8 Big Lessons We Can Learn from the Pandemic
Suffering through a pandemic is a terrible way to have to learn a lesson or two about the nature of humanity.
But it’s what we have, so we may as well make use of it.
What can we learn from our current crisis? Not so much in the “I should have stocked up on more toilet paper” vein, but in terms of understanding more about who we are and our place in the universe? You know: big picture stuff?
Here are my thoughts.
1) Normalcy is an illusion. Still thinking that conditions prior to the pandemic were the way things were “supposed” to be? Or that once this thing is over, we’ll all go back to “normal”? Give it up. We’ll adapt, we’ll get by the best we can, because that’s what we humans do. But there is no special state that represents the way things are supposed to be — there’s just the way things are. As Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari put it:
The heated debates about Homo Sapiens’ “natural way of life” miss the main point. Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, there hasn’t been a single natural way of life for Sapiens. There are only cultural choices, from among a bewildering palette of possibilities.
2) We humans don’t occupy any particular place of privilege in this world. One day we’re feeling like the Crown of Creation. The next day…
