I recently read the book “Shantaram [1]” based on hearing someone talk about this concept, because, fundamentally- I disagreed, I believe that form follows function, and simplification is almost always superior to the complex, but, here’s the quote:
Anything that enhances, promotes, or accelerates this movement toward the Ultimate Complexity is good,’ he said, pronouncing the words so slowly, and with such considered precision, that I was sure he’d spoken the phrases many times. ‘Anything that inhibits, impedes, or prevents this movement toward the Ultimate Complexity is evil. The wonderful thing about this definition of good and evil is that it is both objective and universally acceptable.’
Source: Shantaram – Theory of Ultimate Complexity — Steemit [2]
So, anything that makes things more complicated: Good. Anything that simplifies: Bad. Wrong according to me.
When it comes to a global pandemic, the first mistake is thinking that man is somehow mightier than nature. “It’s only a tiny microbe for fucks sake. We’ve got this.”
We don’t deny the brute force of a tsunami, an earthquake or a volcanic eruption, because we can see it, define it, and understand the extent of the damage. It’s something we can quantify, we can even have plans for it- we can buy “protection” from it- “insurance” or plan in advance for it- by living in a hardened bunker with end of the world supplies.
But a pandemic by an invisible scrounge is hard for most to understand. They want to treat it as a medical problem (it’s not), they want to look at it on a number of cases basis (which is ignoring the extent of it). They want to quantify and control it, which is as insane as thinking that lightning comes from Zeus on top of Mount Olympus or that it’s a penalty for crossing god (although the lighting strike on the Solid Rock Churches’ Jesus statute [3] almost changed me into a believer, however that they are holding services during the pandemic and haven’t been struck again, reassures me that lighting still is science- not divine intervention).
Shantaram was over 900 pages, and an amazing book. There are lots of divine quotes and ideas that makes it worth the read, even if his idea of good and evil is backwards. But, this is the quote I found that I’ve held close during this pandemic: “The truth is a bully we pretend to like.” And the truth is we’re not understanding the picture of the post-pandemic world, because we keep viewing it through our pre-pandemic lens.
Even if a cure is found, and eventually, there will be one, or at least a more effective treatment regime, personal behaviors will have changed. Things that were once believed important will not be as important, trust will be different, love will be different and economies will be different. The last thing we want to use as a gauge to evaluate this new world is by comparing it to the old one. Things will never be the same. Just like there are no more dinosaurs, the post pandemic world will bring new challenges. It’s up to us to shape them.
While Gregory David Roberts, the author of Shantaram, may have thought long and hard about his choices of words to convey ideas, there is no doubt, the next pearls of wisdom didn’t come from deep thought, but from being hit violently in the head too many times: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth” was the most erudite thing Mike Tyson ever was capable of saying- and it’s the one we should be working from now.
We’ve been punched in the mouth. And, while our leaders have scrambled to “save the global economy” it’s the last thing we should be worried about. The only way we keep score is simple- how do we minimize deaths, and infections.
All the rest is immaterial. Any worries about “winners and losers” will result in bad decisions being made. When you get punched in the mouth, all that matters is survival- and in this case, it’s of the human race, not, the world’s economies.
In fact, this pandemic may have just been the wake up call the planet needed. If the coronavirus isn’t going to cleanse the earth of humans, the humans were well on their way to extinction via global warming. All of our unbridled capitalism was driving us toward an environmental meltdown of epic proportions. With everyone sheltering in place, the need for fossil fuels has dropped exponentially, the pollution has slowed, and we’ve all realized that things we took for granted were really gifts that were received before we deserved them.
There can be no return to the past. What we should be thinking about is how to reorganize for a safer future. It’s become quickly apparent that even the easiest thing in the world- voting, is something that’s been messed up by the pandemic. We need to change the way we do it.
