Whanganui streets that are normally busy are now extremely quiet. Photo / Bevan Conley
Whanganui streets that are normally busy are now extremely quiet. Photo / Bevan Conley
Opportunity to learn new ways
I live on a street normally busy with the noise of traffic coming and going. On Thursday I woke to the relative silence and peace of only the occasional vehicle passing along Somme Parade. It was markedly different from any previous experience. I didn't findit eerie. I found it rather beautiful, reminiscent of times spent in the country, where the only sounds are those of nature.
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After putting a couple of teddy bears in the windows for the kids, as many are now doing, I reflected. I believe not only in the karmic forces of this planet but, in line with those, the forces also of the natural world, both living and those that don't have life as such.
My belief is that these forces are constantly responding by trying to restore the natural harmony of all things and all life and that what we are experiencing/witnessing with Covid-19 is exactly that. Nature and other forces (e.g. global-warming related) have been trying to tell us for some time that we need to reorient our approach to restore harmony. It seems these very entities have now pretty much taken it out of our hands, nullifying many systems (many disruptive of harmony in my view) and are offering us the opportunity to act long-term on what has been required for a long time: greater humanity towards each other and greater care for other lifeforms and the planet. If we don't take advantage of that this time, I believe next time the messages will be even more forceful and, perhaps, circumstances even more dire.
I think we would be prudent to learn and to learn new ways on this occasion.
PAUL BABER Aramoho
NeedToKnow3
The facts of life
This lockdown period may be a good time to ponder on the facts of life that we high school biology teachers were imparting to our 6th-formers 50 years ago:
1. We are part of an inter-dependant living ecosystem. 2. All living species, humans included, depend on the health of this ecosystem for their survival. 3. For this ecosystem to be healthy, there needs to be a network of many different species. 4. Simple plant-herbivore-carnivore monocultures are unhealthy and tend to collapse. 5. For one species to be successful over many generations, it needs to be in several mostly isolated populations. 6. For this ecosystem to remain healthy, deaths need to equal births when population sizes reach their resource limits. 7. The health of our ecosystem is maintained by feedback mechanisms.
Fifty years ago the world's human populations were still isolated, although we totalled 3 billion and had reached our resource limits. But despite being warned by "The Club of Rome" of the limits to growth, our births have kept outnumbering deaths; and as our populations have exploded, we have kept destroying more and more complex life-giving jungles, forests, tussock lands, wetlands and estuaries, as well as hundreds of species of large animals, birds, insects, whales, fish, and now oceans and icecaps.
We have replaced many of these networks with food-producing monocultures of crops, grass and cattle, with our isolated populations now melded into one by 120,000 jetliner flights every day. So far, our ecosystem's feedbacks to reduce our population size have been globally warmed droughts, bushfires, floods and cyclones, and also disease viruses from jungle animals when expanding human populations start destroying their jungles. More extreme feedbacks will follow if we don't reduce our world population deliberately.
Covid-19 is really just a health warning to humans to stop flying everywhere, and to make much more use of depo provera and vasectomies. The worldwide stay-at-home lockdowns will slow coronavirus deaths but will also exacerbate the deadly global population explosion that created the pandemic. The number of babies born around Christmas will be fascinating.
JOHN ARCHER Ohakune
Dispose of your rubbish properly
Last night, shopping at Pak'nSave, I noticed the extreme measures to keep us all safe. Congratulations. Unfortunately as I was placing my rubbish, disposable gloves, face mask and wipes from wiping down the trolley, I watched a young woman exiting her car outside the bottom entrance, throw down her still-burning cigarette on the freshly washed concrete and enter the store.
A heads-up to you: that cigarette had been in your mouth, the rubbish bin was three steps from the cigarette and are you so arrogant that you can't dispose of a potential virus source.
The TV ad "Be kind to others" obviously is bypassing you. Litter like drink bottles, cigarettes, all are now extremely dangerous, the virus can live for X amount of hours. Take your rubbish home with you and dispose it properly.
