Pandemic Thoughts Day 3

From April 15, 2020

How will the world change after all of this is over? Will there be more people working from home? Will schools do more online? Will people change their careers and how they view their lives? What will change for me? What would such a world be like?

Let’s say schools do more from home and people are home more. We stay home and we don’t go out as often but I don’t know this doesn’t seem right either. There are a lot of people who have no desire to work from home or remain at home. They want to go out and do things and be productive. The idea of just being idle at home with nothing to do doesn’t appeal to a lot of people but may it’s something that could be more and more necessary? Is this a one time thing? Will this be something that happens again and again? The last major pandemic was the Spanish flu of 1918. There hasn’t been anything this major in over 100 years. So would it be another 100 years before we face this kind of monster again? Or will there be other pandemics that come and threaten our very existence?

Humans do seem to struggle with doing what is right. So many people want to get out and go out and don’t want to remain at home. Some of it is understandably the need to be able to survive and work is the only means to do so. So how would that change? The idea of a universal basic income could come into play. So if people had the ability to get paid no matter if they worked or not, would that help with something like this? As jobs become more scarce due to automation and robotics (and wouldn’t something like this push the need for automation even more?), the need for a universal basic income would increase.

Surrogates hit on the idea of robots replacing humans out in the real world while humans stayed inside and controlled the humans from their safe environment. This was seen recently with a graduation in Japan where robots were used to collect the diploma and the students were present by means of a tablet used as the head of the robot and the student was present on the tablet via a meeting app of some sort. As robotics improves, something like what came about in surrogates could become more of a possibility and what’s not to like about that idea although, when you think about it, there are always those who wish to experience things for real and not virtually.

Going along these lines, the need for virtual stimulation may also increase. Broadway has been cut for the time being and many experiences of late have been done virtually. What better way than to have a virtual reality that would more closely match how it feels to go to those places. And eventually, from there we would get to holodecks. Though I think that the computer processing speed needed for something like that would be astronomical. But it would be a way for things to be experienced when it is not possible to experience those things in person.

So many problems need to be addressed that this pandemic has laid bare. The need for universal healthcare is huge. People are dying because they do not have the ability to get the healthcare they need when they need it. Insurance costs are high, and care is high and not everything is covered. Those who are the most vulnerable are the ones who do not have the insurance they need to get the care they need. And so many countries have found a way around this but the US has not and that needs to change.

I fear though that much will remain the same. It may take something even more dire to get through to people that the way things are is not the way things need to be. So many are more concerned with themselves, with the fact that THEY are locked up inside, that THEIR rights are being infringed on because they are not allowed to go where they want to go when they want to go. They don’t see that their actions have consequences or really care. I can’t say I really understand that. We are not merely individuals. We are a part of something larger, part of a larger human collective. We should work together to take care of each other and take care of our planet. Thinking only of ourselves is not going to help us in the long run. We are tied together and need to work together for the betterment of all. Sadly though, some people are just too selfish to understand this.

How can we get that to change, to get this idea that we are all part of one world, that we need to work together, how can we get that through to everyone? What does it take to do that? Apparently not a major pandemic because it is all too easy to see that the individual is still more important, that money is the be all and end all of everything. How do we leave such a system, a system where wealth is the ultimate goal for many people? How were they able to get people to no longer need money in Star Trek? That is never really talked about. People worked and still did things but were not paid. Obviously food was available to everyone. How do you even start to go about making that possible? Is it possible?

Can our world change from what we currently have to something that is better for all of us? Religion looks at this as being a form of heaven though for many the idea of heaven is to be ruled by a supreme being and only those willing to follow his every command would be allowed to live. That doesn’t quite strike me as a heaven I would want to be a part of. However, it does seem that people are not going to go into this willingly, there has to be some sort of government that leads us in that direction. But that is problematic as well. How then can we make our world better than it is?