As our daily lives get disrupted and the larger systems that our society runs on begin to break under the pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is becoming increasingly important for all of us to practice resilience and sovereignty.

*At the bottom of this article, I have included a list of the best Future Thinkers podcast episodes on the subjects of sovereignty, sensemaking, and resilience in the face of the unprecedented changes the world is going through.

Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties and to adapt to new circumstances.

I have noticed many people suddenly becoming concerned with their health — eating better, exercising more, learning to meditate. Others are taking online courses or reading books. Yet others have finally planted that garden they’ve been wanting to for years. Many have reconnected with their families and communities and have made an effort to help others.

This is how resilience shows up in in everyday life as response to a crisis.

During times of peace, relative economic stability, and abundance, focusing on building resilience is rarely our first priority. People just go about their lives without questioning things much.

Sovereignty is the capacity to respond consciously to the world: to see reality clearly, to make sense of it, and take appropriate action.

When it comes to sovereignty, most of us never even question whether we have it or not until we experience a loss of it.

It’s only when life no longer makes sense that we start to question if what we believe is actually true.

We don’t think about our ability to withstand emotional upheaval and deal with grief until it hits us in the face. It’s not until someone dies, or we’re thrown into existential despair, that we start contemplating how we’re going to stay sane through all of it.

It often takes a crisis to wake us up to the necessity of resilience & sovereignty.

Many people live paycheque to paycheque. Few people even have enough savings to cover the expense of a medical emergency or their car breaking down, not to mention having enough saved up to keep their family afloat for 6 months in case of an unforeseen loss of income.

Now, all of a sudden, we’re realizing why being prepared and having that buffer would have been a good idea.

Many more people will likely be bankrupted than be killed by COVID-19.

Many businesses run with less than 3 months worth of reserve funds. Hospitals only have a few more beds and staff on call than what they need day to day. Most governments don’t have a department to deal with pandemics.

In normal times that may be enough, and having any more would be inefficient. Unfortunately, we are no longer in normal times.

In a crisis, what looked like efficiency now looks like fragility. And what looked like inefficiency now looks like a life-or-death necessity.

The same pattern plays our on a personal level. Many people didn’t question the status quo of how the world is run, because they didn’t have to. They’ve been able to live their lives without concerning themselves with the big picture. It was easy when the bad things were happening somewhere else, to those other people.

Now suddenly, we’ve been hit with a crisis that concerns everyone, here, now. It’s real and personal and immediate. And it’s creating a very rude awakening for billions of people.

The pandemic is making it clear that we cannot got back to the way we’ve been doing things.

We can’t go back to normal, because we see now that it wasn’t normal to begin with. We have to change. But change is costly, both on a personal and a systemic level.

People and systems rarely change unless there is sufficient external pressure that pushes them to do so.

Viruses have played a major role in human and planetary evolution. Ancient viruses that infected our ancestors now make up 8% of the human genome.

This virus is pressure that is pushing on us and our systems — medical, political, economic. It’s making us reconsider how we run our systems, and how we run our daily lives as well.

When it comes to societal systems, the real effects still remain to be seen. This crisis will catalyze the problems that were already brewing for decades, and reveal to us the things that are broken in our governments, economies, and societies. There will be many more second-order effects than what we’ve already seen.

Many of us have had to become amateur epidemiologists for the lack of information early on and the inadequate response from various institutions.

I have honestly seen better and more timely sensemaking of this pandemic from the collective intelligence of people on Twitter than I have from any institution or single expert.

This is a major sign that our systems cannot withstand the crisis that is upon us. On many levels, things are going to get harder before they get better.

We are all going to need to get a hell of a lot more resilient and a hell of a lot more sovereign.

My partner Mike and I have been talking about these topics a lot on our podcast, Future Thinkers. Our interest in these subjects came not by accident, but by necessity after having experienced many serious challenges, crises, and failures throughout our lives.

Below I have compiled a list of free resources — our best podcast episodes that deal with the topics of sovereignty, sensemaking, and resilience in the face of the unprecedented changes the world is undergoing right now.

Some of these episodes talk about personal resilience and some focus more on societal change and existential risks. They are most useful if taken together, since the lessons in them provide different perspectives that interconnect. I hope you find them useful.

Personal Resilience:

Developing and Practicing Your Self Sovereignty

We talk about their stories of learning to practice sovereignty and suggest some ideas, techniques and exercises from their personal experience that others can try.

John Vervaeke — Overcoming The Meaning Crisis

Canadian psychologist John Vervaeke explains what the meaning crisis is and what are some of the practices to deal with it. He talks about how the quest for wisdom and self-transcendence is the key to unlocking meaning in life.

Derek Sivers — Hell Yeah or No

In this 2-part interview, entrepreneur and writer Derek Sivers talks about stoicism, minimalism, and exploring freedom to its extremes. He also explores practices for increasing self-knowledge, and the many different ways in which people can thrive and find fulfillment.

Jordan Peterson — Failed Utopias, Mapping the Mind, and Finding Meaning

Renowned Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson talks about understanding the subconscious mind, finding meaning in a meaningless world, and why we shouldn’t aim to create a utopia.

The Depression Epidemic — What You Can Do

It wouldn’t be a conversation about resilience without bringing up the subject of depression. Having both experienced depression at different points in our lives, we talk about scientifically proven ways to overcome it or at least lessen its effects.

