Purpose & Priorities

There are two types of bliss, 1. Eternal, 2. Ignorance. The journey from the bliss of ignorance to eternal bliss is the toughest. The quest of bliss is tiresome and frustrating. That's why even though I set out to search for that eternal bliss, the path is so thorny, I turn around and go back to being in the ignorant bliss. The bliss of ignorance is like a numbing agent. There are so many warnings and red flags around us, we are still happy and at peace because we have chosen to turn a blind eye to it.

A lot of scientists and researchers had warned us for many years of this pandemic. And yet, no one, none of the governments had any infrastructure in place, and disaster plan in place to stand up to this pandemic. Within a matter of weeks, all the infrastructure and economies of all countries came down shattering and exposed the underlying flawed system. 

For the mankind, this should be a moment of awakening for us. If nothing else, this pandemic should teach every individual, every family, every society, every company, every government, every organization, every country the wisdom to prioritize basics of our civilization and put the frivolous man-made issues on the back burner. 

We are still on the way to make a similar mistake again. A lot of the scientists have warned about AI and the need to regulate it at a political level. No politicians have taken it seriously and it will create a bigger destruction if we don't prepare humanity for it. 

As humans, we tend to not learn from our mistakes. We are extremely weak and primitive species in terms of physical and intellectual strength. The society where sports-persons and actors are worshiped and put on the pedestal, and healthcare workers, researchers, scientists, and educationalists are put behind the curtains, we need to take a hard look at ourselves and rethink our priorities.  

We are the society that puts the biggest chunk of our national GDP into defense, defense from other countries. We spend resources to protect ourselves from other humans, to assert power on others. But our own people die due to a lack of basic resources like food, shelter and healthcare. 

This global crisis dwarfs your individual existence to insignificant level. What bothers me the most is this helplessness that no one seems to prioritize the well-being of mankind. We want to find life on other planets, we want to have robots do our work, we want to find alternate fuel, but we don't seem to have any urgency to protect mankind from all possible disasters. We have taken this planet, its resources and our existence in this universe for granted and think we will continue to rule this planet. 

When you look at the long span of the history of the universe, this pandemic and even our own evolution on the Earth seem extremely insignificant to care about. The whole idea that there is a meaning to life seems fading. 

But as Elon Musk says I'd rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right. We must rise and give our best shot at humanity. We have a flawed global system and we can fix it with time if we have the best interest for each other and our future generations.