Md. Tamhidul Islam
Perhaps as satirically ironic as it is, who knew that after exactly 100 years, the world would roar again, only this time in exchanged roles — the pinnacle of greatness, humankind, being the ones getting roared at. If we were to do a sharp contrast between how, within a century, unmatched economic prosperity with “distinct” cultural phenomena ended up in the turmoil of a vociferous pandemic, unstoppable wildfires, close doomsday calls with WWIII — the most linear answer would be the eminence of human beings.
When I take a peek out of my balcony during a fatigued afternoon, I don’t see an intransigent void of misfortune and accidents, I observe an answer, a simple consequence, an exponential function of nature’s despondency in us. You see, the world can only suffer for so long. Amidst the destruction itself, people in quarantine keep fleeing, the privileged keep panic-buying daily essentials, only to increase the relevance of the ultimate question — who is the virus? It goes undisputed that we will take full responsibility in the build-up for this situation. Not because we’ve chosen cheap airline fares over the safety of the public, not because we’re okay with people dying as long as we aren’t the ones dying — but it’s the fact that we remain blind despite being blessed with a pair of eyes. Being blind is distressfully sad; however, not being able to see in spite of having eyes is truly daunting.
While the ethos of the 1920s was set up aligned with appealing jazz, moving pictures and radios, automobiles and frills, such a vibe of novel modernism was only a catalytic escape for a short period of time, as minimalist as a century. I will not ask anybody to stop doing what they are doing. I won’t “impose” a set of social constructs called morals, ethics, or justice upon the only true laudables of nature. I’m too diminutive for that, or maybe humans are too distinguished to be shackled. But what I will state is, don’t be too flabbergasted when you begin to witness your perishment. It’s no use swimming against the tide when you are the tide.
Our world will never be as we knew it or, for all we know, assumed we knew it. Our future generations — presumably we will survive for them to be born and sustain — will never feel what we felt. As far as the question goes regarding how we can save our earth, as long as we subconsciously refer to ourselves as selfish individuals by the word “earth”, there is no feasible answer to this question. Hence, as nihilistic as it sounds, my suggestion is, if you cannot think beyond your individual entity’s capacity, prepare to laugh your life and doomsday away through memes. It’s not that bad of an approach to avoid direct encounter with the fact that every single one of us is committing suicide by killing the earth, or maybe by forcing the earth to unleash its wrath upon us and kill us. Either way, the virus, which is us, dies in the end.