Becoming More Adaptive

We talk about overcoming fear and helplessness, practicing minimalism, developing mental flexibility and self-sovereignty, and other tools that can help us become more adaptive in a chaotic world.

The Ancient Art of Adulting And Meta-Skills For The Future

We also talk about how what it means to be an adult has changed, and what meta-skills we need to develop in order to adapt to this fast-changing world.

Cris Beasley — How To Deal with Negative Emotions to Develop Mental Sovereignty

Startup founder turned trauma healer Cris Beasley talks about emotional healing practices that can help us improve our quality of life, fix our relationships, and help us gain more sovereignty.

Emmanuel Jal — The Incredible Resilience of The Human Mind

In this heart-wrenching interview with South Sudanese ex-child-soldier, you will hear his incredible story of overcoming immense trauma and coming out on the other side.

Collective and Community Resilience:

Jamie Wheal — Sense-Making In Chaos

Group flow researcher Jamie Wheal talks about how to make sense in a world that is unraveling faster than we can keep up with, and the challenges to creating functional collective intelligence and resilient communities.

Joe Brewer — Rites of Passage For Cultural Evolution

A two-part interview with climate scientist Joe Brewer explores regenerative cultures and how to build resilience at the level of communities and bioregions.

Jim Rutt — Game B: The Fifth Attractor, A New Social OS

Complexity researcher Jim Rutt explains the concept of Game B — a different social “operating system” that could potentially replace today’s capitalism. He also talks about how to strengthen a municipality and make it more resilient to potential collapse scenarios.

Resilient Systems:

Jordan (Green)Hall — Sovereignty in Chaos & Why We Need Collective Intelligence During Global Collapse

In this two-part interview, entrepreneur and existential philosopher Jordan (Green)Hall introduces the concept of cognitive sovereignty and why it’s especially important in chaotic times and talks about why collective intelligence is something we need if we are to mitigate systemic collapse.

Nora Bateson — The Complexities of Climate Change and Cultural Evolution

Filmmaker and educator Nora Bateson discusses the complexity of understanding global existential problems, what it means to do sensemaking, and what we really need for social and cultural change.

Alex Gladstein — Anti-Authoritarian Technologies and The Future of Governance

CSO of Human Rights Foundation Alex Gladstein talks about why civil liberties make a country better for its people, what the future of governance is, and why anti-authoritarian technologies like Bitcoin are important for that future.

Daniel Schmachtenberger — Global Phase Shift and Solving The Generator Functions of Existential Risks

These are some of the many interviews we have done with systems thinker Daniel Schmachteberger. In Global Phase Shift, he talks about the transformation humanity seems to be undergoing right now.

In Winning Humanity’s Existential Game, Daniel talks about designing resilient post-capitalist systems.

In the last 3-parter, he lays out the steps we have to take as a collective to solve the causes of potential existential risks to humanity.

***

Going Deeper Into Practicing Resilience & Sovereignty

If you want to dive deeper into the practices and exercises for building resilience and sovereignty, we teach several courses on these subjects and host weekly group sensemaking calls. Register for the Future Thinkers Members community to join us.

Finding Resilience in a Crisis was originally published in Future Thinkers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A reflection on the emotional effects of a pandemic

Written by Mike Gilliland with contributions by Euvie Ivanova.

Many have been caught off guard by the rapid onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re all suddenly realizing that a lot of things are about to change.

People we know are going to be affected by this virus. Businesses will tank, people we love may die, we may die, our lives may be changed forever.

COVID-19 is creating a very strong mirror for us.

It is a mirror for the fragility of our society, our systems, and us as individuals.

Many people have been descending into panic, depression, apathy, or continuing on like it’s business as usual.

Yet, others have been processing their emotions in near real-time, getting a clearer sense of the world, predicting next stages, acting proactively, and preparing.

This has been happening on individual levels as well as collective and national levels. Some countries have responded with suppression of information and a lack of action. They have downplayed the seriousness of the situation in order to reduce panic and preserve their economies. Others have been more pragmatic and proactive, taking early measures like social distancing and widespread testing.

What I’ve noticed is that countries and individuals who have experienced hardship have demonstrated a swifter and more proactive response. For example, Japan and Hong Kong learned a lot from the outbreak of SARS in 2002. This time around they were more prepared. On the other hand, countries that have lived in peace and prosperity for decades only seem to have a conceptual idea of what shit hitting-the-fan looks like.

Moments of crisis remind us of our own mortality. They make us deeply reflect on real existential questions, like:

• How should I respond in moments of chaos?
• What should I do when my world collapses around me?
• How do I manage my emotions when I can’t take it anymore?
• What depth of tragedy can I really withstand?
• What if every map I’ve ever used is wrong?

COVID-19 is waking us up to the insufficiency of propositional knowing, or the kind of knowledge we get when we only understand something theoretically without any personal experience of it. We’re remembering the value of participatory knowing — the kind of knowledge we get by being embodied and emotionally engaged with something, the kind of knowing created through personal experience.

Participatory knowledge is lived knowledge, and lived knowledge can only be gained through participation in life (whether by choice or by force). Modern western life has not demanded much participatory knowing from us. In most areas of life, it’s been enough to get by on theoretical knowledge alone. After all, this is the ‘information age’, and anything you want to know is just a click away. We live in a world where programmers don’t have to use the applications they build, lawmakers don’t have to follow the laws they make, and psychologists don’t have to have a mental breakdown to understand their patients and do their jobs - a degree is enough.

