My article in Newsmax: “COVID-19 Sent Us Home and Cleaned Up the Mess”

If you were a parent with teenage children, and you had to leave the house for the weekend, how terrified would you be that when you returned you’d find your tidy home turned upside down? And what would you do if you came back and discovered that your nightmare has come true? This is exactly what we humans have done to our home, Planet Earth: We’ve messed it up and turned it upside down. In comparison to the damage we’ve done, you could say that Mother Nature’s “punishment,” which is largely a “Go to your separate rooms” order, is more than mild; it is compassionate!

Mother Nature is silent; she speaks with actions, not words, but she is a dedicated teacher. If we are attentive, she will usher us into a new world of happiness and prosperity. If we are obstinate, her punishments will grow continuously harsher.

The first lesson she gave us was to stay home. By doing so, she told us that we have been nasty to each other and nasty to our home. Miraculously, within a few short weeks, she cleaned most of the mess and the water and air became clear and clean.

But being shut in our houses for a few weeks did not prove to us that we simply have to change. It only stopped our destruction of the planet and finally managed to show us that we had been doing wrong to Nature. However, it did not articulate what it is we have to do in order not to keep on being so malevolent.

This will be our next lesson, which we will experience in the weeks and months to come. As economies all over the world reopen, we will find that many of the businesses that were the backbone of our society and fueled our mindset of extreme self-entitlement and narcissism have lost their charm. They will go bankrupt not because the government did not support them, but because the public has lost interest in those gadgets and accessories.

As a result of the shift in people’s mindsets after the prolonged lockdown and its impact on businesses, unemployment rates will remain dangerously high with no sign of relief. On the contrary, as more and more jobs become automated, joblessness will only increase, posing a palpable threat of violent social unrests, hunger driven riots, rampant homelessness, a drop in school retention and other social problems that will undermine the stability of society.

These COVID-19 aftershocks will compel governments to adopt more society driven policies. Policy makers will have to take into consideration the needs of the unfortunate; they will have to provide them with both decent incomes during the time when they cannot sustain themselves, and they will have to help them become better educated so they can integrate in the new world. In this way, the virus will teach the authorities to think more socially and establish a more considerate economic system.

Here, too, as in the lockdown lesson, the quicker we learn, the less painful and more successful the lesson will be.

In the new world, the most required career will be teaching. People will need teachers in the professions required in the automated era, but the most required teaching subject will be social skills: people who will help us learn how to communicate in a society whose values are radically different from the hostile environment we hopefully left behind.

The virus has made everyone equal: From heads of state to janitors, from tycoons to street sweepers, everyone is vulnerable. This is a humbling and healthy experience for all of society. It allows us to truly place ourselves in the shoes of others. We would not have come to it were it not for the virus, but now that we have, we will never want to go back. This is why we will need teachers—to enhance and develop our social skills of empathy, solidarity, and mutual responsibility.

The threat of the virus will not dissolve so quickly. We will need it for a while longer, if only to remind us of the pain caused by disobeying its lessons. But the more we grow into the paradigm of giving, the less we will need the bullying guard at the exit from the old world. So one day, in the foreseeable future, we will discover that we have entered a new world of hope, confidence, and joy.
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Medium published my new article “How Changes in the Workplace Will Change Our Relations”

Life will not be the same after the coronavirus pandemic. That is an understatement, but how could the healing process improve our interpersonal relationships and our perspectives of life? Working from home, being physically apart from other coworkers, but spending more time with family has forced us to reevaluate our personal goals in general. We can emerge from the crisis stronger if we reassess our priorities and realize the potential benefits of the new reality.

In the pre-coronavirus era, on average, an American worker commuted at least 54 minutes a day, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The coronavirus lockdown changed the rules of the game and sent millions of people to work from home and spend less time behind the wheel and more time on rediscovering the family. We have come to know our families in a different way from what we used to and it has transformed us from within.

