Our world is shrinking
We are shrinking further
Over the last years, we have shrunk our world’s into our mobile phones. We gape at them all the time, even when we are walking.
The old movie, “Honey, I shrunk the kids” could be renamed as “Honey, I shrunk the world”.
There is an imperative
There is an imperative now, to socially distance ourselves, to protect each other.
Most people have been observing the new protocols, and there are many who resist.
When I spoke against a group of older folk gathering in the lawns of our condominium to have chai and eat some snack stuff together, one of them protested, telling me that ‘we are all adults, and we should not attempt to regulate every aspect of our lives’.
Another kid who came in from the UK seemed to have escaped testing, because his parents lied (I have no clue how they did it) and he has finally tested positive.
The same goes for a small time singer who mingled with politicians, and then discovered that she had tested positive. She too had flown in from the UK, and had slipped through the testing protocol. And, one of our best female boxers skipped quarantine to have lunch with the President. Why the President would host lunches at this time is another question.
The Prime Minister closed Parliament only after his party had engineered the fall of a state government. When he asked people to clap for the medical profession, people gathered on the streets to dance, sing and bang pots and pans.
There is an imperative to use our brains sensibly.
It won’t happen to me
One of the classically stupid approaches that people adopt to such a situation is the ‘oh, it won’t happen to me. I am strong’ approach.
McKinsey does have an interesting article on Corona, and the various scenarios that could unfold.
Each of these scenarios assumes a certain kind of response from the government, and the governed.
Juxtaposed to that, you need to factor in
- the quality and extent of public health infrastructure
- the population density
- poverty and literacy rates
I would assume that this should be enough.
There is another factor that is difficult to quantify, and this applies to countries like my own — India. The ‘privileged’ believe that they can get away with anything, and so they flaunt rules. Why? Because they believe that rules and guidelines apply to others, and that nothing can happen to them.
When it does, they lie to cover the truth, and since they have access to a pliant media, the lie becomes the truth.
Stupidity and selfishness beats the best systems.
Look Carefully
Maybe it is time we looked deep into ourselves, and looked at how we behave. Our world will shrink before it expands again, and maybe it is good that we shrink a bit.
A smaller world does not have to be a world that is worse off.
Maybe it’s time to revisit Schumacher again.
