Covid-19 and Being: the question of the ultimate posed by the virus

At this moment: 14:57 2020/05/15

Lately, I’ve been considering the longer term ramifications of the effect of the Coronavirus pandemic on various dimensions of our polities, where “our” connotes' humanity’s". Being a self-interested unit, I start with this place where “I” am. I put I in quotation marks to denote the “I” as a process, to underscore the dynamic aspect of being-as-a-self, let alone the personality to which “I” is appended out of habit and convention.

That understood, I’ll return to using I sans “” enclosures.

This I is not really inconvenienced currently by the restriction in movement. In fact, this is almost a blessing in terms of exploration and examination of the inner and the world it/I inhabit(s). Virtual socializing works well, too, in keeping in touch with loved ones.

However, it’s near-solipsistic to think that this is optimal in the long run. We are formed by and grow from relationship. To borrow from Sartre, being-for-others is tantamount to our being-in-the-world. 

Recognizing this, the act of confinement becomes a challenge to the conventional ways of existing among and with others.

That said, the situation in which many find themselves (a pointed phrase, yes?) may prove fertile ground for a greater growth of spirit and understanding or depending on circumstances, trauma and shutting down. I believe there are strategies to obviate the latter and foster the former; however, I recognize availability and access to these strategies may be limited by those very circumstances.

So far, this is all to do with our psychic and psychological being; related to this is our physical well-being and those of others that requires care and attention. The two are not unrelated, not disconnected, but for one to remain healthy, the other requires that attention, that care.

What to do if a loved one is infected? How to care if medical assistance is not available? And if it is oneself, alone?

I really don’t care for trafficking in the “what-if”, but given this moment, it is difficult not to consider, especially when there is concern for others. For myself, I’m phlegmatic about the whole affair. I’m in good health, maintain a reasonable regimen of qigong/taichi, etc. (preventative maintenance), limit my outings (once a week or about every ten days for essentials and the occasional walk); but what about others who find themselves in precarious positions? What about the abusive household? The food distressed poor? The marginalized – from the homeless to the incarcerated, from the undocumented immigrant to the elderly or those dealing with dementia or other debilitating ailments? 

The “I” grows broader.

The “I” grows into the “we”, the “us”; when we begin considering others, each “I” grows more valuable, more poignant. Existence in never merely our own.

The Coronavirus may well turn out to be our greatest teacher. It may present many who have avoided encountering the inevitability of the void with a direct meeting. There are many who are people of faith – of one or more faiths – who will apply their own narrative strategies to this encounter. For them, I say fine, do so.

For others, there may be no philosophical or religious support in their approach to the world and this is also fine. I lean, in fact, more to that side of the equation; to say “I don’t know” strikes me as both more honest and more liberating than to posit a metaphysical “maybe it’s this” or a definite “this is what is going to happen”; again, the speculation that isn’t really helpful in the encounter with what-is. I might go further and individuate that term to “what-is-before-one” or “what-is-before-us” because “what-is” evokes a thing-in-itself that we cannot know and that stands outside experience for oneself.

In any case, the pandemic is the Void knocking on the door, testing human responses and ultimately (re)defining what it means to be human. We have many options, but none of them exclude each other. 

We may think – owing to quarantining – that we are exist in isolation; this is going to feel truer for those at risk more than others, but I wonder at the militants who decide that somehow this is all a show of control by state powers. They exist in another type of isolation where the ego sets itself up out fear over and against the Other. To be sure, they may live in a mutually supportive community; however, the question obtains what the driver of that community’s ethics and range of understanding is based on.

Nevertheless, even the reactionary should be heard and stock taken of their perspective because even “they” are “us”; we do not exist apart from the Other, even if among the polity, there are those who demonize the Other and act to set themselves apart. How we navigate each other’s personal choices and actions is instructive for the unique subjective “I” that I am, as well as for the “us” that we are. The virus may not be influenced by this one way or the other; but how we comport ourselves en masse will determine how it communicates and transforms.

