Why the coronavirus pandemic calls for moral introspection

Our collective humanity did not rise to the occasion and that’s why we need an awakening. A Whatsapp forward rightly said – next time you see people fighting for the last roll of toilet paper, do know what it feels like to be a refugee. We are all refugees today, even those in modern nations that claim superiority over the rest of the world. Friends in the UK say supermarkets aisles are empty and online shopping orders have a wait list of more than a month. That’s how a refugee feels when he is denied access to basic essentials. We are all scrambling to seek refuge from a pathogen that we cannot see. That’s what it feels like to run for shelter from military targets that can strike from any quarter. We are denied visas to come home and see our families. That’s how it feels to be separated in war from children and mothers and fathers. We can no longer participate in social gatherings. That is what it feels like to lose community and culture. We now know what is like to live in a perpetual state of fear and paranoia.

The next few months will prove to be the real litmus test of where societies really stand, on a moral plane, as economies plunge, jobs are lost and civil unrest takes its toll. Now we’ll know the real price of allowing governments to meddle in the affairs of other countries, expanding military/ defence budgets to issue state-sponsored war to plunder their resources, for not doing enough to stop genocide of minorities and the human cost involved when our own economies are battered.

The consequences of the times to come can be brutal but are inevitable. Now we must spend our time in self-isolation seeking forgiveness for the collective human fallacy that we are part of. Of turning away. Of not caring enough. Of not doing enough.