In the times of Coronavirus: What we need to learn

What do we need to learn from this coronavirus pandemic?

Mom and daughter visiting through the window in the times of Covid-19
Lori Spencer visits her mom Judie Shape, 81, who Spencer says has tested positive for coronavirus, at Life Care Center of Kirkland, the Seattle-area nursing home at the epicenter of one of the biggest coronavirus outbreaks in the United States, in Kirkland, Washington, U.S. March 11, 2020. REUTERS/Jason Redmond – RC2HKF9TE1XS

In my former post about the Coronavirus pandemic, I opened up about the different reactions I had when it became evident we could not escape the impact of the Covid-19. When pandemics happen, we experience the exact same reactions we have when experiencing losses or when we have been victims of a catastrophe. We go through the stages of grief:

Denial versions:

  • It’s a hoax or a false alarm.
  • I’m safe, this is happening far away. I won’t be affected
  • I’m healthy, no virus will make me sick
  • This is only affecting “Other” people.

Anger versions:

  • I found who’s guilty – I assign blame on others
  • I spread conspiracy theories
  • I just feel irritable at the whole situation and the limitations it brought to me

Negotiation versions

  • If I pray (meditate, practice yoga or Qigong) I’ll be okay
  • I’ll eat better to improve my immune system
  • I’ll change my lifestyle to be healthier and protected from the virus
  • I understand we’re part of the problem, we need to do something, we need to change the world

Depression

  • I should not have…
  • I regret…
  • Isolation hits hard, I see how much I need my…
  • I sleep all the time, have no drive for anything, what’s the point anyhow.

Acceptance

  • This is what it is
  • I take responsibility for my part
  • I learn from this experience and make some changes
  • I prepare myself for what’s coming

It’s really sad that what is required of us is to “keep social distance” precisely in times in which we have disconnected so much from each other. I see a slight change in the quality of the messages I receive from friends and acquaintances. An increased, personal, concern for one another. But if individualism is one of the main features of these times, the pandemic can make it worse. We might become more suspicious of others than ever.

Ideally, we can use this pandemic to reflect on the quality of our lives and the relationships we have. Maybe we can stop competing, trying to be the one with the most brilliant idea to see how to build new ideas and solutions conjointly. Maybe now we will see how everything is so interconnected that it’s difficult to function as a society without the contribution of each individual. Maybe we’ll start valuing each individual’s contribution. Maybe…

May you be well

EVOLVING in times of the Coronavirus pandemic

Coronavirus pandemic tests the capacity of the world leaders to manage a crisis.

© FT montage; AFP/Getty Images

“We have to change our everyday lives — not gradually, but right now,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said. Germany has shown an exemplary management of the Coronavirus pandemic.

I honestly feel unqualified to talk about compassion during this Coronavirus pandemic. My perspective about the illness, the role leaders play in a world emergency, has changed since we first learned about the Coronavirus.

I have been upset, worried, uncomfortable, a loud critic during the month or so since we started to realize that we were not safe from the spread of this virus. Many things have crossed my mind. For example, I have thoughts of nature taking revenge on us for the little care with which we treat it. It’s decimating the population of the most destructive creature that has ever inhabited Earth, I thought.

Then I found myself inclined to believe some of the conspiracy theories. We’ve gotten so mistrustful of “leaders” driven by greed, that it was difficult not to start looking around to see who is benefiting from the epidemic so that we can place blame on someone, or something.

I was troubled by some people’s carelessness also. But I was myself being careless. I thought I was healthy, had no symptoms, and could wander around with little risk. Then I read about the healthcare practitioners begging us to help them “flatten the curve.” I realized our carelessness could contribute to unconsciously made the epidemic worst.

And, of course, I blamed the ineptitude of the president of this proud country. It hit me that there are so many people who do not believe in science, who render the US weak in front of the epidemic and who would say anything, no matter how inaccurate or false, to blame an opponent, to capitalize the moment politically.

