Losing humanity

Reading the news these days has become such a bleak endeavor that I have started to just scan them in a (possibly useless) attempt to limit my sense of despair. The headlines are enough to keep me appraised of what is actually going on without forcing me to dig too deep or read too long into how, why, when and where things are happening. There is no doubt that, for the last 20 months we have been undergoing a substantial societal and cultural change, most of which is, surprisingly self inflicted: for the huge majority of people COVID either a second-hand experience that we have learnt from a friend of a friend or, at its closest, just a flu of varying degrees of severity. This does not intend to deny that many people have died from COVID, but so have they from traffic accidents, malaria or cancer, and in much bigger numbers.

In fact, the most severe effects of the pandemic so far have been caused by the mitigation measures and not by the disease itself. It is clear that, in the early months of 2020 a disproportionately high number of nurses and doctors died as a direct consequence of treating the sick with whatever sparse information was available at the time, but all the economic recession and the associated increase in poverty, the spike in home-office and the corresponding gentrification of many small cities, and many other effects in the society have been induced by the lock-downs that were considered necessary to contain the bug. Even the current divisiveness around the vaccine recommendations or mandates are not between victims and non-victims, just the result of different political views.

Photo: Traveller_40

It was probably not there from the actual beginning of the blog, but my philosophical impulse to reflect and comment on the reality, the human nature and the events that happen around me showed is head quite soon and in the meantime I have never shied away from a quiet consideration or a deep thought even if I was not in my top game at the moment. I read somewhere (and it could be related to the UNESCO philosophy day almost one year ago almost to the date) the philosophy is perhaps even more important in the times of crisis not because the practical solutions that it can provide or the patients that it can cure, but because of the pause and distance that it can provide to try to analyze the situation with a pinch of critical thought and thus avoid rush and unjustified responses. But it seems to me that many people did not get the message, and instead are launching themselves into factional disputes fed purely on ideology and sectarianism, devoid of argumentation or empathy of any kind, a true loss of humanity and a fall back to the proverbial jungle from which we once came.

As a precondition for unbiased analysis I try to listen a bit from everyone, even if they seem to speak from a very remote conceptual or ideological framework. Although it is to some extent unavoidable to believe that our own mindset is "better" than anybody else's (that is why we adopt it) it would be plain and simple hubris to discount someone's views without even hearing them out, so that is the norm that normally drives me. A few days ago,  Karen forwarded me this video by Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and, in spite of his declared conservative views, I could only agree with his diagnostic of the terrible situation that we are undergoing as a species. I do not share in his religious views (I was raised catholic but veered into secular humanism many, many years ago) but I definitely agree that the partisan rhetoric and the rise in populism are not only destroying critical thinking, with the unavoidable advance of absurdity, but are also undermining some of the roots of what is to be human, in particular the communication and the ability to feel empathy for one another.

One of my favorite activities in the summer is swimming in the pool, in particular diving long stretches on a single breath: feeling my lungs burn when I am almost in reach of the end of the pool is, at the same time, alarming and thrilling. However, this pandemic is starting to burn my lungs too much. I have been holding my breath for almost two years now and it is not yet clear when we will be able to return to a life that is somewhat normal and stays like that for a reasonable period. There have been a couple of brief respites, but only to see the numbers climb up again, lifting the despair along the way. My greatest fear is that we might lose the rest of our humanity before we get out of the tunnel, perhaps not everyone, but enough of us to make life in this society unlivable. I hope time will prove me wrong. Have a nice week.