Modern life doesn’t require us to know the territory, only to memorize the maps made by others.

The COVID-19 pandemic is showing us that this cannot continue.

It has become clear that no single expert, government body, or technology, can help us make sense of and adapt to the situation. COVID-19 has moved so quickly from a conceptual to existential threat level that most authorities have struggled to respond appropriately. For weeks and months, many couldn’t even admit to its existence, never-mind react, or execute a proactive plan. This just goes to show that we live in a culture that believes people need to be insulated from the conditions, thoughts, and emotions that make them uncomfortable.

Its not our fault that things have gone this way. Modern life has been driving us for centuries towards comfort and convenience, and distancing us from the dangers of nature. Unfortunately, it has also distanced us from the wisdom that comes from being in nature and dealing with real threats.

A culture that allows for propositional knowing to be primary, with no necessity to be in participatory knowing, is unable to adapt to real threats. The more insulated people are, the more atrophied the muscle of participatory knowing, the harder it is for them to face reality, the harder they fall, and the more damage they cause on the way down.

It’s not just culture that causes these problems, we also have a broken ecology of information. Social media algorithms feed us more of the information we pay attention to, and less of the information we don’t, creating our own biased bubble of bullshit. Tech giants aren’t beholden to the truth, they’re running a business, and our attention is the product. There’s no benefit for them in giving us the facts that we don’t want to hear, or bursting our filter bubbles. If they did, it would likely minimize time on site and hurt their bottom line. We click for fear and we click for dopamine, so that’s what they give us. Yet we rely on these tech giants to pipe in vital information about the world. Mass media is no better. The age of mass media has been a fire-hose of bad news for decades.

If you get familiar with the “7 stages of grief” model, you can see that we’re perpetually stuck in the earlier stages and that we rarely progress all the way through the cycle into acceptance. The combination of our unwillingness to face discomfort, with the 24/7 hype and fear click-baity news cycle, has repeatedly diverted us into apathy and ignorance. No wonder the response to the pandemic has been slow and inadequate.

Again, it’s not our fault that we don’t believe anything we hear anymore. What is happening now is a Boy Who Cried Wolf scenario. We’ve had so many false alarms that when a real crisis shows up, we don’t pay attention and fail to respond.

Ignoring the panic/hype cycle has become a reflex.

• Shock: “I can’t believe this is really happening.”
• Denial: “There’s no way we or the authorities would let it get that bad. It’s probably fake anyway. It’s just more politically motivated click-bait.”
• Pain & guilt: Our collective identification and sympathy for Greta Thunberg
• Anger & bargaining: Extinction rebellion
• Depression, reflection, and loneliness: The stage that often leads young men into nihilism and destructive tendencies (The Joker, mass shootings, troll armies)
• Apathy: “Whatever, what’s another crisis? The world is burning and there’s probably nothing I can do about it anyway, so let’s just throw it all on into the dumpster fire.”

It seems that it’s only when something truly becomes real for us (someone we know dies, our city goes on lock-down, we lose our businesses, we can’t buy stuff anymore, our life is threatened) do we really move into acceptance. And it’s only from that place of acceptance that we can act with sovereignty and sobriety

Don’t believe me?

Ask yourself some tough questions and observe how you respond to them.

What if everything I believe is false? What if my whole framework for the world is wrong? What if every map I’ve ever used has been leading me in circles? What if all my efforts, all my goals, all my plans are futile? What if I go bankrupt? What if people I care deeply about are going to die?

Notice that panic rising up in your stomach and chest? That panic, unexamined and unprocessed, is what leads civilizations to anarchy. Unprocessed emotions lead to apathy, nihilism, and revenge. This is why the Joker film resonated with so many people. Many of us know what it feels like.

I know this all sounds pretty bleak, and seems to inevitably lead to nihilism. But my point is that we won’t find the light at the end of the tunnel by bypassing the grief, panic, and existentialism of our age. We’ll get there by going directly through it.

The answer is so simple: Feel it and stay with it.

It is possible to ask these existential questions and be 100% comfortable with the answers. To detach from outcomes, accept what is, and still take positive action. It is possible to be content in the passenger seat of the car as Tyler Durden takes his hands off the wheel. Just feel it and stay with it.

Accepting a state of chaos allows us to admit that we don’t have all the answers, which allows us to finally take a real inventory of what we know, what we don’t, and what we can do about it.

Pretending we have the answers is denial. It is propositional knowing masquerading as participatory.

Can you sit comfortably in chaos?

For anyone who can hold their center as the world falls apart, this is a reason to step up. Those who can face reality and feel past the state of panic, can be quite effective at dealing with difficult times and helping to rebuild.

And by “dealing with” I don’t mean inventing solutions, or trying to “wake up society”. You can’t wake anyone up. Most people will only wake up after reality hits them square in the face. This is a “prepare to absorb impact” situation.

Absorb the blows and do what you can between them. You can work on your own resiliency and your ability to get back up. You can train. Not plan. Train.

At risk of diverting the whole goal of this article from getting you to face the emotions and be with them until they’re processed (Feel it, and stay with it), to waving some glimmer of hope in front of your face so that you can avoid feeling those things, I’m going to talk about some opportunities and ideas in the wake of the COVID-19 epidemic.

This pandemic has create an amazing opportunity for highlighting problems in our social, political, economical systems, and making the solutions a lot more salient.

