Ode to Humanism
An Essay
A blank page, a mind trapped in a whirlwind of thoughts and anxiety, a once in a lifetime pandemic, a recession and the world’s longest quarantine. A life I would have never been able to fathom before. In Argentina, the endless obligatory isolation, also referred to as “quaranternity”, lasted a hundred and eighty days, to be exact. Even seeing the figure written down feels like some sort of laudable accomplishment.
Initially, the intrigue of the adrenaline-induced novel conditions allowed for extra family time. We adapted to a rearranged routine whose primary focus was our three-year-old daughter. Months later, we realized that we had managed to create an inescapable series of repetitive, daily tasks that merely indicated the sluggish passage of time, while unassumingly striving to maintain the illusion of being productive. Parenting during a pandemic, it appears, is a languid effort to keep a vigorous and energetic toddler as happy as possible. A tragicomic experience within the context of a wider health and social crisis with evident economic and political ramifications.
As the days, weeks and months go by, flooded by news of worldwide social unrest, injustice and humanitarian disasters, I began to contemplate, as we all seem to be doing more of these days. The absurdity of our current situation, the pointless repetitiveness, the insecurity, the theatrics of politics and diverging political ideologies, the pretentiousness of a new ‘cancel’ culture, the social distancing: this sounds more like the Theater of the Absurd to me. The Theater of the Absurd, born in the mid 20th century from the ashes of the Second World War, was an artistic interpretation and philosophical manifestation of the absurd and indecipherable nature of life. Eugène Ionesco and Samuel Beckett’s plays challenge the notion of a pernicious reality, characterized by feelings of loss, bewilderment and utter purposelessness. A nightmarish existence filled with chaos and devoid of meaning, as language and communication are devalued in the face of disjointed dialogues that defy a logical evolution of events.
The parallelism with real life is striking, especially in view of our disconnection in an overly connected world, and the mounting inconsistent political rhetoric. Aware of our current human condition, I find myself thinking that what we are experiencing is preposterous. That, after all the years of cognitive evolution, we are still trapped in a vicious cycle of short-term individualism and greed that condemns us all to an unsustainable and injurious way of life. Should one try to make any sense of this, is any endeavor to ameliorate our current existence even worth the try?
Unlike Ionesco and Beckett’s interpretation of existentialism in an incomprehensible world, I believe that not all is futile, just yet. Amid our anxiety, anguish, confusion, and decadent self-contentment, we are still gifted with the ability of clairvoyance and logical intuition that helps us navigate this world during the hardest of times. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic is just another big test in the evolution of humanity. I often remind myself that humankind, in its need to survive and thrive, has a long history of overcoming difficulties through innovation, creativity and analysis. What is sometimes too incongruous to even recognize and acknowledge can also be a push forward. However, the value of our predicament can be hard to extrapolate when the loss of human life, physical interaction, stability, and normalcy we once knew is so unsettling. After all, we are all still grappling with the effects of an inconceivably long quarantine that seems to have just drained the life out of people yearning to resume their lives with no fear. And this is a weight we will all have to bear for as long as we need to.
My thoughts are running rampant as they seek refuge in an encouraging interpretation of the events that have taken place over the course of the year. A blank page waits for me to pen a non-fictional story, but to me all of this feels like fiction to begin with. It is all people think and talk about: how COVID-19 is the defining characteristic of our century. It has thrown our societies in total disarray and has utterly transformed our lives. And yet again, the optimist in me believes that one can discern a dim light in the darkest of places. Salvador Dalí once said, “You know the worst thing is freedom. Freedom of any kind is the worst for creativity”. A somewhat encouraging thought. Acknowledging the true meaning and essence of our existence tends to dawn on us during difficult times. It is during moments of despair, uncertainty, or under the threat of a disease that we consciously exercise introspection and retrospection, that we find novel approaches to life and become resourceful troubleshooters. Great ingenuity tends to derive from wider social disasters. The last ten months have led to a radical change of context, forcing us to question many assumptions previously taken for granted. We bear witness to a profound paradigm change that challenges conventional concepts and practices.
This is not to say that all we have been doing thus far has been completely detrimental. We can, of course, trace our intellectual heritage and gradual sociogenesis to the Hellenistic period, the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment and the four Industrial Revolutions. All of these epochs constitute milestones in our competence to achieve higher standards and envision a better life. We have come a long way.
Evidently, heightened intellectual activity tends to be historically contextualized. The confluence of ideas, not as abstracts but in relation to their cultural, political and social contexts, leads to the development of new disciplines, sciences, and schools of thought. From the understanding of our possibilities and the need to attach value to our actions, there arises suddenly a higher purpose to fulfill. There is an urgency to convince and create, to resist and rethink, to persevere and progress.