As we reopen the economy, each of us will bring the family baggage absorbed from working at home to the workplace, and will continue to feel connected to those closest to them. Back at their jobs, beyond their need to make a living, people will feel they are missing the internal connection between them.

Others will have to sort things out differently. 30 million Americans have lost their jobs since mid-March due to the COVID-19 crisis. A solution to this complicated situation will demand a national plan to appraise what industries and occupations are essential for the common wellbeing. Now we need to restore production and distribution in a way that provides humanity with the necessary products and services, but without excessive consumption, which had almost completely destroyed the world.

Such a plan will require setting special value to development programs that place human connection at the top. Why is this change of priorities mandatory? The answer is simple: We have never been so defeated by putting perfection, knowledge, strength, power, and influence on a pedestal. In our arrogance, we considered ourselves the supreme force of nature. Today, we have witnessed how quickly and easily the apparently safe world we had built can crumble.

Therefore, the goal of our time is to introduce a question mark in people concerning their lives, the world, and in general, where humanity is heading.

What Now?

Humanity’s problem now lies in realizing that the only correct exit from the crisis is to transform human relationships from egoistic to altruistic. Returning to business relations without correcting human relations will lead to a bigger crisis because we have not yet fixed the root of our troubles.

We need a global plan for human society to recover from egoism. For the first time in history, humanity is realizing what we thought we knew but never fully grasped: The world is global and interdependent; it is our common home.

We will start evaluating our lives as “before” and “after” the pandemic. This critical period we face seals the history of the egoistic development of humankind and shows that any system that is based on our egoism will produce negative results. Thus, what we need to correct is not the system itself, but our egoistic nature.

As a direct impact of the crisis, the world is moving toward feeling more connected and unified. A common problem that affects everyone brings people closer. They stop thinking about wars, conflicts between countries, exploitations by corporations, or hating other people; the main goal is to survive the common enemy. We should not wait for another wave of COVID-19 to make us react this way and to learn only through suffering. The feeling of brotherhood and unity must prevail if we truly want to thrive and achieve a more fulfilling life.
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The Times of Israel published my new article “COVID-19 and Anti-Semitism: An Unseen Connection”

The Coronavirus Disease 2019, or COVID-19, like any crisis in history since the inception of the Jewish people, will ignite a wave of anti-Semitism. We can already see it budding on social media, traditional media outlets, in graffiti, and in aggression on the streets. People don’t know why they hate Jews, so they cling to every pretext to vent their innate odium toward this enigmatic nation that seems to them as though its people collaborate to control the world, while in truth, many Jews haven’t the slightest empathy toward their own people or their own nation-state.

There is no point reasoning with antisemites; their hatred is irrational. Whatever reason they provide, its opposite has already been used as a pretext for hating Jews just as bitterly. When two opposite reasons explain the same phenomenon, it means that neither is correct. When it comes to anti-Semitism, there is a three-stage process of revealing it: First there is a dormant, subconscious hatred, then there is a trigger in the form of some crisis, and finally the Jews are accused of causing it.

Jews don’t know why people hate them. They didn’t commit any of the contradictory accusations that antisemites throw at them. And because antisemites hate them for a different reason than the one they articulate, refuting it does not mitigate the loathing.

The real reason for Jew-hatred is rooted deep in the past, in ancient Babylon, the cradle of civilization. Back then, Abraham, from whom emerged Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, was deeply troubled by growing social tensions he had observed among his people, the Babylonians. After deep scrutiny, he had realized that they were becoming increasingly self-centered and called on them to rise above that trend and restore their union.

Not many people listened to Abraham. He was driven out of Babylon and wandered toward the land of Canaan. Along the way, he explained his findings and invited people to join his group. The only condition he had required was agreement with the principle of unity above all differences.

Abraham’s entourage grew and prospered. At the foot of Mt. Sinai, they pledged to be “as one man with one heart” and were officially declared a nation: “the nation of Israel.” At that event they were also tasked with sharing that unity with the rest of the world, as Abraham had intended to do in the first place. That was the meaning of Israel’s mission to be “a light unto nations.”

