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Koronacija – krunidba

May 23, 2020 by Charles Eisenstein

May 2020
Prijevod prema: Djurdjica Ercegovac. Postoji engleska verzija ovog eseja.


Godinama je normalnost bila rastezana skoro do točke pucanja, uže zatezano sve čvršće i čvršće, čekajući kljucaj crnog labuda da ga raskine na dvoje. Sada kada je uže puklo, hoćemo li opet svezati zajedno njegove krajeve ili ćemo do kraja rasplesti raskinute niti da vidimo što bismo od njih mogli istkati?

Covid-19 nam pokazuje da kada je čovječanstvo ujedinjeno zajedničkim ciljem, moguća je fenomenalno brza promjena. Nijedan od svjetskih problema nije tehnički teško riješiti; oni potječu od ljudske nesloge. U usklađenosti, ljudske kreativne moći su neograničene. Prije nekoliko mjeseci prijedlog za zaustavljanje komercijalnih avionskih letova izgledao bi protivan zdravom razumu. Slično je sa radikalnim promjenama koje uvodimo u naše socijalno ponašanje, ekonomiju i ulogu vlade u našim životima. Covid demonstrira moć naše kolektivne volje kada se slažemo u nečemu što je važno. Što bismo još mogli postići usklađeni? Što želimo postići i kakav svijet ćemo stvoriti? To je uvijek sljedeće pitanje kada netko postane svjestan svoje moći.

Covid-19 je poput rehabilitacijske intervencije koja ruši ovisničko uporište normalnosti. Prekinuti naviku znači učiniti je vidljivom; pretvoriti je iz prinude u izbor. Kada kriza popusti možda ćemo imati priliku zapitati želimo li se vratiti normalnom ili možda postoji nešto što smo vidjeli tijekom ovog prekida rutine, a što želimo ponijeti u budućnost. Nakon što su toliki izgubili posao, mogli bismo upitati, jesu li to sve poslovi koje svijet najviše treba ili bi naš trud i kreativnost bili korisniji negdje drugdje. Mogli bismo upitati, nakon što smo bili bez toga neko vrijeme, da li nam je zaista potrebno toliko zračnih putovanja, praznika u Disneyworldu ili izložbenih sajmova. Koje dijelove ekonomije ćemo željeti obnoviti, a koje dijelove ćemo možda odlučiti napustiti? Covid je prekinuo nešto što je izgledalo poput vojne operacije promjene režima u Venezueli  – možda su imperijalistički ratovi također jedna od onih stvari koje bismo se mogli odreći u budućnosti globalne suradnje. A, u tamnijem tonu, koje ćemo od stvari koje su nam ovoga časa oduzete – građanske slobode, sloboda okupljanja, suverenitet nad našim tijelima, fizičko sastajanje, zagrljaji, rukovanja i javni život – možda moći vratiti samo svjesnim ulaganjem napora političke i osobne volje.

Veći dio svog života imao sam osjećaj da se čovječanstvo približava raskršću. Uvijek je kriza, kolaps, slom bio neminovan, baš iza ugla, ali nije dolazio i nije dolazio. Zamislite da hodate putom i vidite ga ispred sebe, vidite raskršće. Tamo je preko brda, iza zavoja, poslije šume. Popevši se na vrh brda vidite da ste pogriješili, bio je to privid, dalje je no što ste mislili. Nastavljate hodati. Katkad vam se ukaže, katkad nestane iz vida i izgleda kao se taj put nastavlja zauvijek. Možda nema raskršća. Ne, eno ga opet! Uvijek je nadomak. Nikada nije ovdje.

I onda, odjednom, skrenemo iza zavoja i tu je. Stanemo, jedva u stanju vjerovati da se to sada događa, jedva u stanju vjerovati, nakon što smo godinama bili osuđeni slijediti put naših prethodnika, da sada konačno imamo mogućnost izbora. Dobro je da zastanemo zapanjeni pred novošću naše situacije. Od stotinu staza koje se pružaju pred nama, neke vode u istom smjeru kojim smo već bili krenuli. Neke vode u pakao na zemlji. A neke vode u svijet zdraviji i ljepši no što smo se ikada usuđivali vjerovati da je moguće.

Pišem ove riječi s namjerom da zastanem ovdje s vama – zbunjen, uplašen možda, ali ipak, s osjećajem postojanja nove mogućnosti – u ovoj točki u kojoj se staze granaju. Zavirimo pobliže duž nekih od njih i pogledajmo kuda vode.

