A bleak New Year

The year 2020 is perhaps, for all of us, the saddest year in our life because of the pandemic that wrought misery all over the world. But we are alive, we see the sunrise, breathe God’s sweet air and, for all the travail wrought on this good earth, it continues to sustain us. Now is the time for reckoning, for the big thoughts to come.

There is one very important revelation that this pandemic made – the social inequity all over the world that cuts across all social boundaries. It has caught governments, even the wealthiest of them, by surprise; no matter how far advanced their medical sciences are, they were not able to cope with the juggernaut devastation that this pandemic brought.

It showed clearly the great divide between the very rich and the very poor. But even the very rich themselves suffered because of the absence of the medication that would have saved them. It is the very poor that suffered most, because they cannot afford the medical facilities that the rich have within their means.

The pandemic illustrated the general weaknesses of public health programs all over the world and more so with the poor countries where hygienic conditions are often dismal. Several vaccines are now being administered. Because there is not enough of it, smuggling, an enormous black market, will emerge. Again, the very poor will suffer most.

In the Philippines, the daily wage earners, the overseas workers and the landless laborers in the provinces were hit hardest. Hunger has taken over many households, worsening a national situation where many people eat only once a day. Does famine loom in the near future? God forbid, because countries like the Philippines do not produce enough food for its people nor do we have the wealth to buy that food from countries with agricultural surpluses.

It goes without saying that the primary purpose of the government now should be to increase food production as well as ensure the purchase of food from food producing countries. The international food chain has been disrupted and it is not only the Philippines that needs food security.

It is hoped that the vaccines that are now being supplied by the rich nations will eventually reach us and possibly arrest the further spread of the coronavirus. The World Health Organization has warned that the coronavirus may be succeeded by future pandemics that will be deadlier and more so, spread faster than the speed with which the laboratories can manufacture vaccines.

If this pandemic is an augury of the future, there is more of it to be far more virulent – the man-made catastrophe that capitalism has wrought on this planet – the insatiable greed that destroys the world’s natural resources, dirtied the oceans and the atmosphere and will most probably render this planet uninhabitable. This could be done accidentally, too, should a nuclear war erupt.

China is an important given in this future because it has a massive population to feed. It has made tremendous advances in science. In China today is the world’s largest radio telescope, waiting for signals of life beyond our galaxy. China already has licensed medical robots, invigorated its deserts. There is hunger in China still, but its traditional famine has been abolished.

Men of goodwill have posited their hopes for humanity’s survival on the advances that science has made. With these advances, progress has also been seen with the harnessing of artificial intelligence. Humans are now routinely outclassed in “think” contests like chess and go. Scientists like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk are extremely pessimistic, however, about the future of artificial intelligence, although these changes may not happen in our time. Elon Musk has already considered the possibility for humankind to settle in other planets where life may be possible.

This is so far away in the future, the stuff which enlivens this particular genre of literature called science fiction, but there is a great possibility that this dire prediction of artificial intelligence resulting in the destruction of humankind is not impossible.

Human beings are equipped with consciences, with a high sense of morality that has always been paramount in the constant contest between good and evil. But machines are not human beings with consciences and with ethical standards to guide their actions. It is the knowledge of this condition that has made humanists not only wary or skeptical about science itself but are powerless to stop the compulsion to know, to discover and to create.

On a very personal level this is the theme of my novel in progress – the humanization of artificial intelligence. Will robots in the future develop consciences? I am sorry to say, however, that this novel, tentatively titled “Esperanza,” is on hold. I have great doubts that I’ll ever finish it.

These then are the thoughts that should stir us into reshaping tomorrow because tomorrow – the new normal – is no longer the old normal that we knew. Those of us who believe in the goodness of man are surprised that this pandemic has not truly united the people, whatever their color or their belief.

We can see the old nationalisms flourish under this pandemic and the demagogues using it to further their control of their vast populations of poor, disenfranchised and disillusioned people.

To recapitulate, the club was ancient man’s first weapon, then the spear and the sword, followed by the cross bow, the repeating rifle and cannon, poison gas and now, the atomic bomb. Man has used all these. And will, because of his nature, use the deadlier weapons he continues to create, motivated as he is by insatiable greed. To this very day, the Chinese are very secretive about research on the Wuhan virus. The Communist Party of China has stopped and/or censored Chinese scientists themselves in their attempt to trace the virus to its origin. If it is manmade, then World War III has started.

Let us pray.