In the meantime, the people who remained in Babylon and did not follow Abraham wallowed in unbridled egoism and developed resentment toward those who followed that “other” idea—of unity above all differences. That ancient “score” is the root of the hatred we now call anti-Semitism.

Within any non-Jew who hates Jews, or a Jew who dislikes his or her own people, there is an unconscious struggle between those two approaches: The Babylonian “me first,” or the Jewish “we first.” The struggle that unfolds within them is the reason why Jews are so often accused of selfishness and partiality toward their own folk, since the world judges them by a much higher moral standard than it judges any other nation.

But even perfect Jewish morality and absolute selflessness will not dissolve Jew-hatred. The Jews became a nation only after they pledged wholeheartedly to be “as one man with one heart.” Upon their declaration of nationhood, the Jews were tasked with being “a light unto nations,” namely to share with the nations of the world the way to achieve unity. That task coincided with Abraham’s initial aspiration to share his idea of unity with all his fellow Babylonians.

Especially today, if the Jews carry out their task, it will end the resentment that the descendants of the Babylonians who did not follow Abraham feel toward his descendants. It would disband anti-Semitism.

Now, in the days of COVID-19, the world feels more than ever that we are all in one boat, that there is a hole in the boat and no one knows what’s causing it or how to cork it. They blame the Jews for it, as always, and make up countless conspiracy theories to justify it. But in truth, the Jews’ only fault is that they aren’t setting an example of unity above differences. This is all that the world needs in order to overcome the coronavirus or any other plight that’s lurking in the darkness of the future.

If the human race were united, it would be no problem to overcome any crisis. Mutual responsibility is the most required commodity these days, and no one will be able to pump out that resource until the Jews show the way by setting an example.

Therefore, the only thing that Jews must do today is unite among themselves in order to set an example of unity to the rest of the world. And when the world unites, the troubles will be all gone.
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Medium published my new article “I Am Genuinely Afraid”

The economy may be reopening but not as it should be. Irresponsible ignition of economic and commercial activities will bear such consequences that will make us regret not waiting a little longer in the first round.

We are living in an integral reality that has a natural balance. When the balance is breached, the system pushes itself back to balance much like a pendulum that returns to the middle with greater force the more you pull it to one side.

Humans have pushed the global ecosystem so far off balance that now it has to strike back a painful blow in order to resume the balance. As long as we refuse to understand this mechanism, we will continue to suffer blows every time nature balances itself. At the moment, we are far from understanding this and far from balance. We were waiting for the moment when we came out of the lockdown so we could keep pushing nature. But the result will be that nature’s next push back will be much stronger and much more painful.

Eventually, we will learn. The only question is how much we will have to suffer until we realize that we will not win by thinking only me-me-me.

The more we developed technology, the more we behaved like senseless children in a toy shop with no one to tell us what we are allowed to buy and what’s too expensive. But you can’t leave the shop without going through the cashier, and the cashier will make us pay for everything we took.

Sure, we have to reignite commerce and provide people with what they need. But we are not thinking only about getting what we need. We want to compete once more in who’s got more, who is richer, and who is more successful. But competition didn’t make us happy the first time, so why go back to it? Worse yet, this is exactly what caused the outburst of the virus — our self-centered behavior — so what sense is there in re-embracing the conduct that inflicted a disaster on us. Can we doubt that another disaster, probably much worse, will follow?

If we reignite only those parts of the economy that sustain us, that guarantee our livelihood, while dedicating the rest of our time, resources, and efforts to establishing better connections among us, we will all be happy. We won’t need any accessories to brag about, and we won’t need to compete with anyone because we will feel worthy just being who we are! We will be appreciated for contributing our skills to the common good, and the gratitude and warmth from people will fill us to the brim with happiness.

Have you ever walked into a room where everyone liked you and thought well of you? Do a little thought exercise and try to imagine this. Now do another exercise and imagine that as soon as you walk out to the street, everyone treats you with that kind of warmth and care.