* * *

Ovu priču sam čuo od svoje prijateljice prošli tjedan. Bila je u dućanu i vidjela ženu kako jeca između polica. Kršeći pravila socijalnog distanciranja, prišla je ženi i zagrlila ju. “Hvala vam,” rekla je žena, “ovo je prvi puta nakon deset dana da me netko zagrlio.”

Provesti par tjedana bez zagrljaja čini se mala cijena za zaustavljanje epidemije koja bi mogla odnijeti milijune života. Inicijalno je argument za socijalno distanciranje bio taj da će to spasiti milijune života sprječavajući preopterećenje zdravstvenog sustava naglim porastom slučajeva Covida. Sada nam vlasti govore da će određena socijalna distanca možda biti potrebna i nadalje, barem dok se ne pronađe učinkovito cjepivo. Želio bih taj argument staviti u širi kontekst, pogotovo kada gledamo dugoročno. Kako ne bismo institucionalizirali distanciranje i rekonstruirali društvo u tom smislu, budimo svjesni što odabiremo i zašto.

Isto vrijedi i za druge promjene koje se događaju u vezi epidemije korona virusa. Neki komentatori su primijetili kako se to uredno uklapa u agendu totalitarne kontrole. Uplašena javnost prihvaća ograničenja građanskih sloboda koja bi inače bilo teško opravdati, poput stalnog praćenja kretanja svih građana, prisilnog medicinskog liječenja, nedobrovoljne karantene, restrikcije putovanja i slobode okupljanja, cenzuriranja onoga što vlast smatra dezinformacijom, suspenzije habeas corpus (načela zakonitosti) i vojnog nadzora nad civilima. Mnoge od ovih stvari bile su u začetku već i prije Covida-19; od njegove pojave postale su nezadržive. Isto vrijedi za automatizaciju trgovine; prijelaz sa sudjelovanja u sportu i zabavi na udaljeno gledanje; migraciju života iz javnih u privatne  prostore; tranziciju od mjesnih škola prema online nastavi, propadanje malih firmi, opadanje broja lokalnih dućana i seljenje ljudskog rada i dokolice na ekrane. Covid -19 ubrzava već postojeće trendove, političke, ekonomske i društvene.

Dok je sve gore navedeno kratkoročno opravdano u ime izravnavanja krivulje (epidemiološka krivulja rasta), mnogo slušamo i o “novom normalnom”; što će reći, promjene uopće ne moraju biti privremene. Budući da prijetnja zarazne bolesti, kao i prijetnja terorizma, nikada ne prolazi, mjere kontrole lako mogu postati stalne. Ako bismo ipak išli u tom smjeru, postojeće opravdanje mora biti dio dubljeg impulsa. Analizirat ću taj impuls u dva dijela: refleks kontrole i rat protiv smrti. Kada se to razumije, pojavljuje se nova početna mogućnost, ona koju već sada vidimo u obliku solidarnosti, suosjećanja i skrbi inspirirane Covidom-19.

Refleks kontrole

Krajem travnja službene statistike govore da je oko 25.000 ljudi umrlo od Covida-19. Tijekom trajanja epidemije smrtnost bi mogla biti deset puta ili stotinu puta veća. Svaki pojedini od tih ljudi ima svoje voljene, obitelj i prijatelje. Suosjećanje i savjest pozivaju nas da učinimo ono što možemo kako bismo spriječili nepotrebnu tragediju. Za mene to ima osobno značenje: moja vlastita, beskonačno draga, ali krhka, majka je među onima najpodložnijima toj bolesti koja ubija uglavnom starije i bolesne.

Koje će biti konačne brojke? Nemoguće je odgovoriti na to pitanje u trenutku dok ovo pišem. Prvi izvještaji su bili alarmantni; tjednima je službena brojka iz Wuhana, koja je beskonačno cirkulirala medijima, iznosila šokantnih 3,4%. To je, zajedno s visokom stopom širenja zaraze, ukazivalo na desetine milijuna smrti diljem svijeta, čak i do 100 milijuna. Nedavno su procjene naglo pale jer je postalo jasno da je većina slučajeva blaga ili asimptomatična. Budući da je testiranje bilo usmjereno na one ozbiljno bolesne, stopa smrtnosti izgledala je neprirodno visoka. Nedavno objavljen članak u časopisu Science tvrdi da je 86% infekcija nije bilo evidentirano što ukazuje na mnogo nižu stopu smrtnosti od one koja se trenutno prikazuje. Jedan noviji članak ide i dalje procjenjujući da je ukupni broj zaraženih u SAD-u čak stotinu puta veći od broja potvrđenih slučajeva (što bi značilo da je smrtnost manja od 0,1%). Ti članci sadrže mnogo kompliciranih epidemioloških nagađanja, no jedno sasvim novo istraživanje  u kojem se koristi test na antitijela, ustanovilo je da je broj slučajeva u Santa Clari, u Kaliforniji bio do 50-85 puta veći no što je evidentirano.

