“I wonder how philosophy could help in a situation like this”
For Céline
A much-esteemed friend from afar, having kindly checked in to see how I was coping with confinement, asked me this:
“I’ve been wondering how philosophy could help in a situation like this.”
My initial reflex, to some degree of sorrow, was to think that in the present tidal surge of information, lecturing, differing opinions and unveiled fears, in this (entirely natural) state of cacophony, it’s hard to see how one could say anything at all without being either haughty or repetitive. Speaking up to point out that everyone is jabbering just adds to the noise without cause. Criticizing the opinion-noise is nothing more than ineffective arrogance. And endeavouring to provide explanations if you’re not a doctor or economist is arrogance all over again. Social networks are abuzz with people explaining and other commenting the explainers. That’s what the networks are for, you might say. As a user myself, I am well aware.
Amidst people:
- explaining where Covid-19 came from,
- forecasting how it will develop,
- comparing it to past pandemics,
- interpreting what it portends for future pandemics,
- which biblical or mythical message it carries with it,
- reading into the expression of our fears, our surges of solidarity almost never incompatible with our self-serving survival reflexes,
- predicting how Covid-19 will impact the economy, and how the flattening of the epidemic curve should coincide with that of the economic-crash curve,
- and tirelessly calculating, hour after hour, the (abyssal) drawbacks of our current situation as well as its benefits (the respite this lockdown offers our planet, the haphazard opportunity to step back and take stock of how the world usually works),
It feels like we’re in a boiling pot. A pot a whole army of aspiring magicians are filling with plants whose virtues they fervently believe in. We will have to wait and see if the soup is edible and whether or not we’ll all get a taste.
It’s scary, but fascinating too, to have all our convictions flipped upside-down.
It’s insane how many issues this situation brings to the surface. Insane what it lays bare before us. The contradictions it carries. It’s scary but fascinating too to have all our convictions flipped upside-down.
For one thing, how it has flipped the meaning of the term “confined”. Up until a few weeks ago, to be “confined” meant a sort of fearful, restless passivity. It was mostly used abstractly to refer to an undue retreat. Then came the “confinement” (what French-speaking countries are calling the “lockdown”), reawakening an age-old word since reserved to the category of prisoners isolated from other prisoners (or in other words, the doubly locked-away), and we heard it a little differently. Suddenly, under somewhat radical orders from our governments, we began to perceive confinement as an action we must master and control, a signature of our own responsibility, a challenge we must face up to both individually and collectively. And we knew that failure was not an option. In the span of a few short days and despite our constant astonishment, not only did our “confinement” become key… it became natural.
The first revelation: seeing how quickly we acknowledge the facts and act accordingly.
We’ve broken away from the almighty “force of habit”, the ability to “let go”, a skill people before spent significant sums of money on, has become a cakewalk… the common creed by which certain changes were en-ti-re-ly-impossible has been utterly shattered by their sudden shift to ab-so-lu-te-ly-essential!
This observation sparks contrasting sentiments: 1. Things we believe to be inalterable, on both individual and global levels, can be pulverized in a matter of seconds. 2. We are capable of bearing very, very major change.
The second revelation is the sudden surfacing of details about “our life before” previously unknown or unexplored.
The cost of salaries relocated the production of goods now become essential (such as masks) and regaining self-sufficiency in times of need does not seem simple. There has been talk of “closing the stock markets” because they are dropping too quickly, but never have we considered closing them due to too rapid a rise. It has come to our attention that planes have been flying empty to hold onto airport slots, that Switzerland’s pharmaceutical industry does more researching than producing… and we’ve rediscovered the deceitful practices of certain insurances refusing, in this pandemic, to pay companies covered for epidemics (subtlety). The strings of our world-of-before exposed in such little time. It’s surprising how much hangs only by a thread.
The third realization is the revelation of interdependencies.
Between our minor life events and major shifts in the economy, between our little boo-boos and important theses, between the speed at which toilet paper vanishes from store shelves and simulations of how the virus will spread, between the jokes we post on social media to poke fun at this situation and the near-complete uncertainty as to how the planet (and humanity itself, asks Harari) will emerge from this ordeal, we’re struggling to find a rightful place in the puzzle for an assortment of tiny remaining pieces, thus far left aside.