In such a society, the most required profession will be instructors and teachers to guide people into that type of mindset. With such a mindset, the cohesion and solidarity in society will make welfare services redundant. People will take care of each other, just as it should be!

Think of army elite units. They know that in battle, their lives depend on their unity. We are in a battle now. We have already realized that we are all dependent on each other’s responsibility. If we forego the mutual responsibility we have acquired in this battle and return to our dog-eat-dog mindset, we stand no chance against the next virus, or whatever blow nature will send us next. I am genuinely afraid for humanity. The virus was a mild lesson; the next one could be devastating.
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My article in Newsmax: “The Teachings of a Global Epidemic”

The world is eagerly trying to get back to its feet. It is clear that people need to secure their livelihoods, put food on their tables, and get back to business, but I wonder, have we learned the lessons the coronavirus crisis tried to teach us? What if the pandemic has yet to fulfill its goal of spurring us toward the creation of a more balanced society?

Gradually, some stores and services are reopening in the United States and around the world. An apparent normalcy is being restored, and everyone seems to be content with our renewed desire to return to our usual egoistic approach toward self-benefit and exploitation of the ecosystem that brought us to this peril to begin with. Or maybe not? It will be interesting to see if we emerge from this forced pause any wiser, more conscious of the system in which we live and willing to do something to restore the lost balance in our relations toward others and our surrounding environment.

If we return to the business-as-usual mode without any commitment for a substantial change in our behavior, no one will be able to guarantee that a bigger disaster will not hit us. It is imperative that we internalize the fact that we live in an integral environment. All of nature is one closed system — alive, breathing, but wounded because of our human ego — the sole factor which disrupts the overall functioning of the integral system of nature, bringing forth such plagues as the coronavirus.

I wonder, where are the international organizations such as the United Nations and outspoken environmental champions raising their voices and demanding a more conscious humanity before the world eases restrictions of movement and reopens the economy? We must hold ourselves accountable for our abuse of the world’s resources and our reckless attitude toward each other. But most importantly, we must realize that returning to the pre-COVID-19 world unchanged would be a recipe for disaster.

Back to Basics, Not Back to Crisis

We cannot realistically expect to return to our ongoing exploitation of the planet which pollutes, depletes and will eventually bring about the total destruction to the ecosystem. Likewise, we cannot revert to the same old dysfunctional patterns of society and harmful human relations among couples, families, children and co-workers. The old paradigm of greed, perversion, corruption and lack of empathy cannot define our reality any longer.

Clearly, no one wants to live in lockdown forever, but I hope that we have taken full advantage of the global halt to realize that life as it was had become unsustainable and to gain awareness of the conclusions we must draw about which endeavors are truly indispensable for society and which are superfluous.

Nature demonstrates the correct way. It functions integrally, as a unified whole, where all its parts take only what is essential in order to maintain the correct performance of the entire system.

The global epidemic froze the world, not to put an end to our development, but to lead us in the right direction and to broaden our view. A more friendly and harmonious attitude toward others and toward nature will shift our previous reality of total loss and transform it into total gain, taking us to a balanced world. What would be the point of ever looking back, when we can decide to build a promising future together?
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Medium published my new article “Baby Steps to Love.”

With all the talk about the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and other relief packages in the U.S. and other countries, you could think that the vanishing of COVID-19 is just around the corner. It is not. It will be with us for a long time coming. Temporary relief packages that are not accompanied by nationwide job restructuring programs are as good as throwing that money down the drain.

Just look at what the National Institute of Health (NIH) writes: “There are hundreds of coronaviruses, most of which circulate among such animals as pigs, camels, bats and cats. Sometimes those viruses jump to humans — called a spillover event — and can cause disease.” Such spillovers caused the SARS epidemic in 2002, the MERS epidemic in 2012, and now the second SARS epidemic, known as SARS-CoV-2, which causes Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). That last one has become a pandemic, paralyzed the world, crushed the world economy, made tens of millions of people unemployed literally overnight, and is still wreaking havoc all over the world. Worse yet, we have not found a vaccine to even one of the strains of coronavirus.