• Private medical systems, such as the one in the US, have unambiguously disinsentivized proactivity in the face of this threat. Simply put, if it costs money to get tested and hospitalized, people will avoid doing so and spread the disease, making the pandemic worse which puts strain on all other systems. This is the best case there’s ever been to have a socialized healthcare.
• An economic system that can’t allow for people to stay home and self quarantine or get medical attention without going broke, or withstand periods of recession without total collapse, is one that maximizes its own fragility. This is the best case there’s ever been to institute a Universal Basic Income so that people can continue to live during periods of difficulty and change. We’ve covered this subject at length on our podcast.
• An information system that is not built and incentivized for truth is one that causes apathy in its participants. Social media and search giants like Facebook, Google, Twitter, and YouTube connect us and filter our information about the world. But this crisis has demonstrated the fragility of a silo’d and centralized ecology of information. This is the best case there’s ever been for an proposing an open and transparent ecology of information, search, and social media. #OSSS (Open Source Search & Social-media)

This virus is a warning shot, a wake-up call, and a chance to rediscover our participatory knowing. If we can stop simply avoiding panic, and start processing our difficult emotions, maybe we can start working on solutions.

This article is written largely based on conversations in our weekly sense-making calls with Future Thinkers Members. Special thank you to Euvie, David, Heather, Eric, Maria, Jared, Daniel, and Alex.

Processing the Grief of COVID-19 was originally published in Future Thinkers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Since then, I’ve been doing a lot of research to understand the possible scenarios and outcomes of this situation.

I recently did two live streams on Future Thinkers with my partner Mike talking about some of these effects.

Here is the first one:

And the second one:

In the meantime, I wanted to share a primer with some basic information.

All the info in this article is provisional and likely to change as more data becomes available.

COVID-19 is a new disease. We don’t have immunity to the virus, we don’t have a cure or a vaccine, and we don’t know what is going to happen.

Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional.

What is the Coronavirus / SARS-COV-2 / COVID-19?

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), previously known by the provisional name 2019-nCoV, and colloquially known as “Coronavirus”, “Wuhan flu”, or “Wuhan pneumonia” (what it’s often called in China), is a virus that is highly contagious in humans and causes the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), which is deadly.

The virus shares 80% of its genome with SARS and is in the same virus family. It is not a flu.

The disease is now in the early stages of a pandemic. World Health Organization predicts a moderate to very severe pandemic, based on COVID-19’s transmissibility and clinical severity.

Where did it come from?

• It is thought to have originated in China in late 2019
• Exact origin is unclear, but the official narrative says it was transmitted from a bat at a live animal market in the city of Wuhan, China
• Some researchers speculate it was lab-made, but the evidence is not solid

What are the symptoms and effects?

• In milder cases: fever, cough, fatigue, muscle soreness (flu-like symptoms)
• In severe and critical cases: pneumonia (lung infection), shortness of breath, heart failure, organ failure, death

How is it transmitted?

• Through bodily fluids
• Through the air in droplets of mucus (from coughs and sneezes)
• Through surfaces that people often touch (door knobs, elevator buttons, public bathrooms, cash)
• Through food that ill people prepared

How deadly / dangerous is it?

• A study of 44,000 Chinese patients found the average chance of dying to be 2.3% — 4.3%, heavily skewed towards the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions.
• For those with cancer, respiratory diseases, diabetes or heart conditions — 5–10%.
• For those over 80 years old — around 15% (likely due to this age group having a weaker immune system and higher occurrence of pre-existing conditions)
• For healthy young people — less than 0.5%
• In children under 9, no deaths have been recorded as of early March 2020

• Other high-risk groups are the immuno-compromised, those under high stress / exhaustion (i.e. health care workers during epidemic), and smokers.
• Young, healthy adults and children can have milder symptoms (like a regular flu) or no symptoms, but still be contagious. However, there have been cases of young people dying or developing serious complications as well.
• Unlike the flu, the symptoms can last for up to 3 weeks or longer, which can disrupt people’s ability to work.
• A percentage of people pronounced “cured” still test positive for the virus and are still contagious.
• There is evidence suggesting that when people get the disease the second time, it is more severe and deadly.
• The disease makes people susceptible to secondary infections (viral or bacterial), which can increase the mortality rate.

What else is known so far?

• There is currently no vaccine and no treatment. Several vaccines are being developed, but it will likely take until 2021 for them to become available.
• The virus can have an incubation period up to 21 days (some reports say up to 29 days), during which time the person shows no symptoms but is contagious.
• It can survive on inanimate surfaces up to 9 days.
• The R0 is between 2 and 6, meaning each infected person infects 2–6 others, which can cause the number of infected to double every few days
• The virus has mutated and there are now 2 strains circulating, the second more aggressive and deadly than the first.
• Recent studies show that the virus can cause permanent damage to the lungs and other organs, male infertility, and other serious complications.

What are the chances of containment?

• At this point, containment is no longer possible. The virus is on every continent and in most countries. It has been growing exponentially in certain regions like China and South Korea (before it got slowed by quarantine and preventative measures), Iran, Italy, and now Europe and USA.