It is this latter moment that we need to hold; the virus communicates. It exists as it is and its very existence is a question to which we respond in myriad ways, and to varying degrees. Some of these ways may not be optimal for survival; degrees may vary from intent and intensive analysis and engagement (of the medico-scientific necessity or the philosophical/social type) to laissez-faire hedonic ignorance of the question poised to a defiant “NO” on the part of many in denial that the virus is a threat at all or those who simply refuse to accept it as questioning their right-to-be themselves.

Do we need a singular holistic, unified response to Covid-19? Were it possible, we would have one. We do not nor, I think, is it possible. It isn’t merely that we are diverse and diversified as societies and cultures but even within the individual, we are legion. As such, the responses will reflect not merely our specific responses to the virus, but how we live our lives, what our ultimate values are, how we encounter the world. There is no one-size-fits-all approach.

Does this infer, much less mean that we should not self-isolate, wear protective covering, maintain social distancing? Of course not. As pointed out earlier, we are-for-others, we are-for-each-other. We don’t exist in our own bubbles and because our well-being is based in everyone else’s, the protective measures to be taken are expressions of that attentiveness and caring, as well as providing a response to the question posed by Covid; how shall we act? Not “react”, please note. But act.

It might well be that our actions are for the most part, conditioned and in many, many ways, reactions; however, the more we take time to measure our responses, the more we come to understand the necessity of dealing responsibly with this challenge.

Some may argue that my positing of this mutual being-for-each-other is idealist nonsense, but it’s very much rooted in social reality, in the reality of the Commons, if you will. We are our community, at the very least, however that community is defined or identifies itself. If we widen the aperture/broaden the scope, we are part and parcel a part of humanity at large.

The action at the personal level may not have much of an effect globally, if at all, but it’s the action itself that defines the individual and of necessity, the individual stands in relation to the community in a number of ways. Relationship is never merely singular.

How we approach, interrogate, and ultimately respond to the great matter of life and by extension death, characterizes all we do. This is not a thought-out, step by step procedure; but how we live our lives is an expression of how we respond to the end of this existence. We can deny it, we can posit afterlives, we can take an annihilationist position, but how we live and move and have (our) being is in response to the grand finale.

Covid has pushed the grand finale front and center into the space before us. It is a signifier of the uncertainty of time and place when the individual becomes naught. This does not mean that we cannot respond with fear or with stoicism or again, with any strategy – cultural or individually chosen – but it does mean that we are presented with facing the period at the end of the sentence. How we choose to write our passages are our responses to this seemingly out-of-nowhere eclipse of the individual and the finalizing of relations.

The virus may be teaching us to care more than we had in prior times. Not just about preserving our own subjective well-being, but how to care more for our loved ones, and perhaps even for those to whom and about whom we give short shrift or care for not at all. Maybe – just maybe – even for those to whom we hold a certain antipathy.

If you want to work on how to care to about someone you dislike or even hate, consider the fear and the terror that may engulf them – as it might well you one day – as they face death. Really feel it. Go into it deeply. Imagine the loneliness, the unexpected solitary nature of that ending. Even if they’re surrounded by loved ones, they have to face their dissolution alone as the body shuts down and consciousness dissolves.

If you feel that people you dislike strongly or hate don’t deserve that much thought, then look deeply into your own demise. Question if you’ve left the world a better place? As you bid farewell to your near and dear – providing they are not forbidden to be by your side if you have contracted Covid – who among them will remember you on a regular basis? What will the tales be that will be told about you in your passing? Do you imagine that your passage from the world will be painless? Why?

I find that this is the not unreasonable challenge that we are faced with more than ever. A communicable, swiftly adapting virus that may not be fatal, but can go undetected and express itself along a spectrum of symptoms and if not fatal, can leave long lasting disability. Even if herd immunity is built up over the years and a vaccine found, that doesn’t alter the current moment with its insistence that we engage with it as a question of how we conduct ourselves in relation to others, even to ourselves.