Our innovations and our technological advances are aspects of human dominance over the world, the position we occupy as beings created with phenomenal potential to preserve what is good in nature and create sustainable instruments for social, economic, and environmental change. By relinquishing this position in the world in the pursuit of short-term financial gain humanity is only commiting an act of self-harm, using technological innovations to harm nature (exploitation of natural resources) and undermine civil liberties and institutions that make human creativity possible, as in the case of the social credit system in China being used as a tool against minorities. This challenging moment will reveal that while we are succeeding in global integration, we are failing to consider the ethics of our advances. Who can blame themselves for the pandemic? Despite having originated in China, it does not belong to China as some politicians claim. Our global supply chain and decompressed sense of space and time, where the world can be crossed in less than two days, and our economies are dependent on the exchange of international raw materials into consumable products. The flow of US dollars was a prototype for the rapidity of the spread of covid, and the correlation is obvious. The US had a high potential to mitigate losses, but instead the virus was politicized and our response lags heavily in comparison to our international partners. When corona is eliminated from Europe, signs indicate that it will still be ravaging the US - 30% of those in a recent poll claimed they would abstain from vaccines, this in combination with an anti-mask mentality, may prove to be devastating. Without a rigorous and scientific understanding of the virus and human behavior, we are at the mercy of the new corona-virus just as people have been at the mercy of the pandemics of the past. After the virus left China and invaded the "free world", misinformation about the virus and its effects began to spread faster than the virus itself, masks were determined as useless, social distancing ineffective, and the virus itself is being framed as a method for global control by the elite - we've all heard about the Bill Gates conspiracy, many believe the vaccine is going to contain a microchip. This wealth of misinformation and anti-intellectual repudiation of professionals and experts who know how to interpret data may be the prototype of future governmental responses from everything including climate change responses and future disasters.
Our doubts and individualism are being played against our need for social responsibility and community - perhaps encouraged by media and corporate interests to patch up the hole leaking in the metaphorical boat of the economy.