I've been meaning to write this for several days but all my ideas hadn't really jelled yet. I'm not sure they're even all there now, but the graphic above is a definite jumping off point.
As I stated above, this pandemic isn't just some blip; it's the catalyst that is bringing about a fundamental change in the human society functions. I mean, let's face it: we've all known for some time now that things (and by "things" I mean pretty much every aspect of our human existence on this planet) have been broken. It's something that personally I have been unable to specially identify, but more of a feeling that things were not right. It felt almost as if we'd slipped into some other reality. This has been especially prevalent these past three years, and the phrase, "This planet needs an enema!" has graced my lips more than once.
Along the same lines, as I wrote a little more than a month ago, I've often joked that someone needed to find the planetary reset button and push it. Now I'm thinking, "Well asshole, you got what you wanted. It's been pushed. What now?"
It's hard to provide an answer for that question, being as we are unfortunately I fear, in the very early days of the actual transition. But fifty, a hundred years from now, people will be able to look back and see this for what it was and say, "Yes, this is the point that x-happened" with a clarity we presently lack.
And yet—despite recent mood swings that have caught me unawares—I fundamentally remain an optimist, and the optimist in me is clinging to the belief that this period is what sends human civilization on a path that eventually leads to the future Gene Roddenberry visualized fifty years ago. Maybe it won't be a nuclear war that sends us to the stars; perhaps it will be a global pandemic that allows us to reorder our priorities and set things right for all the residents of this tiny rock.