However, the most striking realization was to remember that I used to believe in the mighty power of the US. This country is no longer the vanguard, it does not make alliances with other countries, and pride has consumed the nation and its leaders into odious selfishness that, in the case or coronavirus, can prove deadly. The US administration no longer works side to side with world organizations like the World Health Organization to coordinate efforts to alleviate the burden of this health event. Nationalism in the times of globalization proves its weakness and its wickedness. People and countries cannot be global to profit, and then not global when compassion and solidarity are needed.

Child abuse has lasting consequences


Disciplining children by physical means is still commonly accepted around the world. What many people still don’t understand is that this practice can serve as a prelude to an escalating pattern of child abuse.

Image result for child abuse

According to the United Nations, eleven percent of the world population lives in extreme poverty ­­­­–– make less than $1.90 a day––and therefore struggles to fulfill basic needs. Even though fewer people live in extreme poverty these days, almost half of the world’s population —3.4 billion people— still strives to meet their basic needs, the World Bank said in 2018.

Child abuse and neglect can result from the convergence of poverty, high levels of stress, low levels of education, and lack of parenting skills. In households where people are struggling to make ends meet, children’s basic physical, emotional, and spiritual needs are more often neglected.

Researchers have found that exposure to repeated stressors cause hormonal imbalances and activates an area in the brain called the limbic system. The mental status of the parents, the way they regulate emotions, end up affecting children. We need to be aware that brain development and mental health are the result of our interactions. When caregivers or teachers interact with children, they are impacting their brains. This, in essence, is how love becomes flesh, says author Louis Cozolino in his book “Neuroscience of Human Relations,” (W. W. Norton & Company; Second edition, 2014)

Childhood adversities, including neglect, and physical, verbal or emotional abuse, affect the child’s acquisition of skills, their social competence, and their capacity to respond empathically. And, what is worse is that studies have consistently found that any form of physical punishment is associated with future violence against caregivers, siblings, peers, and partners. However, researchers also found that children’s aggression was reduced by stopping harsh discipline.

When a child is born, he or she is equipped to naturally experience concern for another. But, as researchers have shown, deprived children or children exposed to any form of child abuse or trauma, have problems experiencing empathy or even recognizing emotions different from anger, which is a response typical of the fight-or-flight response to stress (resulting from the activation of the amygdala in the brain).

It’s therefore essential to set up policies in place to address the need for parenting education for all caregivers, as an effective child abuse preventative strategy.

Stop the pursuit of happiness!

What did Thomas Jefferson have in mind when he considered essential to add “the right to the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence? Life and liberty were, of course, vital rights that the forefathers of this country had to fight for when the colonies weren’t allowed the sovereignty to decide their own destiny when the British army was abusing the colonists.

But why the pursuit of happiness? I’d like to understand the intention behind the words. I believe that it was not about individuality and not about possessions. Their fight was for freedom and I am inclined to agree with those who think that they were referring to that happiness that can only be achieved when you work for freedom and for the public good.

The pursuit of happiness is since the declaration of independence a goal linked to the American way of life. People have come to pursue happiness, or what they believe happiness is, through the most extraordinary ways. Money and fame have become the avenues that supposedly take you to Heaven on Earth. But it doesn’t take long for people to realize that money can’t buy happiness.  People achieve riches and fame and they party, drink alcohol, consume drugs, have sex, all in pursuit of happiness. Often times people get a quick peek at or a brief sensation of elation that might feel to them as heaven. But, because it doesn’t last long, they go for more and more of it until it risks becoming obsessive and destructive behavior. Might explain why people are frequently unsatisfied. Longing, always longing.

A divorce between the soul and the ego might be the big culprit of people’s lack of happiness. The soul is capable of experiencing the utmost joy and peace. The ego is greedy and lonely and afraid. It can seek experiences that can elevate the body to the heights of elation or manic moods but cannot achieve joy on its own. Joy is a less intense experience, but it lasts longer.

The pursuit of happiness has been misunderstood, I think. It’s not about the individual, but about the collective wellbeing; it’s not about possessions but about achievements. It’s more about doing the right thing than a lot of things!

COMPARE TO BUDDHISM… Accept suffering is part of life.