• According to a recent estimate by a Harvard epidemiologist, 40–70% of the world’s population may get the virus in the next year
• It is still possible and necessary to reduce the rate of spread of the virus, and reduce the load on the local healthcare and economic systems all at once. A tidal wave is preferable to a tsunami. This is called “flattening the curve”.
• It is in all of our interest to delay getting infected until the healthcare system has more beds and doctors available again (at the peak of the outbreak, there is always a shortage of those, which is what caused people to die in hospital hallways in Wuhan, China)

What if I get infected or think I might be infected?

• Call your doctor or hospital (don’t go there in person unless they tell you to).
• Quarantine yourself at home if your symptoms are mild and you are in a low-risk group (young & healthy adult or child). Stay home for at least 3 weeks, or as long as your doctor tells you to.
• Isolate yourself from other people so you don’t infect them, especially the elderly, sick, and immuno-compromised.
• Take measure to prevent the spread of infection — disinfect your house & personal items

Tips to avoid / delay infection

• Wash your hands often, especially after going outside.
• Avoid touching your face, especially your mouth and eyes.
• Avoid crowded places, especially indoors.
• Avoid sharing personal items — towels, cups, etc.
• Don’t shake hands. Do a fist bump or elbow bump instead.
• Clean & disinfect high-touch surfaces in your home daily (doorknobs, keyboards, phones, toilets, bathroom fixtures)
• Avoid international travel if possible.
• You may want to wear a face mask and gloves in crowded places (especially if you are in the high-risk group)

Stock up on supplies

It should be enough to last your household for a few weeks to 1 month.

People panic once the first deaths are announced in their country and authorities start implementing quarantine measures like shutting down schools, public events, or public transport, etc.

At this point, people tend to buy up everything at the supermarkets, and shelves might be empty for weeks. This may already be happening in your location.

In addition, if you decide to self-quarantine, reducing the number of trips to the grocery store will reduce your chances of infection. And if you are put under mandatory quarantine, you may not be able to go to the grocery store anyway.

Only buy the food you are going to eat. Don’t hoard supplies just because.

Nutritious, non perishable food:

• Fish, canned (i.e. mackerel)
• Lentils / beans
• Rice
• Oats
• Chia seeds
• Peanut butter
• Tahini
• Coconut oil / extra virgin olive oil
• Sultanas, raisins, figs, dates, or other dried fruit
• Nuts
• Raw honey (it has an antibacterial / antiviral effect)
• Tea / coffee
• Apple cider vinegar (also doubles as an all purpose cleaner)
• Cayenne pepper (improves circulation)
• Dried herbs & spices, bullion cubes, flavouring
• Frozen meat / fish
• Pet food, if you have pets
• Baby food or formula, if needed
• Bottled water in large bottles

Medical supplies:

• Cold & Flu medicine
• Pain killers (Paracetamol, Ibuprofen, etc)
• Rubbing alcohol for disinfecting surfaces
• Medical gloves (for wearing outside to avoid infection, or for caring for sick house mates)
• Any medication you normally take (1 month supply)
• Bonus: help your elderly, sick, and mentally ill loved ones and neighbours ensure they have enough medication and supplies for a month. They will be the most vulnerable if this gets really bad in your city (as it’s already getting in China, Iran, and Italy).

Hygiene:

• Bleach (for disinfecting surfaces)
• Toilet paper
• Soap (antibacterial or regular)
• Tooth paste
• Deodorant
• Laundry detergent
• Dish soap
• All purpose cleaner
• Feminine hygiene products, if needed
• Diapers & baby wipes, if you have babies
• Pet toilet supplies, if you have pets
• Face masks, if you can get them (there is disagreement on whether they are effective)

Immunity boosters and antivirals:

• Vitamin C powder (1000mg daily)
• Vitamin D (helps lower inflammation and increase your capacity to fight disease)
• Elderberry syrup
• Bee propolis (i.e. in throat spray form)
• Iodine (a few drops in a glass of water, gargle in the morning)
• Glutathione — an antioxidant that increases the longevity of cells (eat eggs, bone broth, raw honey, whey protein powder)

Free immunity & health boosters:

• Get adequate sleep. This cannot be overstated. Sleep is when your body repairs itself. If you’re up every night worrying, this will weaken your body’s ability to fight disease.
• Exercise / be active. If you’re under quarantine at home, use a yoga mat and some tension bands, a chin-up bar, or kettle bells. Or just jump around and do some kicks and punches. There are lots of tutorials of every kind on Youtube.
• Get sunshine exposure daily. This will increase your vitamin D levels and help protect you from disease.
• If there is no sunshine where you live, go outside anyway (or on a balcony, or at least sit in front of a window if you’re in quarantine). You can also try infrared sauna if you have access to that.
• Deep breathing exercises, i.e. Wim Hof method (this activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which relaxes and repairs your body)
• Take cold showers or ice baths (this draws the blood away from your skin and towards your internal organs, and helps your body fight disease).

Mental / Emotional Health

• Make sure to stay connected with friends & family digitally. Frequent video calls can help you feel closer to the ones you love and keep you saner.
• Prepare some games, books, art supplies, music making equipment, and basic exercise equipment in case of quarantine. A guitar or a sketchbook can go a long way when you’re cooped up at home.
• Listen to soothing audiobooks or nature sounds at night as you’re going to sleep.
• Meditate on difficult emotions and accept them. Bottling things up only creates more long term stress and illness, and can cause explosive outbursts and breakdowns.
• Meditate on death — we are all going to die at some point, and so will all our loved ones. It may come soon or it may not. In any case, accepting this emotionally will make you stronger and more capable of dealing with death when it comes.

