Pondering on Pandemics

As the coronavirus spreads across the planet at ferocious speed, we are reminded once again of an uncomfortable truth that most of us prefer to ignore - the human species is intricately and inescapably tied to the biological domain of the planet. The fact that we were somehow able to wrench ourselves out of the food chain and no longer be lion food, was a defining moment of victory for the species indeed. However, over time this existential accolade also seemed to propagate the idea that we had managed to escape nature altogether. While we can celebrate that we have built shelters to protect ourselves from the forces of nature, devised agricultural methods to produce food throughout the year, created medicines and treatments to live longer than ever before, the truth still remains that in the face of hurricanes, famines and pandemics, we are as helpless as we always were to the whims of nature.

It takes such extreme reminders from nature in the form of existential spankings, for the human species to come to terms with this fact. This is scarcely a surprise give that our relationship with nature is decidedly amnesiac. Our cultural vocabulary lacks any terminologies for the reverence of nature, let alone its recognition as a being. And so, our relationship with the planet is not even a transactional one. Modern human societies identify with nature predominantly as a bounty of resources for endless exploitation, a one-sided, take-it-all relationship. The view of nature solely as property, to be owned and controlled and manipulated to meet our material desires, has a long history in Western religion and philosophy. The vernacular that propagates this perspective is deeply imbedded into our economics and polity, so much so that it has become invisible to us completely. Therefore, when a Bolsonaro or a Trump look at the burning Amazon rainforest and only see “economic opportunity”, they are not acting as anomalies or outliers. They are being the personification of the core tenets that make up modern Western society. 

Photo Credit: Anna Jos

The fact that Western models are still considered the only viable models for a vision of a future global society, says more about our lack of imagination than about them being the best choice. Clearly they are not sustainable, and their inherent imbalance with nature means that nature will eventually do away with them, and with us who propagate them. As it appears now, Mother Nature is toying with us. She is in the process of deciding whether we are her greatest experiment with intelligence, or the deadliest parasite that she has ever hosted. And upon reaching a timely conclusion, she will decide our fate as a species. This possibility may seem irksome. But it is worth remembering, nature might be a “Mother”, but that does not in any way imply that she is “nice”. Nature is amoral, with no sense of good or evil, no bias between life or death. Both states of being, the light and the dark, are equally potent sides of the natural balance. Therefore, while the image of a Mother Nature that toys with our very existence may seem heartless, it is the essence of the true nature of this living planet.

The verdict is yet to come in, but it seems like Gaia is testing all possibilities. Will it be a slow descent into dystopia through climate change and ecological collapse, or a quick eradication by some flesh eating super virus? Because, be it global warming or pandemics, these are not existential threats to the planet, but are to us as a species. Nature is resilient and robust, capable of self healing over a cosmic timescale. In comparison, we are a fragile species that has miraculously managed to exist and multiply, somehow untouched by nature till now. If we prove to become too much of a burden to the overall biosphere, nature will "naturally" find ways to eradicate us. If by doing so, it means destroying 90% of the biological life on the planet, then so be it! As long as it is not 100%, nature still survives, rejuvenates and thrives into the future, remodeled, refashioned and redesigned.

Ultimately, the threat of a viral pandemic with the potential to eradicate humanity, is no different in its results than a slow ecological collapse. Both are made possible by where we stand as a species in relation to nature. It is therefore no coincidence that as a species of more than 7 billion people spread across the world, who are interconnected through trade and travel, who have been steadily developing antibiotic resistance due to overuse in the last century, we are sweetly poised for a viral infection that begin as a local phenomenon, to quickly escalate to a global crisis. Coronavirus might not be the one that bring ultimate demise, but it has exposed the pathways any future super-virus can take to spread across the planet. This level of vulnerability to a pandemic is a direct result of the type of socio-economic system that we have chosen to create. 

But that is not to say that any one person is to blame. An individual human lifetime is but a blip on the cosmic timescale. No single person can be truly held responsible for such giant movements of our species. Where we stand now is the inevitable result of our severing the connection with nature, but not by any singular person. What initially began as a climatological imperative, with the slow rise of agriculture and the advent of the concept of ‘private property’, quickly turned to the exploitation of nature. The process supercharged after the European Renaissance by the emergence of rationalism and modern science, as we distanced ourselves further from nature, but managed to build a bunch of nifty gadgets, toys, weapons, spaceships along the way to occupy our egos, to remain lost in complete identification with the material world. Meanwhile, the part of us that came from the womb of mother nature herself, the part that held the spiritual content of our beings, became alien to ourselves. And now, as we stand at the edge of tomorrow, faced with the realization that nature was never ours to own, that it will wipe us out if it requires, one must wonder if there is time to reconsider and make amends. Could we somehow rekindle our connection to Gaia and start speaking to her to reach an understanding? Because, while our path until now cannot be blamed on any single person in the past, the choice to look away now knowing what we know, is not a blameless act.