When the Director-General of the World Health Organization called the coronavirus “an enemy against humanity” at a press conference yesterday, he coupled this with the observation that the crisis also has the ability to bring humans together “against a common enemy.” This discourse of war is useful for mobilizing the kind of collective response that is needed to counter the global pandemic, but, like all militaristic rhetoric, it lacks nuance. Perhaps we need this kind of “US versus THEM” narrative to reach the most number of people. Perhaps this is what we best understand. And yet, is it not a sad testimonial that, at this late hour of modern civilization, the only discourse that can offer an alternative to our normally individualistic, monadic mindset is one of war?
Viewing the virus as an “enemy” is on a continuum with the modern outlook that sees the planet as an inert backdrop to human activity: a set of resources to be utilized and exploited. It reinforces thinking that divides “humanity” from “nature” and places the later as an alien object to be mastered and overcome by human intelligence and ingenuity. As Michel Serres points out, this largely Western division of “culture” from “nature” is actually the name for a protracted WAR. As in most wars, it is necessary to diminish one’s adversary conceptually, to reduce the enemy to something not worthy of compassion or respect. We can see this in the way the names of the animals we have domesticated are used as terms of abuse: to call someone a “cow,” “sheep,” “chicken” or “pig” is a great insult. And yet, these are the creatures we rely upon for sustenance! In the narrative of protracted war, we humans are the vehicles of will, consciousness, intelligence and reflection, while “nature” is always-already an object, devoid of intelligence or plan. It is precisely this kind of thinking that novelist and essayist Amitav Ghosh, in his book about climate change and narrative, calls The Great Derangement.
Here is an alternative narrative: towards the end of the twentieth century, humans discovered that the fuel source powering their world was also disrupting the biosphere, rapidly creating conditions that only existed on Earth millions of years before humans showed up, and that would almost certainly spell hardship and doom for billions of people. And yet, the economic, cultural and institutional structures of the day allowed people to suppress this information for several decades. When it was no longer possible to suppress, they attempted to obscure it by flooding the culture with misinformation, to confuse people and dissuade them from making the necessary changes.
This was all part and parcel of the long war that was being waged against an enemy, “nature,” that wasn’t really separate from the humans themselves. In fact, a primary tactic of the war was to distract the majority of people from realizing that the seeming division between US and NATURE was really covering over an internal division, within human societies, between those who had easy lives and those who didn’t. For this reason, humans were suffering and dying.
However, like most wars, there were excessive, unanticipated effects: knowledge and technologies were created that had applications far beyond their limited wartime uses. Though the war prevented many of these uses and potentials from being realized, it couldn’t prevent the accumulation of knowledge from contradicting the premises upon which the war was being waged: the natural world is not separate from us, a mere repository of resources. Nor are humans mere labour machines, producing ease for a lucky minority.
Once knowledge of the collective predicament became impossible to ignore or bury, the governments of the world did start to hold meetings where they agreed upon what needed to be done, but they were unable to follow through with these plans. A sense of dread and finality began to build, and popular culture became increasing apocalyptic, with people taking refuge in fantasies of societal collapse, or nostalgic visions of the past, or both. It became increasingly clear that human society was unable to steer itself from the path of destruction upon which it was fixed. It seemed as though, in a few short centuries, jellyfish would inherit the earth.
Then, a miracle occurred. A tiny microorganism that had been replicating itself in animals for unknown generations learned, in a few short weeks, how to transmit itself from animals to humans, and then from humans to humans. This had been a difficult and risky move for the creature, with a great chance of failure. But it worked. The creatures began flourishing in the lungs of humans. Perhaps the creatures were aided by the fact that the lungs of humans were already weakened from breathing in the same pollution that was transforming the environment: about four million humans were already dying from these pollutions each year.
The problem was, the people whose lives were easy could largely distance themselves from the destructive realities of the war. They didn’t see the millions of deaths as related to them. The deaths caused by the creature were different: they could effect almost anybody. After only a few months, the creature had caused ten thousand deaths across the globe. This sparked a panic. The creature’s successful reproduction in the lungs of humans shut down a great deal of the economies and institutions of countries around the world. The price of the fuel source that was destroying the planet became alarmingly low, and the poisonous gasses that were being poured into the atmosphere were dramatically reduced.
In a few short months, the creature accomplished what the governments, companies and leaders of the world had failed to do for almost half a century. But there was no celebration of the creature’s work. Instead, it was called “an enemy of humanity.” A vaccine was eventually developed, for which the humans greatly congratulated themselves: once again their ingenuity and science had prevailed over stupid, dangerous and hostile nature. The economy gradually began improving. Stock market portfolios began returning dividends again. The price of gasoline went back to its usual levels, and everyone began getting back to the “normal” work of wrecking the planet for future generations.
EXCEPT, the long, anxious months when things were not NORMAL awakened old, dormant memories, networks, hopes, fears and capacities amongst the humans. Just like in other wars, when governments would tell everyone they suddenly had to stop being selfish and work for the greater good, there was an excessive, unanticipated outcome. A large number of people remembered that the world could be changed, and that, just like the tiny creatures that had threatened us, we were more than just isolated individuals. These collective energies started a movement, and all the governments, corporations, billionaires and their cronies were unable to suppress it. A new world equation was formulated, and the greedy, self-serving and self-destructive energies of humanity were put back into their cages—at least for a while.
Just like the creature made the jump from other animals to humans by small slippages in the replication of its RNA, all of which eventually amounted to a decisive, qualitative change in its mode of reproduction, so too did human civilization, which was seemingly stuck in a repetitive holding pattern, make a great advance thanks to the creatures' exploitation of a series of accumulated vulnerabilities in human society. These "vulnerabilities" were not the people who got sick or died, but rather the weakened social structures that a culture based on protracted WAR had created for itself. With uncanny precision, the creature somehow knew just where to strike in order to help its human hosts better address some of their problems.
Looking back, the Great Virus of 2020 became known as the tipping point that brought about a new era of human flourishing and hope. The strange parasite that seemed to have threatened an entire civilization turned out to be a vehicle of transformation. Old ways of thought that reduced “nature” to a set of inert resources and dangerous potentials still persisted, but they were largely eclipsed by a way of thought that recognized a mysterious and powerful wisdom to the natural world. It required attentive ears, inquisitive, open minds, compassionate hearts and a capacity for complex, shifting relationships to each other and the land, but it lead to an understanding that the old, “modern” world was a kind of sad, dismal place to live, by comparison. And, as it turned out, this “new” way of being was not really new at all—it was continuous with ways of life that has sustained humanity for most of its long history on planet Earth.
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