COVID - 19 - The War of the Worlds.

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scritinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

H.G. Wells - The War of The Worlds - first published in 1898.

An eerie glow at 6am along the river path in Totnes. The sound of the morning chorus was nature at it's best. No other person was around, just me and my three dogs, exercising in safety.
Suddenly, a loud firing up of  a machine roared up from my right, in the industrial estate. A sound of man-made destruction, fumes and potential disaster. The sound immediately leaped into my mind as the sound from Jeff Wayne's Musical of 'The War of the Worlds' and I started humming as I walked further along the path.

Maybe it was the eerie nature of the early morning sky glow, the sound of the machine, or just the isolation and loneliness the recent weeks have provoked, but I started to think, and compare, in my own little world, and it came to me, that, fundamentally, we are the Martians!

H.G. Wells, was a man who studied natural selection. He had written about 'survival of the fittest' and suddenly I am thinking, that is exactly what we are going through right now. Not all COVID-19 deaths have been attributed to ill-health or old age, but a significant number, a majority in fact have.

The Martians in his story, were eventually wiped out by, 'earthly pathogens,' something that they couldn't predict, despite their superior intelligence.

Do we, as humans think that we are superior? Because we have technology, because we have advanced over everything that was on the planet before 'man' came along? The general feeling I believe is that yes, we do think we are superior. The Martians thought they were superior, but not everyone can know everything. No one can predict what will happen next.

But why do I say that we are the Martians?
An easy one to answer.
The Martians came to earth, to destroy us, our planet. They were jealous, selfish and greedy.
We, as a race are the same, we have the same greed and selfishness about the way we run our daily lives, until now.
We have been destroying the planet ourselves, we have built on nature, polluted the air, clogged up precious environments with plastic. The red weed is what we have built and made here ourselves, destroying our own planet and the other life that was here way before we were.  The Martian's greed lead to mistakes, they were task focussed on destroying, that they didn't think about their own protection; they thought they were gods on our planet, their arrogance destroyed them ultimately. We, as a race are arrogant and self-centered to the most part, this is only my opinion, but just look at what we have done to the world. And just look at how it is recovering already, in the absence of cars, pollution, since we have been in isolation. Just as the red weed started to die away as the Martians were conquered by the pathogens.

In 1938, Orson Welles seemingly inspired panic, with a radio production of the fictional book, War of the Worlds.
I say seemingly, because the newspapers at the time were probably not being that honest about the exact level of hysteria. In fact, it was hugely exaggerated.
Sound familiar?
Media-based panic has always been around, as if we cannot decide for ourselves. Do not trust the media right now, the information is mis-leading, and leading to panic in even the most level-headed of us.

The underlying factor here is, that to learn from this, we need to know that we are not some 'superior race' that dominates the world. We are an arrogant, selfish and greedy race and we need to learn a lesson. I do believe that we are now learning our lesson. We are now being infected by a virus; we aren't as intelligent as we like to think. Every day we are learning and wondering what is next?
And the fact is, that no one knows what is next, no one can predict what the next step will be.
What we have to do now is learn from this, be compassionate, un-selfish, kind, to ourselves, friends, family, but most importantly to the things that have been here way longer than we have.
The oceans, mountains, forests, the tiny little creatures that live in the rock pools, all of nature, our planet. If we start to do this, maybe our destruction, our 'natural selection' will not be necessary?

Food for thought...........thanks for reading.