ArmsAlone Cannot Keep Us Safe:

Lessons Learned from Coronavirus

What we are experiencing now is not a prologue to a novel.This is reality. The place is ourworld, the time is now, and a happy ending is not promised.

The streets in my Southern California neighborhood are unusually quiet because most of my neighbors are driving around in hopes of finding stores with bottled water, hand sanitizer, toilet paper, tissues and food. My wife and I also searched store after store for those items this morning. Box stores like Costco and Walmartare rationing some items, something I have never seen before.

President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency. The stock market endured its worstlosses in 12 years. The pandemic led Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders to accelerate his push for free health care coverage for every citizen.

The panic makes me wonder what the U.S. would be like if we were facing an impending missile attack from NorthKorea, China or Iran’s mullahs.It seems we never imagined that anything other than bombs dropped by enemies on our home soil would create such a nationwide, or, for that matter, worldwide catastrophe.

That’s why are have such massive military budgets and nuclear weapons in silos and submarines all over the world. We felt somewhat safe because no enemy would ever challenge our massive military supremacy. And we’re not alone in that approach. China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and North Korea also spent trillions of dollars in a massive military buildup. They all feel like they have done all they can to prevent catastrophe.

But no one prepared sufficiently for the crisis of a pandemic. Coronavirus so far has humbled all the world’s most powerful nations. Can they respond sufficiently to avoid millions and millions of deaths?And if so, will they learn from this?

When a disaster or pandemic strikes,it does so indiscriminately. It spreads and affects us all. In the words of Persian poet Saadi, inscribed at the entrance of the United Nations building:

Human beings are members of one another,

since in their creation they are of one essence.

When the conditions of the time bring a limb to pain,

the other limbs will suffer from discomfort.

You, who are indifferent to the misery of others,

it is not fitting that they should call you a human being.

 

Building walls around us will not keep us safe. The Coronavirus virus proved that Saadi was ahead of his time. He believed that if one of us is affected by pain or poverty, we all suffer, and we all face the consequences.

The people of the world are more interconnected today than ever before. Turning a blind eye towardpolluted oceans and climate change cannot end well for all of us, and the same is true of pestilence.

The Coronavirus is not a curse from God, as some would believe. It’s a warning.I am not calling for disarmament, but I am callingfor us to think of ourselves as a collective human family. I am calling for us to arm ourselves against the invisible enemies of global warming, overconsumption,poverty, discrimination and, yes, disease, all around the globe.

Is it not possible that we can benefit more from arming ourselves against those threats than we have benefitted from arming ourselves with bombs?

The Coronavirus may be nature’s way of communicating to us that the earth can no longer tolerate this misuse.If all the energy and money spent on the chaos and murder taking place in Syria, Russia, Yemen and other areas could be directed on healing the world, instead of harming it, we might have a chance.

Will we ever find a way to make this happen?