The Great Thing About the Coronavirus

Covid-19 is likely to kill millions of people. That is clearly not a great thing. Admittedly, this virus will wreak havoc on our global society and on our individual lives. So what’s great about this virus? Well, to understand that, we need to step back and look at a very big picture.

Our modern global civilization is facing numerous crises — all at the same time. There’s global warming, species die-off, pollution, overpopulation, war, a refugee crisis — the list goes on and on. Yet, underlying all of these individual problems is our level of consciousness. As a species, we act like reckless, selfish teenagers hell-bent on doing whatever we feel we can get away with. Historically, this way of being has worked well enough to get us to where we are today. However, if we’re to survive the numerous crises encircling the globe, a change of our collective consciousness and thinking will be a necessary first step.

Albert Einstein once said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” In the past, our thinking has mostly been based on the idea that we’re all independent of each other, and the more of the pie I can get, the better. Indeed, this has been helpful for both our individual survival and our global society. Yet, in recent times we’ve seen that there are severe problems with this way of thinking and behaving. Shooting a hole in an…