Covid-19 -The Pandemic Outbreak and the Virus Within Ourselves

DR VALSON THAMPU
It will
not be my aim, in the thoughts offered below, to provide palliatives.
Palliatives delude us with the illusory prospect of bypassing the truth. I
start with the premise that we are not the first, nor the last, to face crises.
Many before us have fought these demons. There is much we may learn from their
experiences and insights. The loneliness, for example, that will afflict us
thanks to the Corona was already identified by Hannah Arendt as ‘the crisis of
the 20th century’ (The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1962). A long time before
this virus subverted our social interactions, we had wilfully compromised them.
We have chosen to be aggregations of individuals, not communities and
congregations.
The
present crisis, like its many predecessors, too shall pass. Nothing is forever.
We need to endure. But how we may endure differs. And how one endures reflects
who one is. So, the important thing is not which crisis hits us; it is how we
face it. A crisis is our date with truth; the truth that we’d, otherwise,
rather ignore.
Here’s
the core of what I wish to say. A virus is not an enemy, but a mirror. The poor
virus is unaware of targeting us. It simply is doing what is best for itself,
unmindful of what distress and danger it occasions for humans. But, given the
chance, we do pretty much the same to each other, won’t we? How is a person or
a party that tries to promote his or its interests at the expense of others
morally any better than the Corona? The world is perishing today because the
difference between human beings and viruses is becoming merely notional.
The
existential issues this pandemic has precipitated are: acute individual
loneliness in the wake of lock-downs, disruptions of social life, polluting the
inter-personal space with distrust of each other, tension in intimate relations
and domestic ambience, and anxiety aggravated by fear of death.
Fear of Death
There are
reasons why this infection, like HIV/AIDs before it, activates fear of death.
There is, as yet, neither any preventive vaccine nor any effective, affordable
therapy. It’s also alarmingly contagiousness. Going by the current UK data, one
infected person transmits the virus to two others. If so, as many as 200
infections result per month on account of the one person currently infected.
The US estimates that 40% to 60% of its population could be at risk. As per
tentative projections in India, about 100 to 200 million people could be
infected. About 2-3% of those who infected die. So, the problem is real and
serious; especially given our abysmally inadequate medical facilities.
But life,
not death, is the basic issue. Our attitude to life shapes our attitude to
death. The fear of death implies a failure of life that conjures up a
frightening sense of emptiness. It is from life that death borrows this
spectral sombreness. Drifting in routine life, we remain indifferent to the
value of life. In this respect, the Corona is a wake-up call in regard to the
value of life. If this awareness survives the crisis, we shall emerge wiser
from it. We are better killers of ourselves than the virus is. Why do tens and
thousands commit suicide year after year?Hencetheparadox. On the one hand we
fear this virus because it could kill many. On the other hand, manymore are
desperate to be rid of life. So, death per se is not the issue. It is life.
Isolation, Loneliness
Isolation-and-aloneness
would not have been a poignant issue for us, if we were not social beings.
However, it is the social aspect of life that we’ve marginalized today. We live
as atomized, self-enclosed individuals. Loneliness is its by-product. This
concern looms large in the philosophy of late 19th and 20th century (Karl
Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Sartre, Arendt, Derrida, Levinas and others.)
Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment is a study of the disintegration of the
individual psyche in a state of aloneness. Dickens’ Dombey and Son foregrounds
the loneliness inherent in living for material goals alone. It is the
preference of the modern man to live for himself alone that, according to
Hannah Arendt, makes the modern orld vulnerable to totalitarianism. “We live,”
she wrote, “in a world of singles”. As Jean-Paul Sartre said, “Hell is other
people.” The rupture in social solidarity results from our deliberate choices.
But when it happens via a virus, we feel aggrieved. We are lonely, not only
because we are alienated from others but also from ourselves.
But the
fact that we are shut out of others, in the wake of an epidemic, does not mean
that we have to be lonely or relapse into emptiness. We could fill this time
usefully in two ways. First, we can enter into a dialogue with ourselves so
that we deepen our self-understanding. In that case, we could realize that we
have not been investing adequately in ourselves. As a result, we are
stagnating; especially in regard to our inner treasures. Second, this is the
time to invest in relationships at home, which we tend to take for granted.
Home is our fortress when the external world becomes inhospitable or out of
bounds. A period of self-quarantine doesn’t have to be a time of loss. It can
be time of gain too.
A crisis illustrates, as nothing else can, the
value of human solidarity. The pain of loneliness arises from our need for
others; especially the deeper to be needed. Yet it also happens that we are
relieved to be rid of people of a certain type. This illustrates not only our
need to be in company, but also our duty to be authentic human beings, so that
we can enrich and reassure each other. The need for human solidarity cannot be
met by any kind of mere presence. It takes persons of quality to do so.
The Plague of Distrust
The virus
comes as an enemy lurking in the inter-personal space. This makes us apprehend
others as carriers of perils. The invisibility of the virus aggravates this
anxiety. It is hard to tell the innocuous from the infecting. Everyone is
painted with the broad bush of hostility. This makes having to be with human
beings worse than walking in a minefield.
It helps
in such contexts to remember that, beyond taking reasonable and feasible
precautions and safety measures, it doesn’t help to live paralyzed. At any
rate,it doesn’t help. Life involves the acceptance of reasonable risks at all
times. Risk-free life is a myth. We could choke on a sumptuous meal and die!
