Every fruit tree benefits from pruning

[The_jackalope]

A design trends forecaster calls the coronavirus “an amazing grace for the planet”

Dutch trends forecaster Li Edelkoort has a provocative outlook on Covid-19, the deadly coronavirus strain that has upended manufacturing cycles, travel plans, and conference schedules around the world. Speaking at Design Indaba, a conference in Cape Town last week, the celebrated 69-year old design industry advisor pictured Covid-19 as a sobering force that will temper our consumerist appetites and jet-setting habits.

“The virus will slow down everything,” Edelkoort notes. “We will see an arrest in the making of consumer goods. That is terrible and wonderful because we need to stop producing at such a pace. We need to change our behavior to save the environment. It’s almost as if the virus is an amazing grace for the planet.”

But after the coronavirus, utopia looms, Edelkoort suggests. Indeed, Covid-19 could open new avenues for innovation, akin to how the bubonic plague ushered in an era of labor reforms and improvements in medicine in the Middle Ages. Being confined to our own towns or cities could foster a revival of cottage industries and an appreciation for locally made goods, she says. “There are so many possibilities,” Edelkoort says. “I’m strangely looking forward to it.”

I think this is the perspective I was missing in my support for the virus.

[littlemissmartypants]

1. I'm going out on a limb and recommending this. nt

[Clash City Rocker]

2. What a dark and Machiavellian view

Sure, it will murder thousands, possibly millions, but it might make a slight change to our culture, so it’s a good thing? That just shows how desensitized we have become, that we could care so little about the suffering this will bring on the human race. This guy sounds like Thanos.

[The_jackalope]

3. Odd, to me it sounds like a new springtime for humanity.

The darkeness is what we've been living through, a consumptive winter of constrained possibilities. If drastic change is going to come, let at least some of it be positive.

Different strokes for different folks, no warranty express or implied, only one to a customer, offer void where prohibited.

[Clash City Rocker]

7. A friend of my wife has already died from this horrible virus

Which you apparently consider a blessing, for some disgusting sociopathic reason. Perhaps I could get you in touch with her family, so you could tell them how happy you are that she died.

Hey, you must like cancer even more. Some propel with cancer, they can’t even get out of their beds.

The people who are suffering and dying from this are real people. Perhaps reveling in their suffering is a bad thing, if you don’t want to sound completely evil. But maybe you don’t care.

[The_jackalope]

10. My wife and soulmate died of ovarian cancer

She chose a medically assisted death in our living room two weeks after she tried to commit suicide. I was present and supported her through both, so I'm quite familiar with horrible death. I'm not in the least sociopathic, or so my therapist tells me.

I don't revel in death, but my perspective as an ecologist makes me see it in different terms than most people. I think you and I are probably too different in that way for an exchange of a few messages on DU to bridge the gap. So I'll just say that I'm deeply sorry for your loss, and I understand how much anger a death like that can generate. Please accept my sympathy, I'm very sorry I upset you so much.

[morillon]

5. Yeah, I think it's gross.

I mean, I get what he's saying, in a "there's an actual ecological reason for forest fires" kind of way.

But it's just...inhumane, in my view. Like, can he not rub his hands together so gleefully about the world changing to suit his ideology?

We've all seen the reports about emissions in China being drastically reduced while they were under lockdown. Rather than being all hurray about that, why not be angry that it took a disaster and massive suffering and loss of life to bring it about?

I think his happy dancing is gross, and I don't believe that as Democrats we should go anywhere near this shit. Haven't Republicans already been saying Democrats WANT folks to die, WANT to crash the economy, all because we hate Trump so much?

[defacto7]

4. That's an optimistic way of putting it.

But I think it would take a hell of a hit to make humans change. I don't think it would last more than half a generation before our nature would resume it's normal pace. It's our innate psychopathic nature that needs to die and I don't see a virus changing society enough to make a dent in that. Although we like to think we care, our empathy is undeveloped. The psychopath within is still the major player. Until humans can purge that and the ideologies that feed it, even a saving plague would only be a blip on our way to our demise. SARS-CoV-2 isn't the virus we really need to fear. The real virus is us.

[cilla4progress]

6. In your support for it, jackalope?

I just got done saying society doesn't change without these sudden shifts in the paradigm.

[The_jackalope]

11. Yeah, this virus is bringing a major shift.

We'll see how it changes our civilization.

[defacto7]

12. I guess I lost the free beer after my comment above.

I'm more pessimistic than you concerning the human species. I hope you are correct in your hopefulness that a virus could change civilization or even that it will be a starting place. History and anthropology don't seem to show more than trends after the worst of times, but maybe we are at a stage where a universal change in human character is possible where it never was before. Hope is good, no matter the circumstances. I'll keep fighting to save the planet and to eleviate pain where I can even if I don't see a future for humanity on a healthy planet.

[The_jackalope]

13. Not a chance. You get a few.

I'm firmly on your side of the issue. Humanity hasn't evolved the ability to make the sorts of changes needed on the scale they're required. Then the spread of conquest-based societies out the region around the Mediterranean 5 to 6 thousand years ago, at the tip of a bronze sword, gave us a double whammy. We evolved as a short-sighted species to begin with, and then developed societies that swept around the world, taking what we wanted from the world or other people, eradicating all the societies that were even remotely sustainable.

My hope for humanity in the wake of this pruning is that we will have a period of time when our behaviour will be ruled by more than greed and a need for status. That period will be short, because we are a short-sighted species, and will come rapidly back to the position that more is better. But it might be a nice break for a little while.

[dweller]

8. in any successful plant husbandry

you have to take into account the stock, and the production
the stock is the plant, and you prune to create a healthy organism
the production is the fruit, or the plants desire to survive, thus procreate
you have to also cull sometimes the blossom if the plant over produces,
and the stock cannot support the fruit ... the stock will suffer and the fruit will be
of lesser quality ...
Nature has been at it for a millennia or more, humans for several thousand years
and as hard as we press against the bubble of possibilities, Nature still plays
the winning hand...
" Every fruit tree benefits from pruning"

be careful with what you plan to prune,
🙏🏻

✌🏼