Priča o kruzeru Diamond Princess  potkrepljuje taj stav. Od 3.711 ljudi na brodu, oko 20% je imalo pozitivni rezultat testiranja na virus; manje od polovice njih je imalo simptome, a osmero ih je umrlo. Kruzer je idealno okruženje za zarazu i bilo je dovoljno vremena da se virus raširi među putnicima na brodu prije no što je itko išta poduzeo u vezi toga, no samo ih je petina bilo zaraženo. Štoviše, populacija kruzera je bila u velikoj većini (kao i na svim kruzerima)   starija: skoro trećina putnika bila je starija od 70, a više od polovine bilo je preko 60. Na temelju velikog broja asimptomatskih slučajeva istraživački tim je zaključio da je stvarna stopa smrtnosti u Kini oko 0,5%; noviji podaci (vidi gore) ukazuju na brojku bližu 0,2%. To je još uvijek dva do pet puta više od gripe. Na temelju toga (i uzevši u obzir mlađu demografsku strukturu u Africi i i Južnoj i Jugoistočnoj Aziji) moja je procjena oko 200.000 smrti u SAD-u i 2 milijuna globalno. To su ozbiljne brojke, usporedive s pandemijom hongkongške gripe 1968/69.

Mediji svaki dan izvještavaju o ukupnom broju slučajeva Covid-19, ali nitko nema pojma koji je točan broj jer je testiran samo vrlo mali postotak populacije. Da desetine milijuna imaju virus, asimptomatično, ne bismo to znali. Ono što još više komplicira stvar je da bi podatak o broju umrlih od Covida-19 mogao biti preuveličan (u mnogim bolnicama, ako netko umre sa Covidom-19 evidentira se kao da je umro od Covida-19) ili umanjen (neki su možda umrli kod kuće). Da ponovim: nitko ne zna što se stvarno događa, uključujući mene. Budimo svjesni dviju proturječnih tendencija u ljudskom svijetu. Prva je sklonost histerije da se hrani sama sobom, da ignorira podatke koji se ne uklapaju u strah i da stvara svijet na svoju sliku. Druga je poricanje, iracionalno odbijanje informacija koje bi mogle narušiti normalnost i lagodnost. Kao što pita Daniel Schmachtenberger: kako znate da je istina ono u što vjerujete?

Kognitivne pristranosti poput ovih posebno su otrovne u atmosferi političke polarizacije; na primjer, liberali će biti skloni odbaciti svaku informaciju koja bi mogla biti utkana u narativ u korist Trumpa, dok će je konzervativci rado prihvatiti.

Usprkos nesigurnosti, volio bih iznijeti svoje predviđanje: kriza će se okončati tako da to nećemo nikada znati. Ako konačni broj mrtvih, koji će sam po sebi biti diskutabilan, bude manji od onog kojeg se pribojavamo, neki će reći da je to zato jer su mjere kontrole funkcionirale. Drugi će reći da je to zato jer bolest nije bila tako opasna kako nam je bilo rečeno.

Mene najviše zbunjuje zagonetka zašto, u vrijeme dok ovo pišem, izgleda da nema novih slučajeva u Kini. Vlada nije uvodila ograničenje kretanja dugo nakon što je virus ustanovljen. On se morao jako proširiti za vrijeme kineske Nove godine, kada je, unatoč nekim ograničenjima putovanja, svaki avion, vlak i autobus dupkom pun ljudi koji putuju po cijeloj zemlji. Što se tu događa? Ponavljam, ja ne znam, ali ne znate ni vi.