The third person is essential for emotional health

A dad is trying to playfully connect with his 9-year-old at a restaurant. The boy is standing to the left and the father has his arm around him. Both seem a little uncomfortable. The dad starts throwing what seems like a math quiz at the child.

What’s 40% of 50? the dad asks and the boy has trouble finding the answer.

The dad gives him clues, takes him to “what’s 40% of a hundred?” to which the boy easily replies 40 and then the dad insists with the former question.

Even though this time the boy easily says 20, he is frustrated and concludes, “I’m not smart, dad.”

This simple anecdote of interaction between father and son makes me think of a hundred things.

For one, how difficult it is to respond sometimes to the emotional needs of another person!

The father’s intention seems to be to communicate with his son, to play with him, to stimulate the child’s brain. However, he doesn’t seem to realize he’s making the child feel incompetent and stupid. Not a good foundation for a parent-child relationship, but unfortunately this interaction is not uncommon between adult and young males.

There was an implicit “leave me alone” plead from the boy that the father disregarded. I wonder if the child will remember this one as a humiliating moment where he perceived his father was more intelligent. Will he also feel that his father sees him as a failure and therefore won’t feel proud of him? Not unlikely, the father-son memory will be recorded with some resentment that will mark even the son’s choice of career (I’m not good for math, I will choose art).

The saddest thing though is not only that the father didn’t see the child’s discomfort (the father kept insisting) but that the dad’s good intention was not recognized either.

I believe in these cases a third person is essential. Was this a divorced father sharing weekend time with his child? The mother was not there. Would she have stopped the father from going on with the quiz to protect the child? Would she have interpreted and explained to the child what his father’s intention was?

I’ve seen how important it is for single parents to have a third person reinforce their authority, share responsibilities, explain their intentions to the child.

I’ve also seen how important it is for a child who is verbally mistreated in public to have a third person intervene and stop the abuse. It takes the blame out of him/her (“It is not something I did what explains my parent’s abusive behavior”).

I am certain that in many occasions our perception of the world is tinted and biased because we lack that third person in our lives who can explain and interpret the facts for us. For example, a grandfather who provides a different perspective; the stranger who intervenes to either defend the child or take the steam out of the situation; the wife who explains dad’s intention; the therapist who allows for a space where emotions are acknowledged, words listened, and new perspectives are possible.

Let’s look for opportunities where our children can see the two sides of a coin. That will help them integrate lightness and darkness and grow emotionally healthy.

My truth is your truth?

“The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or a curse.”
― Carlos Castaneda

In Don Juan, the Sorcerer, Carlos Castaneda said,  “To seek freedom is the only driving force I know. Freedom to fly off into that infinity out there. Freedom to dissolve; to lift off; to be like the flame of a candle, which, in spite of being up against the light of a billion stars, remains intact, because it never pretended to be more than what it is: a mere candle.”

In the spiritual path, we sometimes have this illusion that we can reach or we have already reached “the” truth. We talk about things like “keeping inner peace” and “putting aside the ego” and “we’re all one.”

The problem is we have trouble recognizing we are a “mere candle” of the infinite number of existing stars in the universe. “The truth” would be beyond the summation of all potential light that all the existing candles can shine.

When we get/feel separate from the whole, we stop contributing our share to the big light and still, we go around shouting “I have the light, I have the light, I have the light.” We want to show it to everyone else, we preach our truth, force our light unto others.

Holding to our beliefs as if they were a supreme truth revealed leads us into trouble, big trouble. When we hold the position that we’re right, and someone differs from us, then they must be wrong, uh? What follows is separation.

We fight for what we believe, which is understandable if we identify ourselves with our beliefs. But we’re not our beliefs.

Disagreements get us upset, and we snap out of balance. Her or his opinion becomes a threat for me…

What if instead, we seriously, honestly, work for integration, acceptance, union? Are we afraid to integrate a new idea or perspective into our existing beliefs? Being afraid would mean that our ego is disconnected from the soul. I bet the soul, which is adventurous, would always take on the challenge of exploring unknown territories.

I say, let’s us add and multiply instead of subtract and divide!

