COVID-19 is one of the most dramatic occurrences humanity has experienced because it is inducing a revolution in human perception. This present time in mankind’s history is viewed by many as a great transition from a local to a planetary civilization, that we are being developed by Nature to move from mechanical technology to human technology—an enhancement of the positive connections among people, an expansion of the boundaries of our perception and the acquisition of more advanced feelings and thoughts.
COVID-19 has made us acutely aware of how connected we really are. The virus spread in an astonishingly short time to every area of the world and the strategies imposed for containing it resulted in drastic changes all around the globe in all of our major institutions that will forever change us as societies. We are developing a new vision that focuses on the connections among us.
In order to approach the creation of a post-COVID society, it is necessary to revise our thinking about who and what we are in the cosmos. Yes… the picture is that big. It is about viewing the universe as an integral and deterministic system called Nature and our place in it.
Systemic Thinking
Nature is a collection of units that maintain reciprocal relations among themselves and with the world around them. Each unit depends for survival on the well-being of the entire system. It is impossible to understand the course of development unfolding in this system through a narrow vision that focuses only on the parts as though they are detached from one another. Therefore, we must change our thinking from narrow and individualistic to expansive and inclusive.
The swift spread of COVID-19, in addition to showing us its properties, brought our awareness to the properties of the systems of connections among humans and between humans and Nature. Our perception that we can exist as separate entities has been exposed as obsolete and irrelevant.
“Our goal in studying systems is to understand the logic in the system. When you understand the logic and the patterns, you can identify the future stages of the system. This is what enables us to understand what we are doing today.”
David Passig, Futurist
As the four levels of Nature—inanimate, vegetative, animal and human—developed over billions of years, each level incorporated within itself all the qualities of the preceding levels, then was endowed with additional, higher merits. Thus, our bodies include all the elements of the earth, the ability to grow and reproduce, and the instincts of animals. This means that in the integral system of Nature the actions of all entities affect the whole.
The lower levels of existence preceded us, but it is only the human species that has the thinking ability to develop technologically. We have used the resources of the three lower levels to create a vast high-tech world that serves our desires for a comfortable life. In doing so, however, we have plundered earth’s resources without giving anything back, losing track of our imperative to flow with the cycles of the Nature of which we are a part. In essence, we are misusing, plundering, and harming ourselves because all that we exploit resides inside of us.
“Each and every individual in society is like a wheel that is linked to several other wheels placed in a machine. This single wheel has no freedom of movement in and of itself but continues with the motion of the rest of the wheels in a certain direction to qualify the machine to perform its general function.”
Yehuda Ashlag, “Peace in the World”
Human Technology
A true systemic approach requires a deep awareness of the people around us—a social intelligence—that aims us outwards. The realization of our complete and absolute dependence on each other brings home to us the importance of caring for each other. Otherwise, how will we survive?
Recent scientific study tell us that a tremendous acceleration in the deterioration of different biological species and varieties is being observed. Along with these extinctions, we are experiencing drastic climate change that we will not survive if we do not understand our part in the global crisis we face today and strive to change ourselves.
Early mankind created the idea of good and evil gods that caused lightning storms, for example, or other phenomena that they couldn’t explain. Over the millennia, science has given names to these forces such as electricity, electro-magnetism, laws of motion, and so on. Quantum physics is further illuminating an entirely different level of forces that manage us just as firmly as those that we are able to perceive through our five senses.
The more imperceptible laws of Nature also have names—interconnection, altruism, balance, harmony, interdependence, unity—and we are subject to them just as immutably as the laws we easily observe. It is the management of our relationships with each other inside these laws that is the human technology that is now ripe for development.
Professor Ichak Adizes is a renowned professor of management who derives his management strategies from the organization of the universe that ensued after the Big Bang—a huge web of systems composed of subsystems that are inter-related on all levels of existence. According to him, the highest level of integration is in mutual relations of connection and love.
He defines the basic cause of all the problems in the world as disintegration, specifically disconnection between subsystems. In other words, human disconnection and separation from each other and from the other levels of Nature. This is manifested in miscommunication that leads to insensitivity to others’ feelings and unwillingness to be considerate of them. We simply stop caring for each other. Collapse ultimately follows.
Sound familiar? Our relations with each other have sunk to the level of fierce competition, intolerance, and the lust for wealth and power above all. The chasms of separation widen and deepen every day and violence is exploding. We are watching the collapse of our major institutions and we are killing each other. The altruistic system of Nature rejects us in this current pitiable state and will finish the job of killing us if it has to in order to restore balance.
It’s An Inside Job
Now that we have vaccines, there is much talk about “returning to normal,” but what is normal? We have normalized the world that is leading us toward our own extinction, but that is not what is normal in Nature. The virus, a manifestation of Nature’s protest of our selfish behavior, is not finished with us. And it won’t be until we learn its lessons.
The thing is that we live within the mechanism, the system, that can save us. It is altruistic and balanced. It exists in its perfection when its laws are heeded. And we then exist in the perfection of love of others. In fact, it is a necessity that we live this way because Nature is the template and we are part of it. Every one of our thoughts and actions activates the system, so we have to learn how to activate it correctly.
It is up to me. It is up to you. It is up to each individual on this planet.
It requires study and understanding of the laws of Nature until each of us changes our attitude, our inner landscape, into one of altruism rather than egoism. We cannot depend on our leaders to do this because they are deeply invested in the status quo. It is we the people who must demand correct and caring behavior from them and we can only do that by acting that way ourselves. This is the human technology that will save humans.
When individual gain is no longer the motive for our actions, but the betterment of the common good, this inclination will ripple out into the system, and in return our pleasure will come from our participation in a system where everyone is happy to live.
“Connection is the condition in which there is nothing related to you or to me, rather it is only “ours.” In this connection it is impossible to distinguish anything that belongs to either party. It no longer exists. It is as if they pour dye into water and they mix.”
Michael Laitman, PhD