Koji god bio konačni smrtni danak, pogledajmo neke druge brojke kako bismo dobili širu perspektivu. Moj stav NIJE da Covid nije tako opasan i da ne bismo trebali ništa poduzimati. Budite strpljivi da objasnim. Od 2013. godine, prema podacima organizacije FAO, pet milijuna djece diljem svijeta umire od gladi svake godine; 2018. godine bilo 159 milijuna pothranjene djece i 51 milijun djece sa smanjenom težinom. (Glad se smanjivala do nedavno, ali ponovo počinje rasti u zadnje tri godine.). Pet milijuna je mnogo puta više ljudi no što ih je dosad umrlo od Covida-19, pa ipak niti jedna vlada nije proglasila izvanredno stanje ili tražila da radikalno mijenjamo svoj način života kako bismo ih spasili. Također ne vidimo usporedivu razinu uzbune i djelovanja u vezi samoubojstva – tek vršak ledene sante očaja i depresije – koje globalno ubija preko milijun ljudi godišnje i 50.000 u SAD-u. Ili predoziranja drogom koje ubija 70.000 u SAD-u, epidemije autoimunih bolesti koja pogađa 23,5 milijuna (NIH podatak) do 50 milijuna (AARDA), ili pretilosti koja pogađa puno više od 100 milijuna. Zašto, s tim u vezi, mahnito ne nastojimo otkloniti nuklearni armagedon ili ekološku propast, već naprotiv, ustrajemo na odlukama koje uvećavaju te opasnosti?

Molim vas, poanta ovdje nije da zato što nismo promijenili način života kako djeca ne bi umirala od gladi, ne bismo ga trebali mijenjati ni zbog Covida. Naprotiv: Ako se možemo tako radikalno promijeniti zbog Covida-19, mogli bismo to i zbog ovih drugih prilika. Hajde da upitamo zašto smo u stanju združiti svoju kolektivnu volju kako bismo zaustavili taj virus, a nismo u stanju  baviti se drugim ozbiljnim prijetnjama čovječanstvu. Zašto je sve do sada društvo bilo tako zamrznuto na svojoj postojećoj putanji?

Odgovor otkriva mnogo. Jednostavno, suočeni s gladi u svijetu, ovisnosti, autoimunim bolestima, samoubojstvom ili ekološkim kolapsom, mi kao društvo ne znamo što činiti. To je zato jer ne postoji ništa vanjsko protiv čega bismo se borili. Naši ad hoc odgovori na krizu, koji su svi neka verzija kontrole, nisu jako učinkoviti kad se radi o tim situacijama. I sada dolazi zarazna epidemija i mi se konačno možemo baciti u akciju. To je kriza za koju kontrola funkcionira: karantene, ograničenja kretanja, izolacija, pranje ruku; kontrola kretanja, kontrola informacija, kontrola naših tijela. To Covid čini prikladnim spremnikom za naše kaotične strahove, mjesto za kanaliziranje našeg rastućeg osjećaja bespomoćnosti u suočavanju s promjenama koje su zadesile svijet. Covid-19 je prijetnja s kojom znamo kako se suočiti. Za razliku od tako mnogo naših drugih strahova, Covid-19 nudi plan.

Institucije koje je ustanovila naša civilizacija sve su više bespomoćne u suočavanju s izazovima našeg vremena. Kako samo dobrodošlicom dočekuju izazov s kojim se konačno mogu suočiti. Kako su revni prigrliti ga kao vrhovnu krizu. Kako prirodno njihovi sustavi upravljanja informacijama odabiru najalarmantnije prikaze toga. Kako se spremno javnost pridružuje panici, prihvaćajući prijetnju s kojom se vlasti mogu nositi kao zamjenu za razne neizrecive prijetnje s kojima ne mogu.

Danas većina izazova pred nama više ne podliježe sili. Naši antibiotici i kirurgija ne uspijevaju riješiti rastuću zdravstvenu krizu zbog autoimunosti, ovisnosti i pretilosti. Naše oružje i bombe, napravljene da poraze armije, beskorisne su u brisanju mržnje vanjskog svijeta ili uklanjanju kućnog nasilja iz naših domova. Naša policija i zatvori ne mogu izliječiti uvjete za razvoj kriminala. Naši pesticidi ne mogu obnoviti uništeno tlo. Covid-19 priziva dobra stara vremena kada su opasnosti zaraznih bolesti uzmicale pred modernom medicinom i higijenom, istovremeno kada su nacisti uzmakli pred ratnom mašinom, a sama priroda podlegla, ili je tako izgledalo, tehnološkom osvajanju i poboljšavanju. To priziva dane kada je naše oružje funkcioniralo, a svijet je naizgled zaista bio sve bolji sa svakom novom tehnologijom kontrole.

