Corona: Fear is the key

As the second round of Corona scare grips the world as many had predicted, mass hysteria of gargantuan proportions seems to be building up again. Psychologists may call this reaction a paranoia that seems to affect large sections of the people all over the world. And Corona is not the only worry. US is worried about the gun purchases reaching alarming levels as a sizeable section of Asian Americans are in some kind of an insecurity syndrome. Worry and fear are all at the top of the mind as death seems to be lurking round the corner. The situation is eerily similar to the Corona scare round 1 suggesting that experience is not always a good teacher. Rather, it accentuates the past behaviour many times over. Against this backdrop, we once again need to ask the same questions that were raised during the previous round. The responses are of the same trial and error nature. To add to the woes some new questions have cropped up. Is this a different Corona? Does the vaccine has the answer? Difficult to say but history seems to be repeating itself. As the scare mounts and the toll counts rise to alarming levels, there is a need to have a relook at the entire scenario and examine things in totality. And things may not appear to be as simple as they look. Yes, it has impacted lives, ruined families and caused death and destruction of enormous proportions. Yes, it has shattered economies and crashed GDPs. But there is another side of the story. It has raised the number of billionaires in both developed and developing countries and there are some in the queue to graduate to the trillionaire status. It has pushed the growth of e-commerce companies astronomically while online platforms rose in geometric proportions. Investors now realise that putting money in Pharma stocks yields big dividends, and rather fast, even though there is no sure medicine in sight. It also threw quacks and charlatans in thousands sermonising on dos and don’ts on the social media. YouTube has become the most handy tool for the propaganda brigade who are delivering unsubstantiated pearls of wisdom almost at the same pace as the speed of the spread of the virus. Quite interestingly the biological virus seems to have acquired traits of computer virus. So we are told that this time the vaccine provides immunity for some months rather than a lifetime, as it used to be earlier. The connection between computer and Corona seems interesting as there is an uncanny relationship between people having stakes in computers and Pharma. It is not just the medical angle. An interesting aspect is that one voice of dissent on the social media meets with systemic campaign from troll brigade that makes sure that such voices are lost in the din. That apart, there are many intriguing aspects to ponder. But we must understand that while exercising utmost caution helps us, getting scared helps others who have something to gain from our fear. Fear is a big industry these days and marketing negativities pushes demand of goods and services that are often not required. Making a fast buck is seldom done through fair business. As Mario Puzo wrote in The Godfather — Behind every great fortune there is a crime. Corona is certainly bad, but cashing in on Corona is rather worse.

A goodness movement

Newspaper stories these days are depressing. Reading them, we realise that humans are still where they were in the stone age days. Psychologists rightly conclude that you can take the man out of Stone Age but you cannot take Stone Age out of man. Progress does not seem to be the law of life as said by Robert Browning. How long will man take to become man? Why we, the humans, are still not graduating into humans. While the stories of barbarism, aggression and violence of the present times are as distressing as of the past, our claims of being a civilised society appears hollow. We need to ponder why despite so much of knowledge and education, propositions of devilish nature still remain attractive. The animal in man fails to change. The lessons that we were taught have hardly made any impact in those few thousand odd years we have been learning them. Lessons on morality and ethics just remain a subject for essay writing as people seem to believe that honesty is not the best policy. Lying is a sin, greed is the root cause of all evil and pride comes before a fall are all cliches that makes little sense. Everyday people see people dying yet they want to live till eternity. And this desire is behind most problems as people indulge in all kinds of deeds and misdeeds to seek unreasonable security. Security that would make them survive even if the whole world perishes. No one wants to believe that permanence is an illusory goal in this transient world. In fact this question was rather very succinctly dealt with in the famous Yaksha-Yudhishthira dialogue in the Vana Parva of the Mahabharata while the Pandavas were in exile. When Dharmaraj posing as Yaksha asks Yudhishthira what is the greatest surprise, the reply that the senior Pandava gave explains the greatest paradox of human life. Yudhishthira says that the greatest surprise in this world is that though human beings are mortal and see people dying everyday yet they think they will not die. This desire is what perpetuates evil in this world. The main cause of this desire is the ego that gives all sorts of false pretensions to human beings. It makes a millionaire crave to become a billionaire and a billionaire aspiring for becoming a trillionaire. Resorting to all kinds of dirty tricks to fulfil their dreams people ultimately catch up with their nemesis as providence spares none. Even the Corona pandemic failed to dampen the spirits of those people who fail to realise that the last journey has to be performed free from all encumbrances as life is a zero balance account. This piece is not intended to paint a scary picture but to make realise that in the end it is the goodness that prevails. There is need to find out an approach to help make this world a better place to live for all. To create a new kind of movement to change mankind to become what he was destined to become — the most glorious of all the creations of nature. To become the man whom God created in his own image. Awakening the soul should be the idea behind the goodness movement. And this can be done by applying the same tools that marketers use to create a consumer movement. Man essentially wants to be good but he should understand what good being good is. This is what is required.