Nothing to lose? Other voices in the corona crisis

Many people, part of myself included, seem to see the current crisis as a loss of normality. That makes sense, because a lot of processes just came to a halt. But what if you didn’t feel at home in the world as it used to be some months ago? What if you felt like you didn’t belong or wouldn’t get anywhere in that world? If you felt guilty, day in day out, for not getting done what you ought to get done, you now wake up in a world in which hardly anyone gets anything done. The “new normal” that lockdowns create, then, might be a rather comforting kind of normal, at least more comforting than the old competitive world that we had to leave behind for the time being. – Writing my “search for a conversation”, I focused on the current situation as a disconnection from the recent past. Since then, I had a number of conversations that made me see quite a different perspective: The uncertainties and losses we partly experience might actually make us more equal, such that at least some aspects of the current situation might create more familiarity with one another than the former status quo. In what follows, I still don’t have much to say myself, rather I’d just like to give voice to this idea – an idea that I began to see thanks to the conversations I had so far.

Before I get into details, let me be clear about one thing: There is no cynicism or disregard for the current suffering. Quite the contrary. We need to distinguish between two facts: On the one hand, there is the spread of the virus and the disease it causes. On the other hand, there are our social responses and their impact on our lives. By “social responses” I mean measures such as the stay-at-home policy, the prohibition of public gatherings and events etc. In order to appreciate the perspective I’m trying to describe, it might help to imagine that the social responses were put in place independently of any threats to our health. So when I say that the crisis might be comforting for people, I mean that the social measures themselves (and not the disease) can afford comfort.

But how, you might ask, how does being locked up (more or less) afford comfort? The social measures have a number of effects. In my last post, I suggested they disconnect me from my recent past and all the norms that guided me. Of course, this might be disorienting. But think again! What if many of these norms are not helpful or even harmful? Take the general competition within various job markets. Now we’re asked to support each other rather than compete. Is that a bad thing? Take the priorities of academia. Is it so bad that we cannot churn out paper after paper, host workshop after workshop right now? Take the effects on the environment. Isn’t it a good thing that we can swiftly adapt to acting in accordance with measures that will play into ameliorating climate change?

If we focus on certain social, psychological and environmental effects, we can quickly see that there is a lot to be said in favour of our response to the crisis. But still, you might say, it is hard to let go of cherished conventions that guided our interactions. Isn’t it worth keeping them? The disconnection from our recent past might feel like a loss. But again, what if you didn’t feel at home in these conventions? What if you think that much of your life looks like a failure or non-normal in the light of the status quo we had to abandon? There will be way more interesting examples, but I guess that my own experience helps me in taking this perspective. Before I got a permanent job at Groningen in 2012, it became increasingly likely that I would end up with, well, not much. Remembering how it felt to live through various existential worries allows me to imagine myself in quite a different state. Unemployed, ignored, full of on-going self-doubts, would I have thought that I am losing much by the social distancing measures? Or would I perhaps have thought that everyone is now a bit more on the same page as I am?

I don’t know. But Jon, a reader of my last blog post, fleshed out pertinent thoughts about our response to the crisis in some detail. He kindly gave permission to quote his message to me:

After a short burst of anxiety I realised that for me life continues much the same. I’ve been probably unhappy and somewhat anxious for the last year and a half. Why? There was no obvious reason, but a sense of foreboding, that one was not prepared for some thing, that a house could likely never be owned, that I was too ordinary for my growing children to want to spend time with me as they got older, and that I was shaping up to be a net taker, rather than a giver. Confronted with a global event like this is in many ways is a relief, I think once a cancer patient knows what they have is terminal, what really is there to fear outside of the illness.? So, this has happened and it is what I’ve always feared, yet it is hardly that unpleasant. If one can keep ones home and have enough food, it is potentially entirely satisfying. Better still, to be free of the conflict a person can have when immersed in the guilt, the kind of guilt that tells us we should be working when we are not, we should be outside when we are in, we should be engaged in some activity that is full filling when really we can’t be bothered. I find this pandemic peaceful and an opportunity to gaze into the hearth of life, free of self criticism. I enjoy the small things I’ve not seen in people before, both good and bad, and shopping is a surprisingly pleasant experience where people are cordial and aware of you, in the supermarket itself there is space to move and a quiet, calm. On the farm where I live, the M25 that drones as if an ocean is just past the tree line, is quiet now. The ancient farmland seems to be remembering itself, walking around it in the evening it is once more in the depth of the countryside and not a faux village as it is in the modern era. I will miss this when it is over. While the pandemic itself is ruinous to a small number of people for the vast numbers of younger, healthier population, this is far safer an environment that the risks taken driving to work. It is astonishing to me the level of reaction, it is one we can not repeat, there will not be another time in which any sane government will consider suspending all economic activity for everyone on full pay – and on a global scale too! It is an extraordinary experience. I’ve been thinking the virus could be the narrative vehicle in a Pinter drama, the virus itself is relatively harmless, but the story is far more about a collection of disparate personalities confined in a small space. I tell people to savour these times, because scary or not it will be an unforgettable chapter in our lives and we will mourn it when it is over.

Jon’s account brings out aspects and possibilities that I wasn’t aware of when beginning to think about this situation. Taking them into account, I realise what an enormous privilege it is to think of the time before as something lost. Yes, I lived to some degree in accordance with the status quo, I was and still am a beneficiary of the system that is now under threat. But as I noted earlier, I see my alignment with this status quo as a then lucky accident. Things could have gone differently, quite differently. And then it would have been likely that I would have felt largely out of touch with what happened to become, to some degree, a sort of normality for me.

But whichever perspective is more in line with your biography, no matter whether you feel more at home in the abandoned status quo or the interim that we’re living in now, all of us have to face the time after, the time after “suspending all economic activity”. As Eric Schliesser points out today in a rather dark piece, we’ll likely find ourselves in “political turmoil”. As I see it, we might be facing a kind of post-war situation without having had a war. Economically speaking, things look pretty worrisome already. Socially and politically speaking, I fear we’ll be confronted with various myths that are already in the making. It remains to be seen which of these two perspectives will be a better preparation for the time to come. In any case, I find it vital to learn as much as possible about our various takes and hopes generated by the crisis, and look forward to many more exchanges.