Koja to vrsta problema podliježe dominaciji i kontroli? Ona vrsta uzrokovana nečim izvana, nečim Drugim. Kada je uzrok problema nešto nama intimno blisko, kao beskućništvo ili nejednakost, ovisnost ili pretilost, nemamo protiv čega ratovati. Mogli bismo pokušati instalirati nekog neprijatelja, okrivljavajući, na primjer, milijardere, Vladimira Putina ili Vraga, ali tada nam nedostaje ključna informacija, prije svega, koji su to terenski uvjeti koji omogućuju milijarderima (ili virusima) da se repliciraju.

Ako postoji jedna stvar u kojoj je naša civilizacija vješta, to je borba protiv neprijatelja. Mi pozdravljamo priliku da činimo ono u čemu smo vješti, ono što dokazuje valjanost naših tehnologija, sustava i svjetonazora. I tako proizvodimo neprijatelje, probleme poput kriminala, terorizma i bolesti oblikujemo u sukob mi-protiv-njih i mobiliziramo našu kolektivnu energiju u pravcu poduhvata koja se mogu gledati na taj način. Stoga smo Covid-19 izdvojili kao poziv na oružje, reorganizirajući društvo kao za ratni pothvat, dok mogućnost nuklearne katastrofe, ekološke propasti i pet milijuna gladne djece tretiramo kao normalno.

Narativ urote        

Zbog toga što Covid-19 naizgled opravdava tako mnogo stvari na totalitarističkoj listi želja, postoje oni koji vjeruju da je to promišljena igra moći. Nije mi cilj promovirati tu teoriju niti je raskrinkati, no navest ću neke umjerene komentare. Prvo, kratki pregled.

Teorije (postoji mnogo varijanti) govore o skupu Event 201 (pod pokroviteljstvom Bill Gates Foundation, CIA-e itd. prošlog listopada) i ‘bijeloj knjizi’ fondacije Rockefeller Foundation 2010. godine, s detaljno razrađenim scenarijem pod nazivom “Lockstep” (Ukorak), gdje se u oba ova slučaja izlaže autoritarni odgovor na hipotetičnu pandemiju. Oni primjećuju da su infrastruktura, tehnologija i zakonski okvir za izvanredno stanje u pripremi već više godina. Sve što je potrebno, kažu oni, je nešto što će navesti javnost da to prihvati, a sada je došao taj čas. Neovisno o tome da li će trenutne kontrole ostati stalne, presedan je napravljen za:

  • stalno praćenje kretanja ljudi (zbog korona virusa)
  • ukidanje slobode okupljanja (zbog korona virusa)
  • vojni nadzor civila (zbog korona virusa)
  • vanzakonsko neograničeno trajanje pritvora (karantena, zbog korona virusa)
  • zabrana gotovine (zbog korona virusa)
  • cenzura Interneta (za sprečavanje dezinformacija, zbog korona virusa)
  • obavezno cijepljenje i drugi medicinski postupci, uspostavljajući vrhovnu vlast države nad našim tijelima (zbog korona virusa)
  • klasificiranje svih djelatnosti i destinacija u izričito dozvoljene i izričito zabranjene (možete izaći iz kuće zbog ovog, ali ne onog), eliminirajući sivu zonu izvan policijskog i zakonodavnog nadzora . Ova cjelina je sama srž totalitarizma, ipak trenutno nužna zbog, pa, korona virusa.

Ovo je sočan materijal za teorije urote. Koliko ja znam, neka od njih mogla bi biti istina; međutim, isti slijed događaja mogao se odigrati uslijed nesvjesnog sustavnog zakreta prema sve većoj kontroli. Odakle dolazi taj zakret? On je utkan u DNA civilizacije. Milenijima je civilizacija (za razliku od manjih tradicionalnih kultura) pod napretkom podrazumijevala proširenje kontrole na svijet; pripitomljavanje divljine, svladavanje barbara, gospodarenje prirodnim silama i uređivanje društva u skladu sa zakonom i razumom. Uspon kontrole ubrzao se Znanstvenom revolucijom koja je “napredak” lansirala u nove visine: svrstavanje stvarnosti u objektivne kategorije i količine i gospodarenje materijalnim svijetom uz pomoć tehnologije. Na koncu su i društvene znanosti obećale da će koristiti ista sredstva i metode kao bi zadovoljile ambiciju (koja seže unazad do Platona i Konfucija) izgradnje savršenog društva.

