Survival.

It is inbuilt in all humans to Survive, Procreate and Believe.

In the beginning of the 21^st Century the need to survive was being sorely tested. Less than 8% of the population of the world lived in poverty and for the first time in human history survival was not the main attraction.

Not having to survive was causing great distress, I mean seriously if you didn’t have to survive then what were you going to do. People had too much time on their hands, the average Australian was spending five and a half hours a day on some sort of device. Many people were like formula one cars being driven in peak hour traffic. 

In order to cope with the boredom many had turned from alcohol, drugs, sex and rock and roll, to social media, endorphins, cortisol, and video games. Then in March 2020 COVID-19 arrived and all on a sudden survival was the game that needed playing again. The first response was interesting as the population split into groups. 

There were those that immediately went into action. They grabbed whatever resources they could and started to plan out new methods of survival. There were those that had planned for it and bunkered down to fine tune their survival plans and then there were those that hadn’t figured out the game had changed.

Of the third category many thought this was a short term play and went about life as before rolling up for welfare handouts in the expectation that they didn’t have to look after themselves. As time went on more and more realised this was a long term game changer and they would have to change with it.

Survival, if you are not used to it can be disturbing. The first thing that happens is that your amygdala turns on and your reasoning ability is bypassed. The next is that your body is flooded with adrenalin, and cortisol enhancing your physical strength. That was all great when you are confronted by fire and flood, but a real pain when confronted with isolation. The point being that the automatic reaction to stress is a physical one while at the same term short-circuiting the ability for reasoning.

The immediate need for survival created a large amount of grief. As Kubler-Ross concluded the grief process starts with denial and anger. Neither of these are appropriate in dealing with no income while in isolation in the 21^st Century. 

And getting over fear is turning off the amygdala, so you can reason, shutting down the adrenal glands so you can stop and plan. 

At the end of every crisis, there are winners and there are losers. The winners will be those that understand that the world will change forever, and they understand or start to understand what form that new world holds. The losers will be those that stand still and expect a return to the days of yore.

You instinctively know how to survive. March 2020 was a time where the world needed to revisit its relationship with survival.

In the world there are those that make it happen, those that watch it happen, and those that wondered what the hell did happen. 

I would go one step further and say that the greatest moral challenge for 2020 is to take responsibility for yourself and ensure you have a positive political, financial, cultural and physical effect on the society and environment in which you live.