Raafia Jessa

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2020

The whole world is in lockdown. What an insane thing to happen.
It sounds like something right out of a dystopian book.

In my previous post, I made a list of issues happening around the world that are related to/caused by the Coronavirus pandemic. The list of current/potential disasters caused by this virus is growing. One very significant issue to note: The virus has reached places like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. A large population of the inhabitants in these countries live in extreme poverty: forget about healthcare, they don’t even have access to proper housing and many live in the street or ghettos in makeshift houses with many people crammed together into very small spaces. This is a population that is at high-risk since a lot of them already have underlying diseases.

There is no way that I, a nobody of no importance, will ever be able to predict even 0.1% of the result of this vast, uber-complicated global mess. So, rather than pretending I know enough to try to talk about this issue in any realistic way, here is a what the situation sounds like if it was written as a dystopian book:

Once upon a time, on a planet called Earth, there lived a species called Homosapiens. This species thought that they were a miracle: they had convinced themselves that there was nothing in the universe that was more beautiful, more intelligent or more unique than themselves. And so, they killed all other species that were similar and gave themselves the authority to destroy everything on the planet in the quest of achieving a goal that they called “Happiness”.

This Happiness was a strange thing to define. No one could agree on what it was, but they all wanted it. There were many disagreements and many wars were fought until it was collectively decided that Happiness was the “Net Worth” of an individual. This Net Worth was a number, a monetary value that could increase or decrease based on how dedicated an individual was to the God called “Money”. It was decided that the higher the “Net Worth” of a person, the happier that person was.

Thus Homosapiens worked to specialize in something called “Jobs”. There were Jobs that were more desired than others, but the essence of all Jobs was the same: a series of banal tasks that would increase the monetary value of an individual. So, the Homosapiens spent their days inside closed spaces, away from the sun, repeating the same banal tasks every day hoping they could achieve something called a “Promotion”: a higher-level Job in which each monetary worth could be earned faster and thus Happiness could be increased faster.

But, it was not enough to just be “Happy”.
It was thought that Happiness was only real if others could see it. 

So, Homosapiens created devices with which they could document how Happy they were (sometimes faking their Happiness) to display it to others. Then, they created digital networks which were used to share evidence of their Happiness. They were convinced that the more people saw their Happiness, the Happier they would be.

These were the basic principles of the lives of Homosapiens when the year 2020 started. 

Little did they know that there was an entity called “The 1 Percent”.
Little did they know that the God “Money” was a creation of this 1 Percent.
Little did they know that there was only a limited amount of monetary value that they could gain because this 1 Percent had already amassed most of the monetary value that existed on Earth (since they themselves had created it).

Little did they know that they were part of a game that the 1 Percent played. 

The devices that the Homosapiens used to document all aspects of their lives were controlled by 1 Percent. They listened to all conversations, they knew all interests of all individuals, they knew which Homosapiens were intimately connected and with all the information that was gathered, they knew how to control the minds and reactions of all the Homosapiens of the world. 

Then (when all the Homosapiens were working hard at their Jobs and showing their Happiness to as many people as possible) began the experiment called Covid-19. 

Covid-19 was a virus planted into the Homosapiens population. It was highly contagious and was transmitted through respiratory droplets: if an individual had it and talked/sneezed/coughed too close to another, the other would get infected. The strange thing about this virus was that even though it was highly contagious, it was not life-threatening to all demographics of the Homosapien population; it was only deadly to those who were really old or had existing unlying diseases. Those who were relatively healthy and between the approximate age of 16-45 were not in risk of dying.

It was decided that in order to contain the virus, Homosapiens should keep a distance from each other, have no physical contact and to stay isolated in the small containers that they called “Homes” (the 1% did not care about those who did not have Homes; this population was not considered important enough to be saved). In order to save those who were at risk, the Homosapiens did as they were told, they isolated themselves and communicated with each other only through their digital networks.

The planet Earth became quiet, the only chatter and noise that occurred was online. 

Such is the state of the planet Earth today: the population is contained, physical contact with strangers is forbidden, all communication is done on digital networks. The entire 7.8 billion Homosapien population of Earth is sedentary, waiting for instructions about what to do next.

While the Homosapiens wait, the 1% are listening to/watching the digital lives of the Homosapiens (who post even more intimate details for the Earth-wide audience since they have no other activities at the moment). Maybe the 1% are taking this time to decide how to deal with the problem of too many Homosapiens. Maybe they have decided that the Earth can be run without help from these Homosapiens. 

Maybe the 1% have decided that Homosapiens have become a “useless class” and are no longer needed for the Earth to function.