Oni koji upravljaju civilizacijom pozdravit će, stoga, svaku priliku da ojačaju svoju kontrolu jer, na koncu, to je u službi velike vizije ljudske sudbine: savršeno uređen svijet u kojem se može srediti da bolest, kriminal, siromaštvo i možda sama patnja više ne postoje. Nikakvi podli motivi nisu nužni. Naravno da bi oni voljeli svakoga pratiti – tim bolje za opće dobro. Za njih Covid-19 pokazuje koliko je to nužno. “Možemo li si dozvoliti demokratske slobode u svjetlu korona virusa?”, pitaju oni. “Ne bismo li sada morali, iz potrebe, žrtvovati ih zbog naše vlastite sigurnosti?” To je poznati refren koji je pratio i druge krize u prošlosti, poput 9/11.

Da preradimo uobičajenu metaforu, zamislite čovjeka s čekićem koji vreba naokolo tražeći razlog da ga upotrijebi. Odjednom ugleda čavao koji strši. Već odavno je on u potrazi za čavlom, zabijajući vijke i klinove, a svijet bi mogao biti bolji kad bi zabijao čavle. A tu je čavao! Mogli bismo možda posumnjati da je u svojoj revnosti sam tamo postavio taj čavao, no to nije nimalo važno. Možda to što strši uopće i nije čavao, već liči na čavao dovoljno da počnemo udarati. Kad je alat spreman, ukazat će se prilika da se upotrijebi.

A ja bih dodao, za one koji su skloni sumnjati u vlast, možda se ovaj puta zaista radi o čavlu. U tom slučaju, čekić je pravi alat – a princip čekića pojavit će se tim jače, spreman za vijak, dugme, kvačicu i suzu.

Na svaki način, problem s kojim smo ovdje suočeni mnogo je dublji od svrgavanja opake klike Iluminata. Čak i ako postoje, uz dano usmjerenje civilizacije, isti trend bi ustrajao i bez njih ili bi se pojavili novi Iluminati da preuzmu funkcije onih starih.

Bilo istina ili laž, ideja da je epidemija neka monstruozna urota počinjena od strane zlotvora na štetu građana, nije tako daleko od svjetonazora nađi-patogen. To je križarski mentalitet, mentalitet rata. Izvor sociopolitičke bolesti smješta se u patogen protiv kojeg se onda možemo boriti, agresora odvojenog od nas. Pritom postoji opasnost od ignoriranja prilika koje društvo pretvaraju u plodno tlo u kojem takva urota uspijeva. Da li je tlo zasijano namjerno ili vjetrom, za mene je sekundarno pitanje.

Ono što ću reći sljedeće relevantno je bez obzira na to da li je, ili nije, SARS-CoV2 genetski projektirano biološko oružje, povezano s uvođenjem 5G, iskorišteno da se spriječi “razotkrivanje”, Trojanski konj totalitarne svjetske vlade, smrtonosniji no što nam je bilo rečeno, manje smrtonosan no što nam je bilo rečeno, potekao iz bio-laboratorija u Wuhanu, potekao iz Fort Detricka ili je točno ono što nam govore CDC (Centar za kontrolu i prevenciju bolesti) i WHO (Svjetska zdravstvena organizacija). To vrijedi čak i ako su svi potpuno u krivu u vezi uloge SARS-CoV-2 virusa u sadašnjoj epidemiji. Ja imam svoja mišljenja, ali ako postoji jedna stvar koju sam naučio tijekom ove izvanredne situacije, to je da zapravo ne znam što se događa. Ne shvaćam kako to itko može znati usred uzavrele mješavine vijesti, lažnih vijesti, govorkanja, prikrivenih informacija, teorija zavjere, propagande i ispolitiziranih narativa koji pune Internet. Želio bih kad bi mnogo više ljudi prihvatilo ne-znanje. To govorim jednako onima koji prihvaćaju dominantni narativ, kao i onima koji oblikuju one disidentske. Kojim informacijama možda blokiramo pristup u cilju održavanja integriteta naših svjetonazora? Budimo ponizni u svojim vjerovanjima: to je pitanje života i smrti.

Rat protiv smrti

Moj sedmogodišnji sin dva tjedna nije vidio niti se igrao s drugim djetetom. Milijuni drugih su u istom čamcu. Mnogi će se složiti da je mjesec dana bez socijalne interakcije za svu tu djecu razumna žrtva za spas milijuna života. A što da se radi o spašavanju 100.000 života? I što ako žrtva ne traje mjesec, nego godinu dana? Pet godina? Različiti ljudi imali bi različite stavove o tome, u skladu sa svojim temeljnim vrijednostima.