Yet, a vaccine isn’t the only way to deal with the virus. In fact, it is the least efficient since, as it happens nearly every year with the flu, new strains of the virus are appearing all the time, and it is likely that a vaccine will not be effective against all of them.

It is no accident that spillovers from animals are happening so frequently in recent years, as we have cultivated a mindset of exploitation of human resources and natural resources that has become so invasive that it is ravaging the planet and destroying society. Now it is finally backfiring against the perpetrators of these wrongs: humanity, and Western society in particular.

Therefore, we need a deeper transformation. Eliminating COVID-19 is like blocking the flow of sewer out of one hole in one place only to find it is flowing out of another. We need to stop the flow altogether, the flow that is caused by our behavior. And the only way to permanently change our behavior is to change ourselves. However you look at it, the root cause will always be human behavior, and human behavior can be changed only by changing humans.

As long as we continue to cultivate a culture of ruthlessness, alienation, and destructive competition, we will end up losing. We will lose to nature as we are losing now, and we will lose to our own nature as we are seeing in today’s skyrocketing violence, suicide rates, and substance abuse mortality. We are competing ourselves to death, very literally.

The coronavirus is a force of nature, but we can decide whether to take it toward the positive or negative direction. It has set us apart, deprived us of our favorite occupation of hurting one another. In separating us, it has shown us that our connections are the problem. If we transform our connections from abusive to supportive, we will find that we are treating not only each other in this way, but all of reality. In return, reality will transform its attitude toward us and the world will become a welcoming home once more.

The hiatus from the rat race of consumerism that was destroying the world is our chance to block it before it drives us off the cliff. It is an opportunity to reeducate ourselves on life, on the things it has to offer, such as love, friendship (real, not the social media kind), and mutual responsibility. We should use this time to cultivate new jobs and occupations, ones that strengthen our society and not divide it. In today’s job market, there is no justification for ruthless capitalism and senseless competition. Only those who dedicate their time to others will find success in what they do.

The mind of a caring person is infinitely more open than the mind of one who sees nothing but his or her own interest. Caring for others is a chance to learn, experience what others’ lives are like, feel what we did not know exist, and do it in the baby steps that the virus is allowing us to take, one video chat at a time. When we are ready for more contact, the virus will leave and let us meet in person, this time with all the good intentions.
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The Times of Israel published my new article “Reopening the Economy? First, We Have to Change”

There are debates all over the world about how and to what extent countries should reopen their economies in order to prevent a complete collapse. But opening it without first dealing with the cause of the coronavirus outbreak is likely to have horrific consequences that will dwarf the ordeal of the current pandemic.

We think we are at war with nature, that we must fight against it and subdue it. We forget that we ourselves are nature’s creation. Each of our thoughts, plans, words and actions is engendered in nature before it manifests in us. This is true even of the aspiration to subdue nature. But trying to conquer the very thing that planted the thought of conquering in our minds makes even less sense than chasing our own tails.

Just as we don’t understand why nature sends us the thoughts it does, we don’t understand why it has sent us the coronavirus. Yet it, too, had a process that led to its emergence. If we want to overcome the virus, we must know where it came from and why. When we identify the process that engendered the virus, we will see what we must do in order to curb it, and why there are many more in store where that little bug came from, and far more sinister.

Many scientists have already pointed to human behavior as the cause of the appearance of the virus. They explained that the destruction of natural habitats of many wild animals has forced them to migrate closer to humans. This makes what virologists call a “spillover” of viruses from animals to humans easier and more frequent. All the coronaviruses that caused respiratory syndromes in this century have resulted from such “spillovers.” SARS, MERS and COVID-19 were all caused by viruses that migrated from the animal kingdom and caused life-threatening illnesses in humans. So, too, by the way, is the case with the Ebola virus.