Questions for further reflection

I intend to publish a second article on the second-order effects and potential outcomes of this pandemic, but I’ll leave you with these questions to ponder in the meantime.

• What is this situation likely to become?
• What are the best case, medium case, worst case scenarios?
• What are the actions most relevant to those scenarios? What is the 80/20? (most effective thing to do that doesn’t cost much and doesn’t take much effort)
• What happens if we all take those actions?
• What are the potential second order effects? (societal repercussions of the pandemic)

Where can I learn more?

Dr John Campbel has been posting daily level-headed updates on COVID-19 on his Youtube channel.

Another doctor’s informative updates on Youtube.

An aggregator of key news updates.

Coronavirus subreddit is another news aggregator.

Useful timely sense-making from many medical professionals, public intellectuals, and people on the ground can be found on Twitter through #COVID19 and #COVID-19 hashtags.

Live maps:

John Hopkins

Outbreak.cc

BNO news

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The blockchain is the shared database technology that underlies Bitcoin and Ethereum, and it is set to disrupt many industries in the coming decade. It’s already getting used in banking and payments, but most people don’t realize that this same technology can be used to solve the major environmental problems we are facing today on our planet. If adopted globally, it can even help stop or reverse climate change.

As permanent, tamper-proof databases that are shared by a community without a centralized owner, blockchains they are particularly interesting for environmental causes. They make it possible to track and verify transactions and interactions without a centralized authority. This can significantly increase transparency, accountability, and efficiency of environmental projects.

What Is The Blockchain?

The blockchain is a public ledger that can store transaction records or any other data. It is owned by no one, with a copy of it being stored on many personal computers around the world. Anyone can use it and help run the network. This often removes the need for middlemen and allows users to interact in a peer to peer way. It can also reduce transaction costs and increase efficiency. Because it is distributed, this kind of network is difficult to take down or corrupt.

Once a data record is made, it cannot be changed and stays in the ledger forever. A new data record can be added only after it is validated by multiple computers. This makes the data trustworthy without relying on a third party. The ledger is secured with advanced cryptography, which makes it difficult to tamper with.

Platforms like Ethereum allow users to create programs, or dApps (short for decentralized apps) that run on the blockchain and have a variety of uses — not just financial applications. The programs are executed automatically, and exactly as agreed upon by all participants.

Public blockchains are transparent, meaning that high quality data is available to anyone and is consistent across the network.

Here are some specific areas the blockchain can have a positive impact on the environment.

1. Supply Chain Management

Most people want to buy products that are ethically made, but that kind of information is often unavailable and difficult to verify. A product goes through many hands before it reaches the store. It’s very easy for companies to lie about how their products are made, what materials and chemicals they use, where they dump their garbage, or how fairly they treat their employees.

Blockchains can be used to track products from the manufacturer to the shelf and help prevent waste, inefficiency, fraud, and unethical practices by making supply chains more transparent. They can also help consumers be better informed of how each product was made and shipped so they can make more environmentally friendly choices.

If we tracked food, for example, this would enable buyers to purchase local produce knowing that it was actually grown locally. This would also cut down on carbon emissions due to food not having to travel long distances. Blockchains could ensure that a fish being sold at a fish market actually came from a sustainable fisherman, or verify that a bag of coffee really came from a fair trade producer.

Foodtrax is a blockchain-powered dApp being made by the Blockchain Development Company, and it aims to do just that — track food from its origin to the store shelf.

Provenace is another blockchain project that aims to make supply chains more transparent.

2. Recycling

With the current recycling programs, people often don’t have good incentives to participate. The responsibility for running recycling programs often falls on each separate city, which results in many places not having recycling programs at all. It’s also difficult to track and compare the impact of these programs.

A recycling program on the blockchain could encourage participation by giving a financial reward in the form of a cryptographic token in exchange for depositing recyclables like plastic containers, cans, or bottles. Similar setups already exist in several places around the world, in particular in Northern Europe.

It would make it easy to transparently track data like volume, cost, and profit, and to evaluate the impact of each location, company, or individual participating in the program.

Social Plastic (aka Plastic Bank) is a project that is turning plastic into currency by setting up collection centers in third world countries, where people can deposit used plastic in exchange for currency, services like phone charging, or items like cooking fuel. They aim to clean up the world from plastic waste while alleviating poverty. They are now working on a blockchain-powered appthat will allow people to exchange plastic for cryptographic tokens.

RecycleToCoin is another blockchain dApp in development that will enable people to return their used plastic containers in exchange for a token, through automated machines in Europe and around the world.

3. Energy

Traditional power grids are centralized, which can create inefficiencies in energy distribution, like having unused surplus. And in parts of the world affected by natural disasters or poverty, power outages can leave people without access to electricity.

A peer to peer blockchain based energy system system would reduce the need to transmit electricity over long distances, which can result in losses along the way. It would also help reduce the need for energy storage, because such trading can move electricity locally from where it’s being produced in excess to where it’s needed.

Transactive Grid is a joint venture between ConsenSys and LO3 Energy that is working on a blockchain platform that solves this problem.

SunContract is a blockchain-based peer-to-peer energy trading platform for solar and other renewables.

Power plant installations are expensive and are often financed by governments of large private companies.

A blockchain-based platform could enable institutions, companies, and individuals to get returns from directly investing in renewable energy installations in their area and around the world.

