The scary, wild dance of present pandemic has put many thinking minds to test and the direction as well as the outcome of it is as varied as the number of minds engaged in it. This is one of such many minds trying to spell out some systemic stream of thoughts from the vast, jumbled up unruly threads of various colours and kinds. Let’s hope the reader gets something from it, which can be helpful to exercise the inquisitive mind to reach at some original thought of itself.

Our conscious mind is endowed with such a nature that it cannot remain blank at any time. No one can deny the fact that something is always engaging in our minds – sometimes subtly and other times aggressively. The thoughts that continuously criss-cross our minds are of varied numbers, structures and impacts. For example, at this time, whether we like it or not, the main engagement of the human minds all over the world is nothing other than the overwhelming pandemic with its deathly shadow lurking in our neighbourhood. But whatever weighty and overwhelming this ominous thought it may be, there are always many other sub-thoughts that follow the main and primary one. In this musing, we are trying to pull one small thread of thought as to what could be one of the many contributors to the occurrence of this present day pandemic.

On the bases of meagerly available scientific and immediate data on the origin and nature of this newly popped up virus, we can only say that this is a very dangerous one and can inflict very big damage throughout the world. Other than that we do not know for sure the causes, the nature and more importantly, the remedy against it. The knowledge tank all over the world should be and is primarily focussing all its efforts with very high priority to reach at the cure and prevention measure for saving humanity from this virus. But in a bigger perspective, in order to stop the formation of such dangerous viruses in future, the responsible leaders of the world should be really serious about finding out the reasons as to why and how this virus took its origin. This will then be helpful for them to formulate a world legislation as an effort to prevent similar dangerous situations in future.

Talking of legislations, rules and regulations and guidelines, it is not that such are non-existent. Many nations have their own legislative arrangements to address such situations with a view to maintain health safety of their citizens and they are equipped with various degrees of judiciary penalties. In the present context, the development and spread of this virus is widely attributed to the wet market where wild animals were traded in non-hygienic conditions. It is not that there was no legislation against the trading of wild animals or against the neglect of public hygiene, but such provisions were taken very lightly by the concerned authorities and the involved public. Such guidelines, rules and regulations are taken, most of the time by the public, as coercive measures by the authorities. Hence, tendency to break them, disobey them and circumvent or go against them. Until and unless the subjects of such provisions develop a firm attitude within themselves that such provisions are there for their own wellbeing, this rogue tendency to go against them will remain in the society of adamant people.

Looking back at the recorded history books and the religious epics, it is not so difficult to see that whenever and wherever there had been adamant revolt against established spiritual, moral, social and state rules and regulations, there were instances of large scale damage to the society at large. The spiritual, moral and social rules, regulations, instructions and guidelines are usually formed and mandated by concerned societies and they have very little or even no judiciary teeth attached with them. In such a situation, for these provisions to serve their purposes, each member of the society should be convinced to own these provisions as their own and follow them as their moral duty towards society and nature. When this is done, then we find it easy to see that even the state legislations are there for the benefit of the society and not to curtail their rights and freedom. Then it will be easy for the public to follow the established regulations and guidelines of the different wings of the society they live in. They will not see it as coercive but will responsibly follow it as their moral duty.

The above thread of thought, compared with the rampant social disobedience we see around us, naturally leads us to an obvious question – why is the present society not able to see the benefits of willingly living their social and personal lives within the social provisions put in place for them?

There can be many angles to look at the above intriguing question and as many possible reasons can spring up depending on the various contributing factors of the society. This question has been crossing my mind even before this instance of pandemic and I have been sharing it with few friends who care to exercise their thoughts on it. Courtesy some like minded contributing friends, I find some good sense in believing that the root cause of people not showing any responsibility to their moral duty in the society, to a big extent, is the absence of any effort to teach them about it ever since their childhood, which is their learning phase of life. Half a century ago there used to be one period daily used to be set for moral studies. There used to be books prescribed for moral education and exams conducted from its contents. It included chapters on personal and neighbourhood hygiene, social harmony, national integration, cultural respect, benefits of festivals, religious harmony, respecting seniors, eco-system, and such like lessons. These things, once embedded in a child’s mind, they remain life long and direct their way of life. Sad to say, we find such teachings completely missing in today’s curriculum. Children are overwhelmed with heavy loads of study materials to make them competitive in the overcrowded world but nobody is teaching them the importance of social and moral values. Sad to notice, even the busy parents of this competitive society do not have time, energy and concern to teach their children the real lessons of life. Today’s education system is preparing the pupils to be competitively expert grabbers and snatchers from fellow humans. It has compelled the people in individual rat race, with a highly elevated winner streak imbibed in them, to compete ruthlessly with own brothers and sisters, instilling within them the killer spirit to crush their colleagues and grab the top position. The depravity of today’s education is brainwashing the pupils to dwell lifelong on I, Me and Mine. You, Others and society are lost from their visibility range.

Why cannot we relate the present days compulsively staying in-home, moving from one room to another leisurely, giving ear to other members of the family, find time to exercise our mind thinking on something other than our tight scheduled routine, etc., to be the coercive act of nature to teach the moral values of life? Can we hear it saying that if we continue overspeeding, it has its way of putting the break in our lives? Is it not loudly displaying that its air and water is basically clean and healthy and beautiful and we should have maintained them that way? Our Nature teacher is elaborating from its syllabus that the rest and rejuvenation system is set by it with a purpose for the good of mankind. But if the provisions of this system are not adhered to, then Nature has its own way of putting things right on the track.