But human behavior did not only cause spillovers of viruses. Human behavior has polluted the oceans, lakes and rivers, polluted the air and polluted the earth. It depleted the oceans of fish, the sky of birds and the earth of animals. Human behavior starves and sickens millions of men, women and children the world over, enslaves them, rapes them and exploits them in countless ways. Human behavior inflicts death and torment on millions through war, deportation and destruction of communities and entire countries. Even the affluent and fortunate are so afflicted by human behavior that they find refuge in drugs, suicide, excessive eating and depression. In short, human behavior is the cause of all that is bad and wrong in the world.

Yet, what causes us to be so injurious to everything and everyone around us? And if our behavior is so fundamentally flawed, can we even mend it? And if so, where do we start?

We Start at Home

All animals behave according to their nature. Man is a part of nature; therefore, man behaves according to human nature. If human behavior is flawed, it is because so is human nature.

Hugging trees won’t change human nature, but hugging people will. The change should start at home, with the people meant to be closest to us. We must use the COVID-19 hiatus from baleful capitalism to reconnect with our families, reestablish the bond that made us a family in the first place, but which so many of us have lost along the way.

Afterwards, we should look at our communities and begin to reconstruct them. To paraphrase the words of JFK, ask not what your community can do for you; ask what you can do for your community. It will take mutual commitment to succeed, but if people understand the importance and urgency of rebuilding our communities, they will respond.

Before we take action, we must be aware. We must let the idea of human nature being the root of all problems sink into our minds and the minds of the people in our family and community, and then pull together and change it. We can do it. All we have to do is set a good example and let others inspire us through their example. We can use the added free time we have been given to learn about human nature and then go out and do something about it with our friends and neighbors.

From the community level, we must spread the spirit of friendship everywhere else. Just as singing from porches spread from Italy to porches all over the world, so can good deeds. Don’t be afraid to shoot a video of yourself helping others and post it on social media. Tell the viewers that you’re doing it because you want to be a better person, and the idea will catch on. It’s as easy as that: I help others because it makes me a better person. That’s all that people need to know. You will win people’s hearts and they will want to follow in your footsteps.

If we realize who we are and want to change, we only need to change our actions. This will change our mindsets, which will change our hearts.
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Medium published my new article “What Nature Wants From Us”

It may feel like an eternity, but in a matter of a few weeks the entire world has changed dramatically, awakening existential questions and soul searching in us. What have we done for nature to unleash upon us this COVID-19 virus that has paralyzed the planet? Is there something I personally can do to end this hardship, beyond wearing a mask? Let’s take a moment out of our now less-busy lives to consider our situation. What we will discover is that we have been given this breather precisely for such contemplation.

I live in this world and make an impact on all that happens. I influence my immediate surroundings every single moment, but I also impact the distant environment. Each of us creates changes in the entire system of nature since the system is global, integral, and spherical. It is a system, connected in all its parts and moving toward comprehensive balance. When we disrupt its equilibrium, the imbalance manifests in all kinds of phenomena such as the current pandemic. In a sense, it could be said that everything we come up against from nature is actually the reaction of the system to our good or bad influences on it.

How can I relate this to myself, sitting at home with no idea what will become of my work, my children, my future? How can my personal life sway the system? Each day that passes never returns, so before falling asleep it is worthwhile to take stock of how my day went, what I did, did I hurt anyone? Did my actions and thoughts contribute to harmony or to the contrary? I should keep a daily accounting of my life.

When, God forbid, we are hit by a serious illness or loss, thoughts and soul searching about what is happening in life come to the surface and we ask, why me? Today, this blow of the coronavirus has fallen on all of us — regardless of status, origin, or the balance in the bank — and has activated our collective soul searching.

Redeeming the Planet

Nature seems to be telling us now that the best thing for us is to stay at home without approaching anyone until we understand how to interact properly. We are being forced to look at the life we have built for ourselves, the kind of world we have created; the ways we relate to each other, our mutual lack of consideration; how we have destroyed the planet, in complete opposition to the integral system of nature where every part responds to the wellbeing of the whole, and because of such wrecking, how the earth is responding in self-defense.