EcoChain is a blockchain dApp being developed, which aims to do just that — create a platform for people to invest in renewables and get a return on their investment.

ElectricChain is another blockchain platform with several apps like SolarCoin, which aims to incentivize solar installations around the world.

4. Environmental Treaties

In can be difficult to track the real impact of environmental treaties, and sometimes there isn’t an incentive for governments or corporations to keep their promises. Fraud and manipulation of data are also problems in this area.

Blockchain could discourage corporations and governments from back-pedalling on their environmental promises or misreporting their progress, because the technology would allow to transparently track important environmental data, and show whether commitments were met. Once the data is entered into the public blockchain, it stays there forever.

Legal document storage on the blockchain could cut down on fraud and manipulation, for example within the global carbon credits scheme. Around 979 million is spent annually on administrate this system alone. If you have an immutable record of credits bought and sold, then there is little chance of corporations and governments looking the other way when carbon credits are bribed or sold illegally.

5. Non-profits

When you donate to an environmental charity, it can be difficult to track where the money goes or how it is spent. Bureaucracy, corruption, and inefficiency are still common in the charity space.

Blockchain technology can ensure that money intended to be a reward for conservation, or a payment to a specific cause, does not disappear into unintended pockets through bureaucratic labyrinths. Blockchain-based money could even be released automatically to the correct parties in response to meeting specific environmental targets.

Blockchains enable funds to be transferred without bank accounts — which is beneficial to people in countries that lack banking infrastructure. This means that it’s possible to send money directly to the people who need it without going through a complex web of middlemen or a centralized authority.

Bitgive and Bithope are two charities working with cryptocurrencies.

6. Carbon Tax

In the current system, the environmental impact of each product is difficult to determine, and its carbon footprint is not factored into the price. This means that there is little incentive for consumers to buy products with a low carbon footprint, and little incentive for companies to sell such products.

Tracking the carbon footprint of each product using the blockchain would protect this data from tampering, and it can be used to determine the amount of carbon tax to be charged on at the point of sale. If a product with a large carbon footprint is more expensive to buy, this would encourage buyers to buy products that are more environmentally friendly, and would therefore encourage companies to restructure their supply chains to meet the demand for such products.

A blockchain-based reputation system could also give each company and product a score based on the carbon footprint of the products they sell. This would make manufacturing more transparent, and discourage wasteful and environmentally unfriendly practices.

7. Changing incentives

In a world of complexity, it can be difficult for individuals or companies to see the direct effects of their actions. Therefore, the incentives for acting in an environmentally sustainable way aren’t always clear, especially in the short term.

Blockchain technology can help both individuals and companies to see the real impact of their actions and incentivize them to take the actions that benefit the environment. The blockchain can be used to transparently track a variety of data like the carbon footprint of each product, the greenhouse gas or waste emissions of a factory, or a company’s overall history of compliance to environmental standards. Companies and individuals can be incentivized to act in an environmentally sustainable way through the availability of information, tokenized credits being issued for taking certain actions, or blockchain-based reputation systems.

These new incentives could completely change the drivers of our economy, and benefit not only us, but the future generations living on our planet.

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This article on blockchain & environment originally appeared on Future Thinkers.

Check out more blockchain podcasts & videos.

7 Ways The #Blockchain Can Save The Environment And Stop Climate Change was originally published in Future Thinkers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What is The Blockchain?

The blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that underlies cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and platforms like Ethereum. It provides a way to record and transfer data that is transparent, safe, auditable, and resistant to outages. This technology has the ability to make the organizations that use it transparent, democratic, decentralized, efficient, and secure. It will likely to disrupt many industries in the coming 5 to 10 years. These are some of the industries it’s already disrupting.

1. Banking and Payments

Some say that the blockchain will do to banking what the internet did to media. It can be used to give access to financial services to billions of people around the world, including those in third world countries who don’t have access to traditional banking. Bitcoin allows anyone to send money across borders almost instantly and with relatively low fees. Abra is one startup that is working on a bitcoin-based remittance service.

Many banks like Barclays are also working on adopting blockchain technology to make their business operations faster, more efficient and secure. Banks are also increasingly investing in blockchain startups and projects. IBM predicts that 15% of banks will be using the blockchain by the end of 2017.

2. Cyber Security

Although the blockchain ledger is public, the data is verified and encrypted using advanced cryptography. This way the data is less prone to being hacked or changed without authorization.

That said, the applications build on the blockchain are still young and there have been several hacks in recent months. This is something future applications will need to grow up to.

3. Supply Chain Management

With blockchain technology, transactions can be documented in a permanent decentralized record, and monitored securely and transparently. This can greatly reduce time delays and human mistakes. It can also be used to monitor costs, labour, and even waste and emissions at every point of the supply chain. This has serious implications for understanding and controlling the real environmental impact of products. The distributed ledger can also be used to verify the authenticity or fair trade status of products by tracking them from their origin. Some blockchain companies working in this sector are Provenance, Fluent, SKUChain, and Blockverify.

4. Forecasting

The blockchain is set to change the entire approach to research, consulting, analysis and forecasting. Online platforms like Augur are looking to create global decentralized prediction markets. These technologies can be used to place and monitor bets on anything from sports to stocks to elections in a decentralized way.

5. Networking and the Internet of Things

Samsung and IBM are using blockchain technology for a new concept called ADEPT, which will create a decentralized network of IoT devices. Operating like a public ledger for a large number of devices, it would eliminate the need for a central location to handle communications between them. The devices would be able to communicate to each other directly to update software, manage bugs, and monitor energy usage.