Before the pandemic struck, I had modest hopes of fulfilling my three-year long maternity leave and reluctantly finding my way back to the workforce. Yearning, I guess, to reunite with the world I left behind when I gave birth. But now I find myself living in a country which, despite the early restrictions it imposed, is among the ten top countries with most confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide. Its economy, already on its knees long before the pandemic hit, has a laborious task ahead trying to revive an anxious society exhausted from never-ending financial calamities. And to add insult to injury, the virus came as winter was approaching. Conditions are dire for many who try to make ends meet, mainly within the margins of a wider informal economy. Spirits are incredibly low.
During the coldest of nights, there is often a loud voice coming from the deserted streets of the neighborhood where I reside. A vociferous cry that can be heard clearly all the way up to the eleventh floor of our building. A homeless man desperately asking for help, begging for mercy, looking for a sign of hope. A lugubrious sound that transcends space and time and becomes universal. His each call fills the soul with a heavy sense of guilt and great shame. Our humanity is at fault once again. And I only need to take one glimpse at my screen to see more pictures and read more news of poverty levels rising around the world. What is a local, individual experience is increasingly a global reality for so, so many. The economical consequences of the pandemic will signify the social condemnation of more to come.
This is, alas, just another reminder that there is a preexisting element of social malaise prevalent in the most unfortunate communities, among those who have been forgotten, marginalized, subjugated. The phenomenon of social hierarchies, which reinforces the distinction between those who are more and less “worthy” of the resources required to achieve a dignified life, begs the question of how can we do better. Are we capable of doing better? Is our affinity to material comfort so profound that it obscures the mind to the negligence and suffering that is veiled under the facade of general wellbeing? Such social injustices, remnants of the world I have known, question the merits and very value of our modern society.
Consumed by my eagerness to define the present moment, I devoured as many articles as I could. During one of my searches, I came across the work of German sociologist Ulrich Beck, whose critique of the effects of our modernity and the risks involved when a society becomes too dependent on financial wealth, technology and science struck a chord.
His work, carried out during the 1980s, revolves around the notion of ‘Risk Society’, which is now more relevant than ever. Through his appreciation of an aggressive and radicalized modernity, Beck argues that our fate is subject to the threat of omnipresent, invisible dangers, which result from the subordination of nature in the name of industrialization. He recognized the risks ensued by modern technological development, and the innate perils of this evolutionary process. It appears we are bound to mental and physical affliction, destined to eventually lose ourselves in a distorted reality our own species created in the first place. There’s a happy thought. Perplexed by the findings, I wonder if self-destructiveness is in our nature. Manufactured threats such as pollution, pandemics, nuclear power, technical and technological shortcomings, toxic waste, bio-warfare, endanger our very existence. Quite the paradox, considering humanity’s constant endeavor to achieve ambitions of grandeur and permanence.
For better or for worse, we are living through the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the era of Digital Darwinism, where you either adapt to the digital transformation or you become irrelevant. Extinct, even. The inevitability of technology and its impact on a society that is evolving faster than we can adapt to, is already affecting our lives and livelihoods in ways we are yet trying to define. And confused by it all, we careen into our online microcosms with mounting discontent. There is just too much for us to absorb, too fast.
The compelling contribution of Beck’s book ‘Risk Society’ lies in its proposition of a novel approach to contemporary politics and society. Beck introduced the concept of ‘reflexive modernity’, a process whereby society draws on itself for self-criticism and reflection to reinterpret conventional practices and norms. The constant flow and exchange of new information and knowledge helps re-evaluate modernity, while promoting an undercurrent of new ideas for an innovative type of development. One that deconstructs outdated institutions and cultural behavior to reconstruct new ones.
Therefore, what was hitherto accepted as the standard way of performing business now seems to be the target of social rebuke by those who envision a better, more acceptable way of life. Economic progress and increased productivity have so far been the guiding forces behind our human condition. They have helped us enjoy great personal comfort, achieve prosperity and, even to a significant degree, moral progress. Because of this moral progress we seem to have accomplished, we are now propelled by a revived sense of ethical obligation, equipped with centuries of knowledge and experience, to try and do better. To seek different avenues for development. The narrative of economic growth at the expense of social equality and environmental integrity has now reached its expiration date.
