized in large economies, presents one of the most evident points of the current crisis.

When all this replayed novel is over, everything will be overcome, and the pandemic will be one more crisis to glimpse optimism and hope. Expectations will be many, less political diversities, more good actions in favor of the collectivity, abandoning old habits, and the main one, practicing citizenship with more responsibility and adopting more assertive criteria regarding the choice of political leaders.

How about today start to write a different history?