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April 9, 2020

Cultivating Truth (and Tomatoes) in a Pandemic

As the latest numbers coming out about the coronavirus are beginning to point toward recovery, there is a sense that our collective experience of profound groundlessness is beginning to recede. Though that is good news in so many ways, there is a part of me that worries that the lessons of this moment will be lost like tiny sprouts in an abandoned garden.  

In an era where truth has become obsolete, where human beings choose what information to consume based on how much it panders to their particular worldview, and where the ideologies that divide us are so extreme, at times we wonder if we are even inhabiting the same universe, it has seemed impossible that humanity worldwide could ever come together as one. But here in this moment, that happened. We deeply realized that we are all in this together.

For the first time in more than twenty years, all of humanity again looked to science as the authority for understanding the physical world. The twenty-year war waged on the science of climate change has been such an unimaginable success, and it birthed a playbook that has been used now for decades to erode the meaning of the word “fact” to such a degree as to render it meaningless. Without a shared understanding of facts, we have no language, no way to understand each other or our world. But in this moment, the agendas were dropped, and we came together.

Not only did we again start to speak the same language, we learned that when faced with the clear choice, we collectively chose human life over money. When we were forced to make huge changes with devastating economic consequences, we did so, knowing that it would save lives.

The profiteering machinery of our human society has been the great force running the world, and it has often chosen profit over human life and over the environment. We have been told over and over, certain things cannot be changed because of the cost. Health insurance companies that will not pay for life-saving treatments, school shootings because gun manufacturers have stopped any restrictions on gun sales, the list is sadly long.

But this moment in history teaches us those are lies. We do not have to accept a world that chooses profit over human life. We are not too late to make this world better, to start over, to find a new way to relate to the natural world and each other.

We have ahead of us a similar set of choices. Will we listen to the scientists telling us of the perils of climate change and the urgency of our need to act or will we again lull ourselves to sleep with the comforts of our lifestyle accepting the lies of the profiteers?

They tried their playbook against the science of the coronavirus, but when the bodies began piling up, they knew they were beat. With climate change, we are still at the beginning stages of human devastation making it easier to dismiss, but like this virus, left ignored long enough, it will take hold. We have to see through their lies if we want a future for our children and grandchildren.

When I read the United Nations report on climate change in October 2018, I thought about what would be lost. I thought about the suffering and the devastation of such a beautiful natural world, but I also realized that in time the Earth would heal itself if humanity failed to survive. What broke my heart above all was that without humanity, the world would lose so much beauty.

During this quarantine, my family started an organic garden. Planting a seed in the dirt, with spring rainstorms and wildly changing temperatures, feels like a radical act of hope, and maybe so too is this writing. But I have to hope that this world can be saved and that there will be a future world that includes all the beauty that only humanity creates, the art and the music, and our transcendent love. We have to take hold of this moment in time and choose to change our ways because we are all in this together.

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Megan Bauer  |  Contribution: 1,135