Nature is demanding that humanity achieves complete integration, to feel and perceive the collective. Why? Because in such a state we become similar in form to nature itself, and this is exactly the compatibility we need in order to perfectly harmonize with the system. In fact, this is the next level in the evolution of humankind. Whether we are aware of it or not, nature will not wait for us and will force us to be considerate of one another. Everyone would have been glad to forgo this coronavirus era, but this option is not on the table.

Therefore, the key question in our personal soul searching should be: Do I understand that I must develop love for all within me in order to fix the global system’s breakage? Without each of us developing this sense of personal responsibility and love inside, it is impossible to start to care properly for each and every one and attain the collective cohesion we need.

Obviously, each of us personally cannot love eight billion people, the entire world’s population, or even the inhabitants of our own country. Sometimes, we can hardly get along with our own family members. That is clear, natural and understandable, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t request it. Each of us needs to request to be given the power of love. From whom? From nature, the supreme power that unites all of reality into one. And why are things organized in such a way? In order for us to address this supreme power consciously, learn to know it, to exert our free will and demand to be connected as one bundle, with mutual love. Then we will attain complete harmony with nature.
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My article in Newsmax: “Reopening the Economy? First, We Have to Change”

There are debates all over the world about how and to what extent countries should reopen their economies in order to prevent a complete collapse. But opening it without first dealing with the cause of the coronavirus outbreak is likely to have horrific consequences that will dwarf the ordeal of the current pandemic.

We think we are at war with nature, that we must fight against it and subdue it. We forget that we ourselves are nature’s creation. Each of our thoughts, plans, words and actions is engendered in nature before it manifests in us. This is true even of the aspiration to subdue nature. But trying to conquer the very thing that planted the thought of conquering in our minds makes even less sense than chasing our own tails.

Just as we don’t understand why nature sends us the thoughts it does, we don’t understand why it has sent us the coronavirus. Yet it, too, had a process that led to its emergence. If we want to overcome the virus, we must know where it came from and why. When we identify the process that engendered the virus, we will see what we must do in order to curb it, and why there are many more in store where that little bug came from, and far more sinister.

Many scientists have already pointed to human behavior as the cause of the appearance of the virus. They explained that the destruction of natural habitats of many wild animals has forced them to migrate closer to humans. This makes what virologists call a “spillover” of viruses from animals to humans easier and more frequent. All the coronaviruses that caused respiratory syndromes in this century have resulted from such “spillovers.” SARS, MERS and COVID-19 were all caused by viruses that migrated from the animal kingdom and caused life-threatening illnesses in humans. So, too, by the way, is the case with the Ebola virus.

But human behavior did not only cause spillovers of viruses. Human behavior has polluted the oceans, lakes and rivers, polluted the air and polluted the earth. It depleted the oceans of fish, the sky of birds and the earth of animals. Human behavior starves and sickens millions of men, women and children the world over, enslaves them, rapes them and exploits them in countless ways. Human behavior inflicts death and torment on millions through war, deportation and destruction of communities and entire countries. Even the affluent and fortunate are so afflicted by human behavior that they find refuge in drugs, suicide, excessive eating and depression. In short, human behavior is the cause of all that is bad and wrong in the world.

Yet, what causes us to be so injurious to everything and everyone around us? And if our behavior is so fundamentally flawed, can we even mend it? And if so, where do we start?

We Start at Home

All animals behave according to their nature. Man is a part of nature; therefore, man behaves according to human nature. If human behavior is flawed, it is because so is human nature.

Hugging trees won’t change human nature, but hugging people will. The change should start at home, with the people meant to be closest to us. We must use the COVID-19 hiatus from baleful capitalism to reconnect with our families, reestablish the bond that made us a family in the first place, but which so many of us have lost along the way.

Afterwards, we should look at our communities and begin to reconstruct them. To paraphrase the words of JFK, ask not what your community can do for you; ask what you can do for your community. It will take mutual commitment to succeed, but if people understand the importance and urgency of rebuilding our communities, they will respond.