6. Insurance

The global insurance market is based on trust management. The blockchain is a new way of managing trust and can be used to verify many types of data in insurance contracts, such as the insured person’s identity. So-called oracles can be used to integrate real-world data with blockchain smart contracts. This technology is very useful for any type of insurance that relies on real-world data, for example crop insurance. Aeternity is one blockchain project that is building tools that are useful in the insurance industry.

7. Private Transport and Ride Sharing

The blockchain can be used to create decentralized versions of peer-to-peer ridesharing apps, allowing both car owners and users to arrange terms and conditions in a secure way without third party providers. Startups working in this area include Arcade City and La’Zooz.

The use of built-in e-wallets can allow car owners to automatically pay for parking, highway tolls, and electricity top-ups for their vehicle. UBS, ZF and Innogy are some of the companies developing blockchain based e-wallets.

8. Cloud Storage

Data on a centralized server is inherently vulnerable to hacking, data loss, or human error. Using blockchain technology allows cloud storage to be more secure and robust against attacks. Storj is one example of a cloud storage network using the technology.

9. Charity

Common complaints in the charity space include inefficiency and corruption, which prevent money from reaching those that are meant to have it. Using blockchain technology to track donations can let you be sure your money is going to end up in the right hands. Bitcoin-based charities like the BitGive Foundation use blockchain’s secure and transparent distributed ledger to let donors see that the intended party has received the funds.

10. Voting

Probably one of the most important areas of society that the blockchain will disrupt is voting. The 2016 US election is not the first time certain parties were accused of rigging election results. Blockchain technology can be used for voter registration and identity verification, and electronic vote counting to ensure that only legitimate votes are counted, and no votes are changed or removed. Creating an immutable, publicly-viewable ledger of recorded votes would be a massive step toward making elections more fair and democratic. Democracy Earth and Follow My Vote are two startups aiming to disrupt democracy itself through creating blockchain-based online voting systems for governments.

11. Government

Government systems are often slow, opaque, and prone to corruption. Implementing blockchain-based systems can significantly reduce bureaucracy and increase security, efficiency, and transparency of government operations. Dubai, for example, is aiming to put all its government documents on the blockchain by 2020.

12. Public Benefits

The public benefits system is another sector that suffers from slowness and bureaucracy. Blockchain technology can help assess, verify, and distribute welfare or unemployment benefits in a much more streamlined and secure way. GovCoin is a UK-based company that is helping the government to distribute public benefits using blockchain technology. The blockchain is also a good contender for implementing a basic income. Circles is a project working on developing a blockchain-based technology for implementing a universal basic income.

13. Healthcare

Another industry that relies on many legacy systems and is ripe for disruption is healthcare. One of the challenges hospitals face is the lack of a secure platform to store and share data, and they are often victims of hacking because of outdated infrastructure. Blockchain technology can allow hospitals to safely store data like medical records and share it with authorized professionals or patients. This can improve data security and can even help with accuracy and speed of diagnosis. Gem and Tierion are two companies that are working on disrupting the current healthcare data space.

14. Energy Management

Energy management has been a highly centralized industry for a long time. Energy producers and users cannot buy it directly from each other and have to go through the public grid or a trusted private intermediary. TransactiveGrid is a startup using Ethereum that allows customers to buy and sell energy from each other in a peer-to-peer way.

15. Online Music

Several startups are coming up with ways for musicians to get paid directly from their fans, without giving up large percentages of sales to platforms or record companies. Smart contracts can also be used to automatically solve licensing issues, and better catalog songs with their respective creators. Mycelia and Ujo Music are two startups creating blockchain-based solutions in the music industry.

16. Retail

When you shop, your trust of the retail system is tied to the trust of the store or marketplace. Decentralized blockchain-based retail utilities work differently: they connect buyers and sellers without a middleman and associated fees. In these cases, trust comes from smart contract systems, the security of exchanges, and built-in reputation management systems. One startup disrupting the retail space is OpenBazaar.

17. Real Estate

Some of the issues in buying and selling real estate are bureaucracy, lack of transparency, fraud, and mistakes in public records. Using blockchain technology can speed up transactions by reducing the need for paper-based record keeping. It can also help with tracking, verifying ownership, ensuring accuracy of documents, and transferring property deeds. Ubitquity, is a blockchain-secured platform for real estate record-keeping that is an alternative for legacy paper based systems.

18. Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding has become a popular method of fundraising for new startups and projects in recent years. Crowdfunding platforms exist to create trust between project creators and supporters, but they also charge high fees. In blockchain-based crowdfunding, trust is instead created through smart contracts and online reputation systems, which removes the need for a middle-man. New projects can raise funds by releasing their own tokens that represent value and can later be exchanged for products, services, or cash. Many blockchain startups have now raised millions of dollars through such token sales. Although it’s still early days and the regulatory future or blockchain-based crowdfunding is uncertain, it’s an area that holds a lot of promise.

19. Your Industry

If your industry deals with data or transactions of any kind, it is a field than can likely be disrupted by blockchain technology. The space is wide open and the opportunities are many.

Original article was published on Future Thinkers.

Check out more blockchain podcasts & videos from Future Thinkers.

19 Industries The Blockchain Will Disrupt was originally published in Future Thinkers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.