Hajde da zamijenimo prethodna pitanja s nečim više osobnim, što proniče u nehumano utilitarističko razmišljanje koje ljude pretvara u statistike i neke od njih žrtvuje za nešto drugo. Za mene je relevantno pitanje, da li bih ja tražio od djece u našoj zemlji da se odreknu igre kroz jednu sezonu ako bi to umanjilo rizik moje majke od smrti, ili štoviše, moj osobni rizik? Ili bih mogao upitati, da li bih službeno zabranio grljenje i rukovanje, ako bi to spasilo moj vlastiti život? Pritom ne želim umanjivati vrijednost života svoje majke ili svog vlastitog, koji su oboje dragocjeni. Zahvalan sam za svaki dan koji je još s nama. Ali ta pitanja upozoravaju na duboke probleme. Koji je ispravan način življenja? Koji je ispravan način umiranja?

Odgovor na takva pitanja, bilo da su postavljena u vlastito ime ili u ime društva općenito, ovisi o tome kako se odnosimo prema smrti i koliko vrednujemo igru, dodir i zajedništvo, zajedno s građanskim slobodama i osobnom slobodom. Ne postoji jednostavna formula za balansiranje tih vrijednosti.

Tijekom svog života vidio sam kako društvo sve veći naglasak stavlja na sigurnost, zaštitu i smanjenje rizika. To je posebno utjecalo na djetinjstvo: kad sam bio dječak za nas je bilo normalno da bez nadzora lunjamo kilometar od kuće – ponašanje koje bi danas zaslužilo posjet Centra za zaštitu djece (Child Protective Services).  To se također manifestira u obliku korištenja latex rukavica u sve većem broju zanimanja; sredstava za dezinfekciju posvuda; zaključane, štićene i nadzirane školske zgrade; pojačane sigurnosne mjere na aerodromima i granicama; povećana svijest o zakonskoj odgovornosti i osiguranju od odgovornosti; detektori metala i pretresi na ulazu u mnoge sportske arene i javne zgrade i tako dalje. Očigledno je da to poprima oblik zaštitarske države.

Mantra “sigurnost na prvom mjestu” dolazi iz vrijednosnog sustava koji preživljavanje smatra vrhunskim prioritetom, a podcjenjuje druge vrijednosti poput zabave, pustolovine, igre i propitivanja granica. Druge kulture imaju drugačije prioritete. Na primjer, mnoge tradicionalne i indigene kulture mnogo se manje zaštitnički odnose prema djeci, kao što je Jean Liedloff dokumentirala u svom klasiku Koncept kontinuuma. Dozvoljavaju im rizike i odgovornosti koje bi za većinu modernih ljudi izgledale bezumne, vjerujući da je to nužno za razvoj samopouzdanja i ispravnog prosuđivanja kod djece. Ja mislim da su mnogi moderni ljudi, pogotovo mlađi ljudi, zadržali nešto od te inherentne spremnosti da žrtvuju sigurnost kako bi živjeli život u potpunosti. Međutim, kultura koja nas okružuje, neumorno nas navodi da živimo u strahu, istovremeno gradeći sustave koji utjelovljuju strah. Za njih je biti siguran od posvemašnje važnosti. Tako imamo medicinski sustav u kojem se većina odluka  zasniva na kalkulacijama rizika i u kojem je smrt najgori mogući ishod koji znači krajnji neuspjeh liječnika. No, cijelo to vrijeme mi znamo da nas smrt čeka bez obzira na sve. Spašeni život zapravo znači odgođenu smrt.

Vrhunsko ispunjenje civilizacijskog programa kontrole bio bi trijumf nad samom smrću. Neuspijevajući u tome, moderno društvo odlučilo se za faksimil tog trijumfa: negiranje umjesto pobjede. Naše društvo negira smrt, od toga da sakriva leševe, do fetiša mladosti, do skladištenja starih ljudi u staračke domove. Čak i opsesija novcem i vlasništvom – produžetak sebstva, kako sugerira riječ “moje” – izraz je zablude da nepostojano sebstvo može postati postojanim uz pomoć svojih dodataka. Sve je to neizbježno s obzirom na priču-o-sebstvu koju nudi modernost: odvojeni pojedinac u svijetu Drugog. Okruženo genetičkim, društvenim i ekonomskim konkurentima, to sebstvo mora štititi i dominirati kako bi se razvijalo. Mora činiti sve što može ne bi li spriječilo smrt koja (u priči o odvojenosti) predstavlja potpuno poništenje. Znanost biologije nas je čak učila da je u samoj našoj prirodi maksimiziranje vlastitih šansi za preživljavanje i reprodukciju.