Let’s take what the other says, even when we disagree or feel challenged, as an opportunity to move forward, learn and integrate new perspectives.

Is selflessness possible

We’re ego and soul, and yin and yang, opposite forces, characteristic of duality, struggle inside us.

One of the most compelling challenges in my spiritual life has been to really understand the motives underlying my own feelings and actions. One of my teachers said a long time ago that a healer’s actions need to be motivated by what he called “pure intentions.” However, since subconscious forces drive us, how do we know what our real intentions are at any given moment?

For example, the most generous gestures could be driven by the need to please others or to be loved. An action could give us stature to the eyes of others but only our inner core would know how many pints of selfishness our generosity hid.

But this is not a new dilemma for me.

At 15, I was already a snob philosopher who could swear with no shame that she understood Socrates pretty well. Plato’s writings got me thinking about the essence of life, about beauty and goodness and I pondered what would be the best way for me to achieve some kind of utter kindness, selflessness, integrity… only to come to the conclusion that achieving this utopic perfection would on itself be tremendously self serving because I’d be striving for it basically to feel good about myself.

So, is selflessness really possible?

I follow the great egalitarian philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in that man is born good but the pernicious influence of human society and institutions corrupts them. I also believe with Daoists that we are born with wisdom, trust, faith, love, peace and joy and life experiences makes us learn anger, grief, fear, mistrust, resentment.

But be what it may be, we’re still made of ego and soul, and yin and yang, opposite forces, characteristic of duality, struggle inside us.

Maybe our life is about bringing light into our darkest places inside. Maybe it’s about increasing our awareness of our true essence. Maybe enlightenment is this consciousness of our wholeness, which is made of contradictions, about keeping a constant awareness of our oneness in the midst of our perception of division and differences.

The question then is not if selflessness is possible but if we could increase awareness of our interconnectedness.

Disconnected from the other

The main point about civility is…the ability to interact with strangers without holding their strangeness against them and without pressing them to surrender it or to renounce some or all the traits that have made them strangers in the first place.

—Zygmunt Bauman

The media constantly inform us about acts of terrorism, wars, people displaced by violence, refugees, famines, natural calamities, human and drug trafficking, mass lay-offs, corporations that sink overnight or merge to form larger and frighteningly powerful entities. All of these are symptoms and consequences of our disconnection as humanity.

In January 2018, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, Teresa May, created a new position, a Ministry of Loneliness. More than nine million people in the UK suffer, either occasionally or permanently, from loneliness, according to a report published by the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness. And loneliness seems, more than anything, the product of our inability to connect with others.

We’re not only isolating ourselves, we’re regrouping.

Armed with recent demographics, journalist Bill Bishop published The Big Sort:Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart. (First Mariner Books, 2009). When he looked at the electoral results of the last thirty years, he observed that Americans have grouped by class, skin color, and beliefs in increasingly homogeneous communities. This has happened not only at the region or state level, but by city and even neighborhood. His data has been confirmed by other reporters, such as Corey Lang and Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz of the UK,[1] who also predict that this tendency toward segregation will be generalized along party lines. People are choosing neighborhoods (and churches and news programs) that are compatible with their lifestyles and beliefs. This type of grouping prevents the new generations from being exposed to different opinions and views of the world. The phenomenon is happening throughout the nation. For example, in rural West Texas, a fifty-acre community development  (Paulsville) was created in 2008 to provide homes exclusively for followers of then libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul.

Bill Bishop suggests that the outcome of this trend has been a notoriously dangerous polarization of the population, a decline in tolerance, and an increase in extremism.

Facebook designs algorithms that select what’s displayed in my wall and shown to my friends and family. Other algorithms will get me to see more posts from people who think like me and fewer from those who have different opinions, or more personal comments and pictures, than any political news I’d like to share. My followers and the people who like or click on my posts back my opinions, but my posts rarely reach those who think differently. The balkanization of social media or splinternet––meant to block, filter, or redirect certain topics––causes us to live in separate microcosms, with narrower visions. It denies us the opportunity of enriching ourselves with differing ways of seeing the world. It has become a political instrument to perpetuate power in the hands of a few.

