It’s strange how the mythical stories of old have so much to teach and lead us; yet all we do is ignore them and never learn.

The Babylonians, in a very fantastical past, tried to build a tower which would reach the heavens. But God, in His infinite power, thwarted their pride by making them all speak a different language and sowing total confusion. So the building was stopped.

Back then it took an omnipotent God to disperse these builders. Today we are more tied to reality and science. It took a tiny virus to spread like wildfire, scare us all into isolation and bring the whole world order to a standstill.

We have cast God aside. True, the Old Testament God was rather excessive in His ways. Floods, locusts, curses on His enemies, pestilence and more were the order of that day. But isn’t the Coronavirus just as devastating? God’s punishments have been overtaken by a virus, a truly biblical-style curse.

Till a few weeks ago the world was going at full blast. We – not just in Malta, although here we did excel – built too much and too quickly.

In our frantic race to turn all space into a golden cage of riches and beautiful real estate we forgot that humans, and all the world’s beings, need space to breathe and live. That space needs to be looked after not tarnished with fumes, pollution and tarmac.

All of us were ravaging the land with our abuse of fossil fuels and polluting ways and we were hastening the onslaught of a climate crisis too scary to contemplate.

Ironically, we, the ones living in the spoilt western civilisation, had reached quite a pinnacle of existence before the tiny virus hit the world. Life expectancy was higher than ever, there was a spike in the world population unheard of in previous ages, and progress was obvious in many sectors.

Communication, comforts, medical care, travel possibilities all had moved to what we felt was a golden age. We had explored and were planning to conquer space.

We were invincible and were truly free of all shackles. Or so we thought.

There was such a frenzy of development – not just in construction – that many of the problems inherent in society were barely tackled. We, or the majority of us, prefer being smug in our comfort zones and never bother with going deep into what is really happening inside the core. Even if the core is soiled, spoilt or weak we trudge along oblivious to the reality.

In the age of instant information and communication, loneliness, homelessness, poverty, mental problems and a dependence on drugs, prescribed or not, were rampant. Even if some spoke of finding solutions, no one really cared enough. It’s the economy, they intoned. It’s capitalism’s way, they said in near unison.

To tackle the problems, the status-quo gurus proclaimed, would subvert the whole of society. This would ruin the fabric of modern ways of life and risk unravelling all we had. How ironic that a tiny organism is what is now unravelling all we have.

We lived like royalty in self-defeating luxury which was causing the ruin of all around us. The ironies we were living through were too real to confront. We lived better so we consumed more; we needed more and more land for palaces or apartments with views that extended beyond the needs of each and every one of us. And to live in these times – or rather those times – we ate more and more and better and better.

Our lifestyle kept improving and for this to make more sense - or total nonsense – we destroyed arable land, ruined the ecosystem. We ate more and more animals and fattened them in unhealthy ways. The list is endless, in the process reducing, risking or stultifying the sustainability of the whole planet.

Except for some wars which hardly affected the western world – so we didn’t really worry – we have had a good long period of peace. This meant that, unlike what happens in wars which destroy a whole swathe of humans in their prime, we kept our young and able-bodied alive and kicking.

This virus is the opposite. It kills mainly the old so, in an apocalyptic irony, it could be culling the infirm and adding strength to the next generation of humans.

We live in a state of horror. Of horrors yet to come which we cannot understand. But one thing appearing in most places of the world is that the old-style no-holds-barred capitalism is being tamed. Socialism, that long-dreaded word, is making a comeback.

Ever since the onslaught of the Coronavirus there has been more talk of support, of government intervention. This means that full-blown capitalism and a totally free market economy is being scaled down. Or at least in these dire times the idea that the open market is the only way forward is being challenged.

Even nationalising essential industries is bandied about in places where these words would usually be met with total derision.

After all this corona horror and when we return to a normal life maybe we will learn that we humans are hardly the hardiest of beings. The world needed a rebooting, a cataclysm, to show us that our arrogance in the face of everything will only be our downfall.

A little virus has caused all this mayhem and makes us question whether society, as we knew it before the virus struck, can ever be restored to even a semblance of its former glory and relentless pace. Will it make us wiser, more caring, more ready to understand the reality of our existence?

This babel of a virus might be what will teach the world that going full steam ahead and not caring about the day after or the underprivileged can’t go on forever.

May this virus be conquered and with it our skewed, suicidal path of excesses.

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