Dr Ram takes a look at the human value system, in the post-Covid-19 era, and tells us how a ‘new normal’ will replace the old one. A socioeconomic analysis for Different Truths.

This pandemic has shaken the very roots of human thought and behaviour. What was earlier so ‘normal’ shall scarcely be ‘the new normal’? Isn’t it strangely satisfying that this virus has levelled the valleys and mountains of status, the developed and the developing, the haves and the have nots? The attitudinal swagger of the developed West gone as the ‘puniness’ of humans gets driven into our cognition. It has inexorably underscored that the all of humanity is an organic whole ‘Vasudhaiw Kutumbakam’ as the old Indian Sanskrit adage says. A pinprick here will cause pain felt by the whole being. When in January, news filtered out from Wuhan about a new highly contagious Coronavirus, we felt secure in our world comforted by the remoteness of the epidemic. Alas, within weeks, like wildfire, this virus entered our lives, melting the disconnectedness, and replacing it with palpable fear and uncertainty. Yes, indeed we are connected.

This pandemic has shaken the very roots of human thought and behaviour. What was earlier so ‘normal’ shall scarcely be ‘the new normal’? Isn’t it strangely satisfying that this virus has levelled the valleys and mountains of status, the developed and the developing, the haves and the have nots? The attitudinal swagger of the developed West gone as the ‘puniness’ of humans gets driven into our cognition.

Human value systems evolved across cultures and over aeons are all set to change because this virus is here to stay. Value systems dovetail the expression of perennial human emotions. Love is the only original emotion all else is learnt and later. Tactile communication of love as a human value or emotion is the established norm but given the highly contagious nature of this virus, coupled with the fact of the emergence asymptomatic carriers today, all this is going to change. The emotional vacuum so created will be hard to fulfil. We have hardly even begun to understand the enormity of it all and the kind of emotional future shock it might entail. For a moment, imagine that funeral where mourners just drive or troop past the bereaved family maintaining the mandatory social distance or worse still, consider the plight of near and dear ones who cannot even accompany the coffin of a Covid-19 deceased. The mother who can’t hug her son coming back from far off lands only to be quarantined. Or the son deprived of the warmth of mama’s bosom, when he meets her after so long. The reticence and stoicism with which neighbours meet you. That warmth the intimate hug to make you feel loved, all that’s gone. How will one live without these tiny gestures of love and togetherness? If not these, then what will be ‘the new norms’ of expression of human bonds and intimacy. Questions that even the most anticipatory of futurologists have not yet enquired or visualised.

The value loads that humans had so assiduously built and attached to events and things over the years and hooked up their aspirations and dreams to have started to melt. The cherished dream of foreign lands and the associated glamour has suddenly evaporated. From ‘global to the local’ is going to be the likely new trend. So goodbye to international jet setting tourneys.

 The value loads that humans had so assiduously built and attached to events and things over the years and hooked up their aspirations and dreams to have started to melt. The cherished dream of foreign lands and the associated glamour has suddenly evaporated. From ‘global to the local’ is going to be the likely new trend. So goodbye to international jet setting tourneys.

On a more sombre note, that poor migrant labourer now yearns for his own dusty village and the warm intimacy of simple village life. Alas, that is, if he survives the long harsh journey back. Dreams have changed, his aspiration as of now is ‘if I have to die, let me dissolve in the soil of my own village’. This virus has changed human dreams, aspirations and outlook. Would you believe ‘how much of it’ has brought this all about? Just under

2gm by weight of the virus from across the globe has brought humankind to its knees!

Coronavirus has hit the economic system too. Another universally applicable system so diligently evolved by humans. In fact, it is this system that is responsible for exacerbating the hiatus among human beings. Whether it is status ascription, material affluence or power to affect the other, the ultimate source of it all can be traced to this entrenched economic system. Is it crumbling? Well, the ‘new normal’ is certainly not going to be as of yore. As it is symbols of status, affluence and power are fast depreciating and, in the post-Covid-19, the world likely to emerge in a totally different form and substance. Work culture has already changed from glamorous swanky office spaces to work from home with seamless connectivity. This requires changes in the work stations. It is likely to get more efficient, less intrusive and bossy. Welcome changes, but for less equipped societies with ingrained bureaucratic underpinnings, the change is likely to precipitate a catharsis. With web traffic increase a major fallout could be lesser traffic on the roads and lesser office space requirements relieving some of the pressures of urbanisation. Lesser face to face contact would imply decision making without recourse to human contact element, thus radically altering work culture, maybe lesser corruption.

Coronavirus has hit the economic system too. Another universally applicable system so diligently evolved by humans. In fact, it is this system that is responsible for exacerbating the hiatus among human beings. Whether it is status ascription, material affluence or power to affect the other, the ultimate source of it all can be traced to this entrenched economic system. Is it crumbling? Well, the ‘new normal’ is certainly not going to be as of yore.

Well, it’s a new world today, ‘needs’ are not being driven by the background music of glamorous advertisements rather by what humans actually need. A strange scenario when economies are going into recession because humans are not consuming redundancies. The great pandemic paradox facing the developed world today is ‘whether to open the economy to save it or to enforce the lockdown to save humans.’ As it is the highfalutin lifestyles of the West and those aping them were unsustainable. But who was listening! Now nature has given time to ease up. Listen in as you see nature smiling and healing all around you. Rivers are running clean; the sky is azure and the birds come a visiting us again.

Is it the end or a resurrection?

Photos from the Internet