And philosophy in all of this?
It’s not the Professor Raoult’s miracle chloroquine. What type of miracle are we hoping for anyway? Full recovery for all and complete eradication of the Covid-19 virus? Then what? Wait for the next virus to come along? And go through the same process all over again?
Consolation as a philosophical practice
Consolation as a philosophical practice began in antiquity, and traces have been found through to the 17th century, when it was left first to theologians and later to psychologists. It was introduced by the Stoics in their efforts to provide a rational response to the human situation with room for maneuver. Lucretius, Seneca and Cicero addressed letters to real people suffering through the worst torments of our human existence: the loss of a loved one (many emotional and moving consolations pertaining to the death of a child), serious illness, the loss of one’s belongings…
Consolation can also be embodied by a dialog or a poem, though the fundamental structure is consistent: acknowledging a person’s suffering by evoking their emotions to show that they are understood and encourage them to take a rational approach through which they can realize the boundedness of their fate, the force of nature or that of God’s decrees, and gain perspective on their grief. Some consolations from antiquity are more modern than those of the 17th century. Boethius’, for instance, wrote the remarkable ‘Consolation of Philosophy’ in 524 AD while imprisoned on accounts of treason and awaiting his execution. The letter is addressed to a personification of philosophy itself.
Consolation offers rationality to appease overwhelming emotion, and is both useful and necessary in situations where the only choice is to accept one’s fate.
Active acceptance can be achieved through rationality. This can avoid the prostration of victimhood.
It is a discreet and seemingly powerless practice that possesses all the ingredients of admirable heroism.
Consolation is an example we can build on. Our fear of the unknown, our grief upon the loss of elderly loved ones, our heightened awareness of our vulnerability and the meaning it bears, can find solace in consolation, and reading the very writings of Seneca could be time well spent. Yet neither in religious nor in philosophical literature have I found a collective consolation about an epidemic outbreak. This is surely because grief is a personal matter, even when an emotion is widespread.
Individual grief and collective challenge
Beyond our concerns for ourselves, however, the challenge we must face up to here and now is collective. It puts our sense of social solidarity to the test. It tries our sense of belonging to the human race and our system-mindedness on a global level.
Many years ago, Commander Cousteau feared our collapse if we did not grasp the necessity to respect the oceans, as life itself depends on them. Nearly six years ago, Bill Gates warned that not missiles, but microbes would be the threat of our future. Boris Cyrulnik has predicted profound change following Covid, as occurs in the wake of a major crisis, and that we have the means to be resilient. From a more political-philosophy angle, Sloterdijk foresees the Western system emerging from this as authoritarian as China, pointing to current excessive “mothering” and general disempowerment as early signs. Mobile snitches and informant neighbours.
As for Yuval Noah Harari, he asserts we will have two decisions of significant importance to make: the first between totalitarian surveillance and reinforcing our sense of citizenship, and the second between nationalistic isolation and global solidarity.
I like that agenda. We all knew the complexity of the system would render our own individual actions virtually useless. We’ve established that the system is complex, and that those we thought to be in charge are working to design hopefully- fruitful solutions with a fair amount of disarray. Plainly put, they too are “searching” in hopes that the leverage that comes with their status will help them find a way out. But all poetry aside, we know that together we have a great deal of power, that we can define what will come next. We can choose a heightened sense of citizenship and global solidarity rather than the alternative. Because you can rest assured — never would the alternative deter future viruses from coming. And for the group, existence precedes essence when it comes to making choices that demand commitment.
Social networks are abuzz with people explaining and others commenting the explainers. It’s entirely natural. Everyone feels the foundations of our old world becoming unstable, while the possibilities for the future, now our principal focus, open up before us
I do hope we will remember this before airplanes go back to striping the sky every two minutes, before air pollution can once again be seen by satellites and resumes killing 5000 of our country’s citizens per year, before our consumption-frenzy sets the Earth depletion mechanism back into motion, before…