The ‘reasonableness’ of the risk we accept is not, however, a fixed thing. Each
person has to decide it for himself or herself. If a dear one is infected,
would I risk reaching out to help? I think I would. Love, not fear, must decide
the issue. But, in doing so, I will do all I can to scrupulously ensure my
safety. I will, in other words, be open to taking risks; but not be ‘resigned’
to it.
The truth
is that others are not threats, but blessings. That it seems otherwise now, is
a contextual aberration. So, it helps to look this distrust in the face.
Consider also this strange thing. Spreading fear and distrust is a profitable
enterprise today. Elections are won by this strategy. Can it be all right to
resort to it when it helps us to thrive at the expense of others, but is
pernicious when it endangers us as well?
The Ordeal of Communication
Consider
this irony. COVID-19 is a ‘communicable’ disease. That is, it proliferates
through communication. Communication is basic to our being. It plays a
significant role in our development and health as social creatures. This age of
communication is also characterized by a failure of communication. Rather, we
drown ourselves in an ocean of shallow communication (cf. social networking
sites). The most poignant thing is not that we do not communicate, but that we
have nothing to communicate. We make a lot of noise, but we have no voice. Who
we are is not in our communication. Then what is it that we communicate? How is
perverse propaganda that incites genocidal violence any better than the deadly
‘communication’ of this virus?
In the
social isolation that the need to contain this epidemic enforces, we have an
opportunity to audit our communication. Karl Jaspers recognizes four different
modes of communication. Most people do not care to go beyond the merely factual
and functional. The experts, on their part, handle generalities or the esoteric
minutiae of super-specialization. Very few reach the level of the ‘spirit’
(Geist) that makes one respect,in communication,the underlying unity ofall
things human. Fewer still attain the level of ‘existential communication’ in
which one Existenz (Jaspers’ word for authentic existence) communicates with
another Existenz. So, we could be at the bottom of the dry well of aloneness,
even while we are in a crowd, if remain shallow egos. Society as an aggregation
of such individuals is imagined by Prophet Ezekiel as the valley of dry bones.
The transformation of this heap of dry bones into an army of living souls
happens through spiritual communication.
We note
in passing a phenomenon that has reportedly surfaced in China in the wake of
the Corona epidemic. In China divorce rates threaten to increase on account of
enforced togetherness. This proves that
mere physical proximity is not always a blessing. It can be a burden, if we do
not grow in our capacity for person-to-person relationship. (Jesus recognized
the ‘weary and burdened’ human existence cf. Mtt.11:28). In this phenomenon we
must read a warning that we could be a liability to others, if we stay shallow
and insensitive.Hence the irony: even as we feel hurt by loneliness we remain a
source of burden and weariness to those who relate to us.
Victimising
Infected
The
motive for this arises from a false idea of security. It assumes that the other
is the problem. In contrast to this stands the medical fact that improving
one’s immunity is as helpful as avoiding infective points of contact. But that
is a long-cut. In comparison, victimizing the suspicious other seems a
quick-fix. There is an illustration of this in the Gospel of St. Mark: the
healing of the demoniac. The narrative presumes a connection between the
menacing condition of the demoniac and the value system of his society. No one
wants to change in any way. So, the only option is to drive out the demonic,
who has to live among tombs. Jesus, in restoring him, highlights the connection
this society was unwilling to face. This is the significance of the herd of
swine perishing as part of the healing and the restoration of the man. It is
unrealistic to assume that we shall emerge from a crisis without facing the
realities that lurk in it.
What
shall we do?
1. We
must assume responsibility, first, for ourselves and, next, for others in the ambit
of our social reach and personal interaction and help to break the chain of
transmitting the infection. We need to mind personal hygiene. Minimize travels
and social exposures as far as possible, without undermining quality of life
altogether. Safety is secured not by irrational fears, but by informed choices
and responsible behaviour.
2.
Prepare mentally and spiritually for a period of self-quarantine or community
lock-down, marked necessarily by loneliness and the disruption of familiar
routines. Isolation does not have to
entail existential emptiness. It can be a blessing in disguise as well. It
could be a time for deepening and enriching our inner life and inter-personal
relationships. Certainty a time, say, for improving our reading habits and life
of the mind.
3. It
could be a time to enrich family life, which needs to be worked at; for it is
unlikely to happen automatically. Culturally, a shift is happening from home to
life out there. So, having to stay home-bound could induce restlessness.
Restlessness denotes unused or under-used energy. There is no remedy for it
other than devising a strategy for using one’s time and energies in a purposive
and self-enriching way.
4.
Special attention must be paid to meeting the needs of children. It is more
difficult for a child and a teenager to stay put in the home. Abandoning them
to the resources of the virtual world is a bad idea! Parents need to recognize
their additional responsibilities in such a context, and prepare themselves to
discharge them adequately. If done well, this could ensure matchless long-term
gains.
5.
Finally, as even management gurus tell us these days, reckon the reality of
death in our view of life. We are sure to die. It is a matter of time. If will
be tomorrow, as Hamlet says, if it is not today. We can’t decide how long we
shall live, but we can decide how well we live. There is nothing tragic about
our dying; not even dying young. What is tragic is our dying without ever
having opened our eyes on the beauty and meaning of life.
If at all
we have to be in social isolation, we could remember the instance of Jonah
inside the whale’s belly! (ref. The Book of Jonah)It turned out, in his case,
to be a state of transformation. It could also have meant ignominious death. It
was Jonah in prayer, not the killer whale in alimentation, who made the
difference. So, who we are, matters; virus or no virus. Especially so, when the
virus is slithering, unseen, in the garden of our life.
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