As I sit here, like many on the planet, I am under self-isolation, observing the thrashings of a world consumed by fear, with many resistant to change and gripping with all their might onto old, unsustainable value systems and frankly now-irresponsible ways of being. COVID19 is a unique once-in-a-generation opportunity to expand our consciousness and re-calibrate our values, our ways of being and the underlying operating systems, creating an opportunity for humanity’s rebirth!

“Value systems and underlying operating systems”, you ask? Yes, let me explain.

Everything that currently exists hasn’t always existed. This observation tells us that what currently exists will no longer exist at some point in the future. If history teaches us anything it’s that change is inevitable, and that our resistance to change and our attachments to what is familiar, is what leads to much suffering in our lives. As the underlying value systems of humanity evolve, so too must our needs, our behavioral patterns and the functional systems of how we operate. It’s delusional to believe that we have “figured it out”, that there is no new learning or evolving that can take place, or that we and life shouldn’t change as the conditions change around us; and despite our intentional blindness, conditions have been changing for decades.

COVID19 is putting all of who we are being and how we are living under a microscope. It is challenging the systems of how we live and operate. One of those systems under the microscope these days is the current model of consumer-based capitalism or consumer capitalism. This is a system that preceded all of us – we inherited it, we were born into it, and legitimate questions are now arising about its continued relevance, and even more about its sustainability.

To be clear, I am a capitalist at heart, albeit, as my values have changed, so too has my relationship to capitalism. I am now, what many refer to as, a “conscious capitalist” or a “sustainability capitalist”, in different to the current model of consumer capitalism. Consumer capitalism by definition is the basing of an economy and measuring its health against the amount of products or services people buy/consume (whether they actually need them or not). In many ways, it was a brilliant model to base an economy on at the turn of the last century, when poverty was running rampant and war had ravaged western democracies. Its founding principles are ingenious: stimulate innovation and creativity by financially incentivizing individuals to create goods and services that benefit and advance humanity. On the face of it, consumer capitalism was brilliant, and it served us well for a long time. However, it is no longer serving us, and has become unsustainable. As consumer capitalism evolved, it became more subtle and clever. With the advent of propaganda techniques based on new theories in behavioral psychology, propaganda experts-turned marketers began to manufacture wants, and then re-framed “wants” back at us so that we perceived our “wants” as “needs”. As it further evolved, the model adopted the idea of “planned obsolesce” – making things that are designed to break (instead of last), therefore ensuring you will buy a newer version of what broke, and throw away the old product you bought. This has proven disastrous for may reasons, not the least of which is the total environmental degradation we have managed to create in only 50 short years! But there’s a subtler destructive effect beneath the obvious, and that is the impact consumer capitalism has had on who we are being in the world, and how we relate to ourselves and others.

Part of the current consumer capitalist model relies heavily on stimulating the emotion of greed, one of humanity’s worst traits; and a trait that has turned us into Human DOings rather than Human BEings. Greed is not a trait that gives consideration to other critical being-centric human traits such as love, compassion, empathy or sustainability (living symbiotically and in harmony with the very environment we rely on for our survival). Without these traits in the mix, consumer capitalism cannot exist for long in any form that truly benefits humanity, without destroying it. Indeed, love, compassion, empathy and sustainability are the foundation upon which human beings and everything human beings create, thrive; including consumer capitalism. Yet it is these very traits that consumer capitalism has been chipping away at for the better part of 50 years. Issues such as climate change, the opioid crisis, teen depression and suicide, increases in societal violence, and pollution (such as micro-plastics, “the great pacific garbage dump” and increases in CO2 emissions) are all symptoms of system-wide dysfunction at the foundation of the consumer capitalist model. Now, with COVID19, the fragile “house of cards” underbelly of this system is being exposed even further, and we all know a house divided against itself will fall.

Where many, maybe even most, view this system breakdown occurring as a tragedy, I view it as a critical moment in human history and as an opportunity to reconnect to what’s important: what it truly means to BE human. We are after all human BEings, not human DOings. Yet, under the current consumer capitalist model, one wouldn’t be present to that. Do, do, do is all we have become. Keeping busy working ourselves to death so that we can consume, consume, consume, pay bills, pay bills, pay bills, and die is all we have done… for decades. However, the COVID19 pause button on our old consumer capitalist model of living has been pushed, its underlying values are being exposed, and many are now saying, “hey, those aren’t MY values”. “Normal” (which is just the habits we are neurochemically addicted to) is currently being questioned, and in many cases visionaries are now willing to re-imagine and redefine what “normal” could be going forward, despite the lamentations of those still gripping onto the old consumer capitalist order.

For example, after months of working from home, maybe the new normal won’t require us to sit in rush hour traffic, stressed, only to then sit in a cubicle for 8 hours at a job we hate. We may invent a way to create more life balance – working and living from home, because technology provides for this. It’s the same with school. Do students really need to sit in industrial age-style rows at school, learning information from an antiquated curriculum that doesn’t prepare them for the real world, or will school become more integrated and embodied – a blend of distance and experience learning from home, integrating mentoring and connecting with others in meaningful ways; perhaps through travel, more physical interaction and activity, or rediscovering the arts.
ALL of us were born into modern consumer capitalism – it preceded our very awareness and consciousness. We were taught “this is how life works”. But life hasn’t “worked” this way for the vast majority of human existence, it won’t always work this way, and under COVID19 it currently isn’t working.

We have choice in the matter, each and every one of us. It begins with getting back to core values for ourselves and families. But even more important, it begins with taking the opportunity the current Covid 19 pandemic is providing all of us to reflect and ask ourselves critical questions about who we are, who we are committed to being, and what we are going to do, moving forward, to avoid falling back into the numb, blind consumption, unconscious “this is how life is” mindset many have lived their lives in for decades.

What Covid19 is showing us is that we cannot continue to live as though we can mindlessly consume at will without paying attention to whether our way of living is sustainable. The planet is screaming warnings at us to change our way of BEing, and then align our new way of being with new DOing. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should. Just because we can buy something doesn’t mean we should, and we don’t “need” much of what we buy. The reason why so many are mindlessly hoarding toilet paper is because we have been taught “buying” something gives us control over uncertainty. It’s retail therapy! But there is nothing about hoarding toilet paper that makes anyone more secure. It’s the perfect example of the delusion consumer capitalism has created about who we are as BEings. As human BEings we have shirked our responsibility to be conscious and intentional with who we are BEing from moment to moment, and thus we buy mountains of toilet paper. We have gotten lazy, unhealthy and lethargic about our BEingness, and atrophy is now coming home to roost in the form of disease (dis-ease).

We are at an existential inflection point. We cannot go back to business as usual after COVID19. This is a profound wake up call. Humanity must evolve or die, and part of that evolution is realizing we can’t eat money, and that the consumer capitalist model is now failing humanity and the planet. None of us were born to pay bills and die, but the broken consumer capitalist system would have one think otherwise. Covid19 is showing us in real time that our current way of consuming life and ignoring what matters is totally unsustainable for humanity and the planet.

My question to you is, who are you going to BE about it. I advocate for conscious capitalism, and a more measured, intentional and being-centric approach. Once we all reflect on this, we can come together and decide what we are going to do about it. COVID19 is providing us the opportunity to step outside of business as usual, to reconnect with ourselves, with each other (even if virtually) and with nature, while pausing our mindless consumption, pausing our unconsciousness, and pausing our unnecessary busyness. Welcome to humanity’s opportunity for rebirth.

Chad Lefevre is founder of neurobe.com (a BEing-based think tank and research firm), and themostimportanconversations.com (a global virtual workshop dealing with the nature of being, and how to live an aligned life).