Of course, none of this is new. We live in a deeply complex modern world, saturated with expertise and technology. As adept masters of the almighty Internet, we profess to be virtuosi of all sorts, to know it all, when in fact, the more we learn the less we know. And the more we intrude on nature’s business, the more our actions will somehow backfire. And here we are: vulnerable, confined and conditioned by the very force of nature. A force majeure. Another social experiment to politicize.
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Sitting by the window still wondering how to begin my essay, I observe how my elderly neighbor from across the street does the same. She sits patiently, looks at the sky, occasionally waters her plants and waits for all this to end. My friends, scattered around the world, express the same thought: how, while in confinement, they want this pandemic to finally pass. This collective social experience is providing us with a new sense of a shared, transnational or -if you may- transcultural identity: a collective identity that is captured by the uniqueness of a global time-specific event, an embodied experience lived by all. The importance of this event should be enough to develop a consciousness of unity, whereby we derive formative and normative guidance to achieve development that is genuinely humanizing as well as sustainable. The disorienting effect of this pandemic will hopefully trigger our capacity for social reconstruction, inciting a cultural shift towards the development of more conscious global society. Crystallized in our collective memories as a fateful event, the pandemic can be the start of a genuine cultural change: one that is reflected in our daily habits. Social equality, inclusion, responsibility, environmental priority and financial viability can become a second nature. This is the legacy we ought to collectively aim towards: a roadmap for the survival of our human kind.
Each of our individual memories informs collective memory, and, with time, collective memory reshapes local and global cultural practices. The significance of preserving memory is fundamental for our re-education. Not only for the sake of historical archiving of this pandemic, but also for the cultural shift and adaptation that is required for a more viable future. We are the generation that will most vividly remember this pandemic. As such, we are also the ones who will “write the event’s history, influencing the collective memories of succeeding generations”, as James W. Pennebaker cited in his book “Collective Memory of Political Events” (1997). Our ethical obligation is to remember our faults as a society and incorporate the lessons learned, past and present, in order to seek emancipation from our current misgivings. This is a good time to rethink our collective narrative of progress and the values we want our children to inherit.
Art, philosophy, poetry, literature, theater have always been the classic components that inform the intellectual premise and heritage of any given culture. Nonetheless, culture extends beyond the creations, inventions and artistic manifestations we come up with. As a more complex and dynamic concept, culture is our way of thought, our actions, our business making, our tendencies; the ethical foundations (or lack thereof) of our institutions, our shared beliefs, our politics, and our economics. It constitutes the entire socio- ecological system within which we operate. Culture, thus, requires that all actions from every sphere of life be re-directed to stimulate a social re-formation, a modern Renaissance, aligned with the responsibility and respect towards human life.
Before becoming anything else, beyond the scope of our perceived identities, we are human. We share an esoteric (inner, evoking its meaning in Greek) world, which, as Kant eloquently argues in his Doctrine of “Perpetual Peace”, is a unique value of human prudence and judgment. Despite our differences, I am sure we occasionally find, somewhere in the dark corners of our ego, our innate sense of camaraderie and altruism towards our fellow human. In that same spirit, we are also able to distinguish what is morally right from wrong, and capable of exercising our political agency to promote a renewed sense of order, one that appeases our relationship with our ecosystem. Our epoch must be defined by ecopolitics, not ecocide. We know the facts, we see the images, we feel the consequences more with each day that goes by. The tragedy will be irreversible if we do not seek to do otherwise.
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At the beginning of this long conundrum, I questioned whether any effort to improve our situation is truly worth the try. As evidence and history show, progress can be achieved. With a healthy dose of idealism and earnest pragmatism, sustained progress is possible. The challenge to overcome social mayhem and corrosion will require an unwavering sense of purpose and unity. It always has. Ultimately, I hope, the values imparted by a global cultural revolution will guide our social evolution.
In the meantime, while still trying to come to terms with the sheer uncertainty and absurdity of our times, we have also found solace in the simple things in life. What were once fleeting pleasantries in a fast-forward routine have now turned into profound and insightful conversations with a few, chosen ones. In this sudden pause, we have found time to ponder and explore ideas of a re-imagined life. For ideas, just like the air, travel and keep the mind alive. And as the inevitability of a natural phenomenon may cause darkened clouds and belligerent skies, it also transforms air into water: a tangible substance that gives life. Similarly, an idea, a hope can come into fruition and allow for humankind to thrive. But for this happen, a storm is first in line.
Not sure whether the future is hopeless or hopeful, I contend myself with a mind trapped in a sea of thoughts of endless possibilities. Meanwhile, there is a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, social isolation, my daughter in the background having her own version of an existentialist crisis, and a blank page to work with. Where does one even begin?
