Even in the time of Covid-19 we can act in beauty and positivity, to fight the culture of fear
Almost a year has passed since the beginning of the narrative on the influenza virus Covid-19. Based on our culture and traditions, our life history, the people around us, the information channels we draw from, our emotionality, each of us has formed their own opinion on the subject. For months I couldn’t resist the temptation to share my idea, in the vain attempt to open the eyes of those who for me didn’t see and reasoned by reporting the arguments of a skilful narrator. Scientific evidence, graphs, tables, statistics, philosophical postulates, articles, historical events, quotations did nothing but further distance those who thought differently from me.
Despite my Capricorn nature leading me to be tenacious and to go forward, often even against everyone, I understood that the strategy of communicating with those who don’t have the tools to question the mainstream version brings no advantage to any of the parties involved. It’s like wanting to persuade a faithful Catholic Christian that the Madonna is not a virgin: a rational and scientific reasoning could easily demonstrate it, but faith would always prevail.
We are all more distant and ill…
Regardless of the thought that everyone has formed on the management of the health emergency linked to Covid-19, it is evident how recent months have made people increasingly distant and hostile towards each other. In the past, almost always catastrophes have led humanity to unite to overcome the difficult moment, whilst today what happens is exactly the opposite. Life is increasingly artificial. The number of couples who cannot have children grows more and more and so assisted fertilisation is resorted to. Pregnancy is, increasingly often, medicalised, is experienced as an illness, which concludes with childbirth in hospital – a place of illness which in our society is also where one comes into the world – which in many cases requires medical interventions. One proceeds after birth with medicines, plastic masks, pesticides for hands and a life spent mainly alone in front of monitors. A life of illness even if we are healthy.
Even the choices we believe to be the fruit of our free will are in reality increasingly artificial. Today it is Google’s algorithm that chooses for us whether to turn right or left at a crossroads. Amazon’s is able to know which product we need and soon there will be an algorithm that will identify our future wife, our ideal educational path or the job for us, elaborated on the basis of our data collected and profiled by artificial intelligences. I don’t think the solution to all ills is to reject technology and medical and scientific discoveries, but such discoveries should guarantee us greater wellbeing and happiness: it is evident that this is not happening and will not happen if we don’t start adopting a different way of thinking.
Dilating time not subject to constraints and obligations to allow citizens’ personal fulfilment in political, private and artistic life, but also in play or contemplation, is the indispensable condition for creating new wealth – Serge Latouche
The change
The change we want to see in the world is healthy people who die of a healthy old age. The effort of research and medicine should be to maintain our immune system and our body healthy without the use of medicines, vaccines, masks or other synthetic means with side effects. 95% of us are born healthy and never in the history of humanity have there been so many possibilities and knowledge to live in health as those we have available on a large scale today. People must return to collaborating and living together. It’s true that in the societies we find ourselves in today we have the possibilities to survive alone, but living in community is part of our nature, it allows us to do enormously greater things and to feel more fulfilled.
We must return to celebrating and honouring nature. Dancing, singing, eating and playing together are the basis of a life worth living. We can find the pretext to celebrate in the natural events that unite us to the whole world: the sun is at the zenith at the equator for everyone regardless of nation, sex, religion, political creed. Work must become part-time for everyone, but with full pay. Plenty of free time to dedicate ourselves to the most important things such as sleep, self-production, food, creativity, love, children, conviviality, volunteering, physical activity. Cities must be filled with parks to enable people to pour into these spaces of life. Road traffic must be almost eliminated thanks to bicycles and electric public transport. Country roads must be accompanied by colourful hedges and the land scattered with vegetable gardens, flowers, trees. I often think of the Shire imagined by Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings, would it really be so difficult to live like that?
Vivi Consapevole in Romagna
It’s not difficult, it’s just a choice. It’s not true that there isn’t money to create true wellbeing. Money for wars, for masks, for vaccines, for banks has always been there. It’s about choosing what world we want to create. On these foundations in 2016 Vivi Consapevole in Romagna was born, first a magazine, then an association, today also a territorial community: Custodi della Terra. We share the same charter of values, a lifestyle in collaboration with nature rather than in contrast with it. We cultivate and eat organic, we avoid the medicalisation of life, we are seeking a way to build an educational path useful for our children and for the future of our species, we meet every week for a vigil and celebrate together to honour nature. We are fortunate, a happy island, aware of how much terror and pain surrounds us and how necessary it is to spread our ideas to the world. However, we don’t think that the way to do this can be through opposition, but rather uniting those who are ready to set an example. Start looking for the people around you who have this idea of the future. Unite with your aware neighbours. Create the change you want to see in the world. Don’t waste your energy with those who are unable to understand.
Written by Francesco Rosso. This article was featured in the magazine Vivi Consapevole 63, December 2020/February 2021.
