Covid-19: Logic, Change, and Learning

It is said that after the pandemic the world will not be the same. Changes for the better are expected, in line with the "pragmatic" humanism; or for the worse, as skeptics of various orientations say.

However, if our basic mindset does not change (which is very likely) we will notice only superficial and operational changes. The really significant ones will not be perceived, or will only be perceived by a few people.

So what matters is how we will perceive and understand the changes, and what we will do based on that understanding. The central requirements are perception and intelligence. And these, judging by our history of destruction, wars, epidemics and other horrors, leave much to be desired.

It is argued that history includes great scientific and technological achievements, which is obviously true. But there are two points that are no less true: a) the benefits of these achievements are still out of reach for a large part of humanity; b) the projects designed to expand this reach have not produced the expected results.

Such projects (communism and market liberalism are obvious examples, but not the only ones) have failed because they are based on ideologies that claim to seek the human well-being, but in practice serve more to political and economic interests. Still, their authors and successors continue to believe them, touting their alleged virtues and ignoring their practical failures. All of this shows how our perception is flawed, and how it can lead to wrong conclusions and actions.

Of course there are exceptions, but in general our behavior, especially that of politicians, members of the business world, the scientific mainstream, the media and other supposedly "pragmatic" social structures is based on the Socratic model of thinking.

John Gray summarizes Socrates' main beliefs as follows: a) human evil is a type of error, which will disappear with the advance of knowledge (Lenin also believed that criminality would disappear with the advance of communism); b) a good life is an examined life; c) reason enables human beings to shape their own destinies. In other words, according to the Socratic method the subject is separated from the object (the observer is separated from what he observes, man is separated from nature), and logic is capable of inducing and modifying behaviors and reversing opinions.

These beliefs have been seen as unquestionable, but that is not what historical experience shows, as we know that life is not so mechanical. Logic does not change behaviors; what changes them are the lived experiences. So it would be useful to have in our educational systems a discipline for the development of perception, through which people could relearn how to think.

But it would be very difficult to implement it, for a simple reason: when seeing the world in another way, people would realize that they live more according to the logic of the market than according to the logic of basic human needs, especially when it comes to the right to health and other social protections -- which would be inconvenient for their rulers.

Despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, it has always been so. In the 16th century, for example, Machiavelli wrote in The prince that "men forget the death of their father more quickly than the loss of their patrimony". In other words, he denounced what was thought well before him and many today still think: that business prevails over life. This way of thinking is one of the conditions for what Peter Sloterdijk calls “the continuous production of a frivolous atmosphere”, whose main purpose is to favor consumption.  

And so we go. History, economics and science alternate progresses and failures and the patterns keep repeating: conflicts, plagues and epidemics; contempt for feelings, emotions and subjectivity; self-deception and insensitivity to suffering and death; and the incessant disrespect for nature, whose devastation continues to "reward" us with new plagues: AIDS, Ebola and now Covid-19.

The idea is popularized that human beings violate nature, which retaliates through epidemics, pandemics and other catastrophes. That is what the South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han calls the dialectic of the Anthropocene. It might be useful to add that the greatest tragedy is people's astonishing lack of awareness of what is happening around them -- the unbelievable lack of understanding that the Earth will survive without humans but the opposite is not true.

In the same vein there is a reflection by the great Fernando Pessoa, that comes from another context but is no less appropriate: "It seems needless to explain something so simple and intuitively understandable. It happens, however, that human stupidity is great, and human kindness it is not remarkable".

Although there are already ways to reconcile logic and experience, our societies still resist adopting them. Covid-19 has more than ever placed us before the need for this reconciliation. For that, however, we need thinking resources that cannot be provided by technology alone.

Such resources include the four "givens" of human existence. These are conditions whose understanding broadens our concerns about the complexity of human life and the need to make it less focused on trivialities.

The four "givens" are death, freedom, meaninglessness and isolation, which were identified by Irvin Yalom. They are not concepts, theoretical constructs or anything like that; they are our deepest existential structures, which we reach whenever we manage to get rid of distractions, fads and frivolities.

These "givens" show themselves with great distinctness when we are in limit situations like the Covid-19 pandemic. The whole of humanity is now immersed in this extreme challenge, which however can provide us with invaluable experience and teachings.

Death makes us value our time and that of others. It is not possible to respect life without respecting death. Remaining insensible to the other's death is a sociopathic behavior. Isolation brings the awareness that we came into the world alone and in the same way we will leave it. Hence the need for solidarity. Freedom causes fear, because it implies seriousness, commitment and responsibility. Meaninglessness is a general feeling, which nevertheless encourages us to make sense of our individual lives.

The "givens" of existence are profound experiences and not mere "narratives". They have nothing to do with our daily denials and deceptions; they are the essence of real life, which humans have always tried to escape through narcissism, self-deception, distractions and frivolities that Pascal called divertissements. Taken together, they define the tragic character of the human condition. Writers like Dostoevsky, Herman Melville, William Faulkner, Joseph Conrad and Albert Camus have a lot to teach us about this.

In the case of the current pandemic, the women and men working in hospitals and ICUs all over the world are daily faced with these four "givens" and with the complexity of the world. They risk their lives and get out of this process as better and more realistic people. Through it they learn that it is experience and not discursive logic that changes values, behaviors and ways of living. It is a privilege seeing these people in action and hearing their testimonials. Of course we should learn from their example, but many of us are not sensible enough to do so.

Contrary to what it seems, the tragic character of the human condition does not lead us to self-pity, but to realism. The most important thing is to understand that we are part of the world, that things should be seen as they appear before our experience, and that respect for others should not give way to numbers, statistics and pseudo-scientific verbiage.

Aristotle said that tragedies make us better by putting us in touch with fear and compassion. Respecting them makes people more thoughtful and compassionate, but many do not have enough intelligence to think about the human condition and what it means. This is particularly true in countries where the understanding of the complexity of life is low and the number of sociopaths is high. 

It is disheartening to realize that many consider it negative to talk about those who lost their lives in the pandemic. These people will hardly understand that respecting the sacrifice of those who passed away and the courage of those who cared for them is the most positive of all changes.

Tips for further reading

ERNEST BECKER, The denial of death (New York: The Free Press/Simon & Schuster).

IRVIN YALOM, Existential psychotherapy (New York: Basic Books, 1980).

JOHN GRAY, The silence of animals: on progress and other modern myths (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013). 

NICOLLò MACHIAVELLI, The prince (Amazon Classics).

MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO, Del sentimiento trágico de la vida (Amazon Books).