In a sociopolitical climate of constant change, corruption in the highest spheres, mutual distrust, and unrelenting competition, we feel easily judged, criticized, and excluded. This also constitutes an obstacle when trying to connect with others. I distrust others because I suspect they want what I have (my money, my partner, my position at work, my influence). Since others have abused me in the past, betrayed me, abandoned me, rejected me, I can’t expect otherwise. In the midst of this mistrust, I keep my guard up. I don’t show my vulnerability. I choose not to connect with those different from me but to group with like-minded people. The paradox is that vulnerability actually connects us, humanizes us. We need to change the paradigm that the intellect is what makes us strong. True strength doesn’t come from our physical bodies and brains, which inevitably deteriorate, but from experiences and feelings that eventually make us capable of empathy and prompt our indignation about social injustice or ignorance and ambition. We all have a soft side, and that’s just fine. We are yin; we are yang.


[1] The LSE US Centre’s daily blog on American Politics and Policy (online).

Disconnected from our bodies

Not only have we progressively disconnected from each other and the planet, we’ve also stopped listening to our bodies. We’ve forgotten how to lead a rhythmic life. We don’t eat when we’re hungry, but when the food is available or when it’s noon. We don’t sleep when tired; that’s what caffeine is for. We turn off symptoms with medication, instead of trying to understand their roots. In addition, we’ve lost body wisdom. Our gardens are more for adornment than for receiving our daily dose of sun or for planting trees that purify our air. Instead of exposing our skin to the sun, which would transform skin tocopherols into vitamin D, we take a supplement. Instead of drinking orange juice, we look for vitamin C capsules. If something upsets our stomach, we just take an antacid or digestive enzyme instead of eliminating from our diets the foods causing problems.

We’ve also stopped trusting the wisdom of the body, no longer listening to its inner healer. We believe that our doctor is the expert in our own body, and we allow specialists to manage our health. I often see patients unable to decide on a course of action because what reason prescribes goes against what their heart, their instinct, or their dream shout. Society (which strongly echoes the parental voices lodged in your mind) sometimes prevents you from seeing the red flags or advising you about what’s best for you. We end up not doing what our hearts and souls really need and want.

I believe three types of disconnection (from the body, from others, and the planet) are interrelated and lead to deficiencies in our ability to nurture ourselves, love our neighbors, and protect and preserve the environment.

Development (a misnomer) has given rise to the adoption of new values, which have a clear detrimental impact on the evolution of the individual and the culture, and are very different from the knowledge of our ancestors, who recognized the need to preserve, honor and care for the planet. But we still call ourselves civilized.

This divorce we have created is based on an illusion. In 1973, in his essay “The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective,” the astrophysicist and author of Cosmos, Carl Sagan said, “Our sun is a second- or third-generation star. All the rocky and metallic material we stand on, the iron in our blood, the calcium in our teeth, the carbon in our genes, were produced billions of years ago in the interiors of a red giant star. We are made of star-stuff.”

The still-predominant reductionist paradigm feeds the perception of separation from our surroundings, including other people, and convinces us that we’re merely individual beings, divided, segments. We’ve fooled ourselves into denying we’re all stardust and that what I do to you I’m doing to myself too, that what I do to the planet affects me.

Fortunately, we’re coming to understand that reductionist science, which until recently we thought irrefutable, is questionable and that we’re enrichened by the adoption of more holistic, systemic, and comprehensive perspectives. Holon means complete, total. A multidimensional and holistic perspective of health, disease, education, politics, and our relationships with others and with the world goes beyond what current science could even now explain (measure or corroborate).

Adopting a holistic approach can transform our relationship with our bodies and the environment. If we were more open to ancient cultures, we’d see that Buddhists, Taoists, and Hindus offer us invaluable pearls of wisdom, treasured for generations, and with a universalist perspective. They teach us, for example, that a frugal, moderate discipline and lifestyle, a conscious existence (monitoring our minds), can keep us physically, emotionally and mentally healthy and is good for the planet. The four Buddhism’s components of love are joy, compassion, equanimity, and benevolence, which allow us to connect with others and the environment from a kinder heart.