We’ve also figured out that a lot of people can work remotely, watch movies at home, give concerts from their living rooms. The question is, how do we make the post-virus economy work with these new realities. First and foremost- we need to guarantee everyone has access to high speed internet, at reasonable costs, and I’m not going to argue about whether 5G is the cause of this- we can stick to regular old fiber. People who wanted to request ballots were told to go to a site- to download a form to print and mail! Well if you don’t have internet, and you don’t have a printer (remember- paper is dead?) how do you vote? How do you have your kids do school work? You get the picture. It’s time for a second Works Projects Administration program to bring access to all.
We’ve known that copyright became almost meaningless the moment the first MP3 hit, but we’ve been fooling ourselves ever since. All these performers need a formula for getting paid- just the same way that actors, and television producers and reality show hosts get paid too. Youtube has programs to pay creators, but, Facebook hasn’t done the same. It’s time that either we pay for content as we consume it- be it from folk singers like my friend Alex Bevan who’s been doing 3:30 shows after the Wine with DeWine and Amy Acton show, or from Darci, with her free Yoga classes at night, or even citizen journalism like this blog. Instead of making Mark Zuckerberg [4] richer, we need a formula that sends money back for views, shares and like, paid out of the well of the consumer economy.
It should also be obvious that our for-profit health care system wasn’t ready to handle a pandemic and required an immediate bailout. If our for-profit hospitals were going to bill us all for the care they were forced to deliver at their idea of “competitive pricing,” the country would have been bankrupt before the first 1000 deaths, and the paperwork they created would equal the national debt. The system is broken, it needs reinvented- to line up with what every industrialized nation has done- universal health care. And, we need to stop drawing lines on the map on this. The idea of different costs for drugs in one country or another should be as insane as the cost of water- it’s a universal basic need. It’s time for a World Health Organization that actually delivers global health care for all. From the slums of Mumbai, where much of the book Shantaram takes place, to slums of LA. Pandemics don’t know lines on a map- and universal health care should be a global goal- take care of people, because, as I said at the start, people are what’s important.
The doctors and nurses who are risking their lives daily, aren’t the ones who will get the bailouts- that will once again go to the corporate crooks who think they are worth $4M a year- while tearing down hospitals in Dayton, just before our two biggest needs for them- tornadoes and pandemics. Mary Boosalis can go to hell, but not soon enough, for her shortsightedness that put us all at a disadvantage.
We’ve seen universities emptied and students asked to distance learn. We’ve heard cries for student debt forgiveness, yet the people who are turning into the real heroes in this pandemic are the grocery store clerks, the paramedics, the farmers, the truck drivers, the fruit pickers and the warehouse workers- all who are being asked to take the greatest risk, for the least pay. When it comes to education and compensation, how can we continue to say that hedge fund billionaires have a right to isolate themselves, while these people have to work? It’s time for a universal basic income along with a guarantee of a quality, affordable education for all. It’s got to be cheaper than the money we put into prisons and remedial education and incentives to get people to enlist in exchange for an education, never mind welfare, social security and medicaid and medicare.
Simplify. If everyone qualifies, we don’t need legions of bureaucrats to regulate and enforce the polices and procedures that only lawyers can love. From childcare to eldercare, health care to welfare, we can simplify systems to make it work for more for less. If we only realize we have to put people first.
There are so many other things we should re-examine and re-evaluate. Public transit to concert halls and sports arenas- how will they be safe in a post-pandemic but pre-vaccine world?
Instead of looking at the challenges of getting things back to “normal” we need to look to what the new world will look like. For me, the answer is obvious, it’s time to simplify and put human life before all. None of your measurements of your economy will matter, if we keep allowing people to die because we couldn’t tell how to keep score.
I wish I could end this with some prophetic quote from Shantaram. I’m sure there is one. But, the one that works best is one we’ve known forever- it’s called the “Golden rule”- “Treat others the way you’d want others to treat you” is really the only way to make it through this global pandemic. What happens after that- is hopefully, we don’t forget it and go back to the way we were before the tiny microbe turned the world upside down.