Before we take action, we must be aware. We must let the idea of human nature being the root of all problems sink into our minds and the minds of the people in our family and community, and then pull together and change it. We can do it. All we have to do is set a good example and let others inspire us through their example. We can use the added free time we have been given to learn about human nature and then go out and do something about it with our friends and neighbors.

From the community level, we must spread the spirit of friendship everywhere else. Just as singing from porches spread from Italy to porches all over the world, so can good deeds. Don’t be afraid to shoot a video of yourself helping others and post it on social media. Tell the viewers that you’re doing it because you want to be a better person, and the idea will catch on. It’s as easy as that: I help others because it makes me a better person. That’s all that people need to know. You will win people’s hearts and they will want to follow in your footsteps.

If we realize who we are and want to change, we only need to change our actions. This will change our mindsets, which will change our hearts.
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My article in Newsmax: “Are We Going Back to Normal?”

Nature is doing its job—we just need to support it and the world will heal from the coronavirus pandemic.

People stand and cheer for healthcare workers outside Mount Sinai West Hospital at 7pm on Manhattan’s Upper West Side during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in New York City, New York, U.S., April 13, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Segar

One thing we have certainly learned from the coronavirus quarantine is that nature could live peacefully without our interference. As countries begin to consider lifting the lockdowns imposed to avoid further contagion, we see unequivocal signs of the planet’s ecological recovery. Nature is a master teacher, now it is our turn to become exemplary students, pass the difficult test handed to us, and advance a grade by improving the relationship between us and the environment.

“As people stopped commuting and traveling, the Earth’s surface vibrated less,” reads a recent National Geographic article which explains how the coronavirus has “quieted” the world with the measures to curb the pandemic, thus reducing seismic noise. It puts in perspective the tremendous impact of humans on nature for better or worse.

Since COVID-19 pushed the world’s pause button, satellite images released by NASA show a significant reduction in toxic emissions and pollution in America. The air is dramatically cleaner in big cities across the globe, the chirping of birds has replaced the unbearable metropolis noise, and animals reclaim their habitats penetrating the big cities. One obvious conclusion is that instead of man’s hectic race to manipulate the world, it is much better when we sit quietly and allow nature to breathe, recover itself, and bloom.

Our attempts to control others out of pride, and particularly, our predatory behaviors toward each other, have brought despair and affliction upon us. However, humankind has the ability to consciously make a change. The first step toward change is awareness. Otherwise, it is impossible to fix something that we just assume works well.

Flattening the Negativity Curve about the Future

If we stop producing, acquiring, and accumulating the unnecessary stuff that is choking the planet, if we discuss and internalize what really matters in life and invest more time in nurturing good and healthy relationships, we will stop feeling that life is a dead-end road and our future will seem brighter and clearer.

Like never before, we are on the verge of a historic breakthrough. As humanity impatiently awaits the reopening of society and businesses, we should not become nostalgic about the past. Returning to what we call “normal” would be returning to the abnormal state that constantly left us unfulfilled, chasing unrealistic goals, and immersed in exhausting competition to succeed at all cost. However, since the old, egoistic patterns have proven themselves unworkable, it is worthwhile to look forward to welcome change, instead of backward. Ultimately, the current crisis has come to raise us and all of creation to a higher level of existence, so we would be wise to flow with the harmonious power of nature and allow it to heal us.

How do we ensure that we do not derail our trajectory toward a renewed and rehabilitated world? We will stay on the right track if we realize that nature is whole and round, where all its elements must be connected in one integral system in which they support and complement each other.

Humanity needs to replicate this pattern and move in sync with nature by gradually refraining from treating one another badly. We must understand that we constitute a delicate system in which each person depends on the other and we need to constantly strengthen social cohesion. This is the formula of nature for a wonderful and balanced existence, one that is complete and eternal. Thus, it is precisely from this enormous coronavirus crisis that we can flatten pessimism about the future and raise the curve of the positive new life.

— Published on April 16, 2020
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