The Bible also preaches frugality, which some people may interpret as paying less for stuff. The real meaning is having less (only what’s necessary), avoiding waste, and not allowing our happiness to depend on what we own. This is also good for the planet.

In psychology and social sciences, we’re also approaching a more down-to-earth vision of love and relationships, an understanding that individuals can connect with others without exposing themselves to be hurt.

I will be able to take responsibility for my feelings and experience joy in relationships as long as I can fully express my essence and be myself in the presence of another. It makes all the difference in the world if I learn that it’s healthier to choose a companion, friend, neighbor, colleague, or family member who won’t judge me and in front of whom I don’t need to hide my feelings or thoughts or appearance in order to be loved. In other words, if I learn to be with people capable of accepting me as I am, who love me because of who I am. And if I make a mistake and choose a wrong pal, if someone mistreats me and becomes a toxic presence in my life, it’s also important to know that the fairest and healthiest thing to do is to get away.

It might not be necessary to know why or when our instinct and intuition got clouded, or when or why our human relationships became utilitarian, or how we came to have a minimal or neglectful relationship with nature. But it’s crucial to overcome this rift between us and our bodies, between us and our neighbors, between us and our planet. It’s critical to regaining the natural wisdom through which we keep our inner healer attuned.

How could love and solidarity prosper in a competitive and polarized world where it’s become so difficult to bridge the gap between us and those who don’t think, live, feel, or vote like me?



Disconnected…

Walls and borders…

We spend most of our lives disconnected!

As the founding executive and director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts medical school, Jon Kabat Zinn Ph.D. would probably say:

We are disconnected from our sensations, disconnected from our perceptions, disconnected from our impulses, disconnected from our emotions, disconnected from our thoughts, disconnected from what we say and also disconnected from our bodies.

And this seems to be due to the fact that we are constantly mired in worries, lost in the mind, absorbed in our thoughts, obsessed with the past or the future, immersed in our plans and driven by our desires, confused by our need to have fun and at the expense of our expectations, fears and desires, however unconscious and automatic they may seem.

Disconnected from the planet

The world is becoming increasingly polarized, our awareness of separation grows and the spending habits we have adopted disregard the responsibility we have with caring for the planet. Our fall from paradise –as a metaphor– seems to refer precisely to the beginning of this disconnection from nature that happened when humans transition from hunter-gatherer societies to become shepherds (Abel) and farmers (Cain). With the progress of agriculture, private property, States, armies and a new type of relations between men and women soon appear.

In a world progressively displaced towards urban life[1], we not only have we lost the acuity of our senses but our instinct and intuition. Let’s take the example of a hunter: he has to learn to listen to the animal that stealthily approaches, identifies the marks it has left on the ground, refine his ear to identify where a sound comes from. He needs to be able to see, feel the signs that his prey leaves on the road. In his job as a hunter, the individual needs a type of sight that would allow him to identify a target at a great distance and pursue it with his eyes. This refinement of his intuition, of his senses, of his abilities, makes him a more efficient hunter. We have lost instinct and intuition. The sharpness of our senses has deteriorated. We rely on external gadgets or additaments to make up for the loss of our senses.

Our disconnection from nature in modern life is such that we are unable to anticipate the impact that material “progress” has on our lifestyle, health, others and the planet from which we derive our sustenance. When we eat a hamburger we can’t see the relation between its fat content and the damage that a diet rich in lipids can produce on our immune system, and eventually the arteries, which years later could increase the risk of suffering a heart attack or an embolism. We only perceive the immediate gratification.

The news tells us about global warming, melting glaciers, increasing temperatures of the oceans. In the summer of 2017, the largest iceberg in the world split up from Antarctica and in 2018 the northeastern United States was hit by heavy storms of ice, rain, and snow that apparently originated in the Arctic warming (this year began to melt early, in February). We know that sea levels are rising and the coastal cities in the Gulf of Mexico and the islands north of the Caribbean have been affected by more intense hurricanes and tornadoes than ever. We witness more earthquakes, devastating fires (related to droughts), endangered species, toxic algae blooms, all phenomena of unprecedented intensity[2]. The key question is whether these occurrences are a consequence of human activity or not.

