I think that we will not rush to malls like we used to, and that we will see the manufacturing-buying-disposal chain as a thing of the past.
After having a period to calm down from the consumeristic rat race we were running, we now—while we’re in the stay-at-home conditions of the coronavirus era—have time to contemplate on how a lifestyle where we each set out to benefit ourselves on account of others brought about great imbalance between us and nature.
Now, while isolated from each other in our homes, there is a lot of information being shared around that acknowledges how our pre-coronavirus life was leading us to a dead end, and how our current prolonged period of social distancing gives us a new space to revise the way we live our lives.
It is thus my hope that together with the recognition of our past competitive-egoistic paradigm falling short in the satisfaction and joy that it permitted us, we will also learn that true happiness will come if we enter into balance with nature. That is, as nature is an integral system, and as nature increasingly shows us how interconnected and interdependent we are globally—as exemplified by the current coronavirus crisis—then we would be wise to learn how to adjust our attitudes to each other to match the level of interconnectedness and interdependence that nature is developing our awareness toward.
We would then exit the coronavirus era by replacing our egoistic paradigm with a new altruistic one, inverting an era that was amounting more and more negative phenomena, such as exploitation, abuse, depression, stress, loneliness, anxiety and neglect, into its opposite positive form, where we would reveal mutual consideration, responsibility, support, encouragement, happiness, peace, unification and love.
And what would we do with the piles of plastic excess that we built much of our old economy on? What would happen to all the buildings and towers we built, all the malls and shopping centers, when we wake up with an upgraded human consciousness in the post-coronavirus world?
We would turn them into museums. We would wander around all these stores, gazing at all the unnecessary and unimportant objects we filled our lives with, thinking “How could we have thought that making, buying, selling and disposing of all this garbage would have brought us any kind of enjoyment? What were we thinking?”
The post-coronavirus era museums would act to signify our new state of upgraded consciousness: that by feeling a common atmosphere of support, consideration and encouragement, we would look upon our pre-coronavirus materialistic culture as an extinct era, and these museums would remind us that we would not want to return to such a failed attempt at happiness. It is as Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) writes in his article, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”: “Man was not created for acquiring fortunes or for building buildings. Hence, one should seek everything that will bring one to love.”
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