Where are we now?
Recapitulation of past few years and formulating moral lessons from covid
I will start with positive findings, during our extensive research in last 4 years we have discovered, that world is not really going to end soon due to climate doomsday and that there was no deadly virus which would be threat to us.
Those are positives. Now to the negatives, as has been said in this tremendous video by Dr. Vinay Prasad the current intellectual discussion about COVID can be summarized as following:
“I don't believe in forgiveness because in my opinion, these pieces of sh*t are still lying. I mean, like if you want forgiveness, the first thing you have to say is what you actually did wrong, and they're still f***ing lying.”
Those people are still lying and won’t admit anything. We can debate, why they would be lying so furiously in light of clear evidence, which is indisputable but I think we all know what would be consequences for them to admit it.
When we talk about reflection of our covid experience, I think we have to switch from scientific discussion to more broad and sophisticated image of world also maybe to psychology and theological point of view.
Science and religion
There has been interesting interview with Bret Weinstein, where he explains what exactly the scientific method is. It’s nothing more than empirical test which helps us build theoretical model of reality. Science by it self can not be religion as there is no final authority, which would decide what is true or not.
The nature and reality around us decide that and this means, that the theoretical model will be always based on observation but it doesn’t explain, how we came here or what is our life-purpouse.
In this case I don’t see any dispute between scientific view of world and religion. Science describe reality around us in best possible way and religion is what define our inner meaning or explain our purpose on this world. Science has clear limits and without religion what use would be to scientifically explore anything? Science helps us to get closer to God or our creator we can say.
When we think of science as current religion of Western world, we still miss few crucial pieces. We have already explored most of the world places and still we didn’t found anything which would explain properly the question why we are here.
Logical assumption is, that this clue won’t be probably in physical form hidden somewhere in the ground. And no AI or Computer will compute it for us. That’s surely not really way we want to go.
In this sense, we can claim that we have explored the matter around us, disassemble it into microscopic pieces but we still didn’t observe any spirit, god or inner soul in the objects. Therefore, the religion of last few centuries and as well their priests who proclaim to be The Science can’t answer us any of our questions, which we need to know. They need to be confronted with that.
This was exposed during covid, when via technology and psychological manipulation we were able to invoke fear in people and force them to contemplate in the solitary of quarantine.
As bad as it was, it maybe improved our spiritual understanding and also help us to see, that the current world we are living in is without soul wondering in pointless technocratic system, which was build century ago. Nicely expressed in short movie Elephant Dream.
Covid moral lessons
I won’t get here into how many dysfunctional and simply wrong assumptions we had about the world around us. We didn’t fixed anything and all the problems after WW2 which should be eliminated are here and even worse we are repeating exactly history. The raise of fascism is really worrying and those individuals should be stripped of any power or prestige in society.
Here I would like to focus on moral lessons as they will survive for generations and can help in guiding us forward. The snippets are borrowed from book “Our Last Inoncient Moments”.
First moral lesson:
"A key part of the COVID narrative is that friendship, marriage, sisterhood no longer matter if your loved one’s behaviour is ‘unacceptable.’ And if it is, then dissolving these relationships is morally justified, even heroic."
Second moral lesson:
"What makes relationships possible is that we set the right expectations, and that we trust ourselves and others to honour them. These expectations set the parameters for acceptable behaviour, and keep us responsive and responsible to each other. It is precisely these expectations that the COVID narrative demanded we breach."
Third moral lesson:
"When a pattern of respect and discussion and genuine inquiry is dismissed in a moment with the label “grifter,” or even “murderer,” is repair possible? Should you even want it? And when such distrust settles in, is it possible ever to be open again? I often wonder, how have I let fear and shaming and apathy change me, and how will the new person I am face and endure challenges (and triumphs) in the future?" - Choose better your friends and people around, those with questionable morals don't let anywhere close to you.
Fourth moral lesson:
"Anyone who broke trust and turned against you is not anymore your friend. Next time they would try something similar, stand up strong and never ever let them force you to submit. Fight them and forget all that nonsense about empathy, they are evil and immoral people."
This moral lessons are naturally in every human being, since you are born when you see someone you know that this is normal behavior. If you would do similar thing to dog or any animal, they will understand that you don’t like them, without any action just your attitude towards them is not-friendly and you are see them as enemy.
Why are so many people immoral?
You might now wonder, why so many people enjoyed this and why nobody protested against this "unnatural” behavior. The explanation is simple, most people take it as normal in today society and they simply don’t anymore know, what is right or wrong. They don’t have anymore moral inside them. Also the society supported this opportunistic / bad behavior and rewarded it, there was no sanction, if you behave that way.
From recent talk with Elon Musk about religion, I agree with him - the society in West completely lost the religion, moral and is now more secular or tribal than ever before.
This can not continue as the void need to be filled with something. There will be sects, groups or new religion and we already seen that before covid - religion as Bitcoin, Gender, Woke, Academy, Flat Earth and other. People are searching for meaning of life and society doesn’t even trying to help them. Anyone need religion as Simpsons reminds us in Episode “Joy of Sect”, we just need to pick the correct one.
I find incredibly disturbing, that we manage to dismantle whole basic founding of Western society and nobody cares. It only indicated what kind of idiots we have here in position of leaders or society rulers. They are encouraging the collapse.
Modernized Christianity
For me personally Christianity would be the basic starting point as historically we are born in it as well the “Ten Commandments” are basic moral principles of society. We also celebrate Christmas, Easters, Holy Kings and have Churches everywhere.
In this case as the current state of religion is very troubling, I would advocate for modernization of Christianity into 21th century and maybe pick the new upgraded religion which is called “Mormonism”.
Mormons are based of Bible but follow historical development and transfer the Christian principles with new chapters into America where the priest Adam Smith starts new chapter of life. I find this believable and I think everyone in Western society need to be thought at least some basic principles of religion which is based on the “Ten Commandments”.
I won’t go any deep into this but as I feel also some guilt as part of inteligence and academia educated, I really see no other way forward then reintroduce into Western society religion - in this case I am fine with Mormons and restructure society into old principle, where state and religion is separated.
We can modify laws in society but the moral story of everyone needs to be derivated from the religion and “Ten Commandments”. Not from technology or informatics. Otherwise we are going to repeat all the totalitarian ideologies from the 20th century!
Those are natural moral constructs of living beings and they need to be recognized as such and every discipline either law, science, public society need to adopt them and in case of breaching, condemned those who are breaching them.