One of many examples we could offer about the disconnection between our lifestyle and the impact we cause on the planet is how comfortable we get to feel with the practice of buying products packed in plastic because (we shrug the shoulders) we can throw the container in recycling bins. But do we question where this waste is going? Much of the plastic that we throw away has to be transported (with a high fuel use) to the recycling centers. But also, the recycling process itself consumes energy or in many cases the plastic ends up being transported throughout the world[3]in huge tankers that leave a trail of lethal oil in the water, to be later deposited in batches on Third World countries fields[4]. And, what will happen to objects made of recyclable material when their use-value ends?

Another example of our disconnection: the Pacific Ocean draws approximately ten metric tons of plastic fragments to the beaches of the Los Angeles, California area. Birds, turtles, seals and other marine animals confuse plastic debris with food (their smell and appearance deceive them) and the animals can die from malnutrition, chemical poisons in the plastic or intestinal obstruction. In some cases, they get stuck or entangled in objects such as fishing nets. Can you guess where all that plastic comes from? The lack of regulation of certain industrial processes (production, waste disposal) is also responsible for both pollution and the consequences of the presence of plastic in the environment.

The United Nations has issued a resolution that seeks to eliminate plastic in the oceans in 200 countries, but they estimate that the task will take at least thirty years when it may already be too late (at present, about 115 marine species are affected by plastic debris). Presently, countries like Spain do not know what to do to dispose of the millions of plastic bottles that are thrown away every day. From the moment I write to the moment you’ll read this, it’s very likely the statistics will be worse. However, markets are still filled with plastic containers that we sometimes have no option but to buy and take home (shampoos, alcohol, medicines, all come in plastic bottles).

There is consensus in the scientific community (expressed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC for its acronym in English) that human activity is modifying the atmosphere and affecting the planet. But legislators, the president of the United States, and many media still doubt these conclusions and are even reversing the advances made in the protection of the environment. The interests of large corporations, which are not willing to bear the costs of re-engineering, necessary to prevent future emissions of greenhouse gases, are behind this problem.

The careless appropriation and abuse of resources and mindless consumerism ignores the impact we’re having on the planet. Add the use we make of fossil fuels or the waste that we generate. In the main cities of countries like the United States, up to forty percent of the food that is produced is dumped and as long as the water continues to flow in the tap we will not realize the consequences of the insensible waste of water and wood, resulting from the expanding urban population.

The media also constantly inform us about acts of terrorism, wars, people displaced by violence, refugees, famines, natural calamities, human and drug trafficking, mass dismissals, corporations that sink overnight and others that are they amalgamate to form huge and all-powerful corporations. Symptoms and consequences of our disconnection as humanity.

Next: Disconnected from our bodies

[1] Urban population in 2014 constituted the 54 percent of the global population while in 1960 it was a 34 percent, and it continues to grow.
[2] In just a month (August-September 2017) three hurricanes, Harvey in Texas, Irma in Florida and María in Puerto Rico cause immense damages (calculated in 500 billions of dollars). Damages caused by Maria are considered the worst disaster ever registered in Dominica. At the same time, the very dry summer came with fires that affected 10.000 buildings and houses and 47,000 acres in 2017. New fires are ongoing.
[3] China recently banned the imports of foreign waste (they were recycling but the waste received was not properly sorted out). The U.S., Europe and Japan are having trouble finding an alternative. The European Union is considering a tax on plastics and some countries have started to ban the use of plastic bags, cups, plates, straws, and plastic bottles. To give you an idea of the dimension of the problem: They have estimated that around 4.73 billion plastic cups are thrown away every year only in France.
[4] I hesitate in using the term Third World, which was coined in the fifties and might mean something completely different now. However, I’ll use it to designate the group of countries that are less developed technologically and where the living conditions, health indicators and income of most of the population is the least favorable.