Upitao sam prijateljicu, doktoricu medicine, koja je neko vrijeme provela u Q’ero – Centru za kulturu predaka Quechua Indijanaca u Peruu, da li bi oni (kad bi mogli) intubirali nekoga kako bi mu produljili život. “Naravno da ne,”, rekla je, “Pozvali bi šamana da mu pomogne da lijepo umre.” Lijepo umiranje (što nije nužno isto što i bezbolno umiranje) nije čest izraz u današnjem medicinskom vokabularu. Niti jedna bolnica ne evidentira da li je pacijent lijepo umro. To se ne bi računalo kao pozitivan ishod. U svijetu odvojenog sebstva smrt je krajnja katastrofa.

No, je li tako? Razmotrite perspektivu Dr. Lisse Rankin: “Ne bismo svi željeli biti u odjelu za intenzivnu njegu, izolirani od svojih voljenih, na aparatima koji dišu za nas, u opasnosti da umremo sami – čak ako to znači da bi vam mogli uvećati šanse za preživljavanje. Neki od nas bismo radije da nas drže ruke onih koje volimo kod kuće, čak i ako to znači da je došlo naše vrijeme … Upamtite smrt nije kraj. Smrt je povratak kući.”

Kada se sebstvo razumije kao relacijsko, međuovisno, čak i među-egzistencijalno, onda ono međusobno dijeli svoju krv s drugim. Shvativši sebstvo kao lokus svijesti u matrici odnosa, više ne tražimo neprijatelja kao ključ za razumijevanje svakog problema, već umjesto toga tražimo gdje je neravnoteža u odnosima. Rat protiv smrti uzmiče pred potragom za dobrim i  punim životom i tada vidimo da je strah od smrti zapravo strah od života. Koliko života ćemo se odreći da bismo ostali sigurni?

Totalitarizacija – perfekcija kontrole – neizbježan je konačni proizvod mitologije odvojenog sebstva. Što bi drugo nego prijetnja životu, poput rata, zasluživalo totalnu kontrolu? Tako je Orwell identificirao neprekidni rat kao ključnu komponentu vladavine Partije.

U svjetlu programa kontrole, negiranje smrti i odvojenog sebstva, pretpostavka da će interes javnosti težiti minimiziranju broja umrlih, gotovo da je neupitna, cilj kojemu su druge vrijednosti poput igre, slobode itd. podređene. Covid-19 pruža priliku za širenje tog stava. Da, smatrajmo život svetim, svetijim no ikada. To nas smrt uči. Svaku osobu, mladu ili staru, bolesnu ili zdravu, smatrajmo svetim dragocjenim, voljenim bićem što ona i jeste. A u krugu našeg srca napravimo mjesta također i za druge svete vrijednosti. Smatrati život svetim ne znači samo dugo živjeti, to znači živjeti dobro i ispravno i potpuno.

Kao i svi strahovi, strah od korona virusa daje naslutiti ono što bi moglo ležati ispod njega. Svatko tko je doživio smrt nekog bližnjeg zna da je smrt portal za ljubav. Covid-19 uzvisio je važnost smrti u svijesti društva koje ju negira. Na drugoj strani straha možemo vidjeti ljubav koju smrt oslobađa. Neka se izlije. Neka natopi tlo naše kulture i napuni podzemne spremnike tako da prodre kroz pukotine naših okorjelih institucija, naših sustava i naših navika. Neki od njih mogli bi možda također umrijeti.

U kakvom svijetu ćemo živjeti?

Koliko života želimo žrtvovati na oltaru sigurnosti? Ako to doprinosi našoj sigurnosti, želimo li  živjeti u svijetu gdje se ljudska bića nikada ne okupljaju? Želimo li cijelo vrijeme u javnosti nositi maske? Želimo li prolaziti medicinski pregled svaki puta kada putujemo, ako bi to spasilo nekoliko života godišnje? Želimo li prihvatiti medikalizaciju života općenito, prepuštajući konačni suverenitet nad našim tijelima medicinskim autoritetima (koje su odabrali oni politički)? Želimo li da svako događanje bude virtualno događanje? Koliko smo spremni živjeti u strahu?

Covid-19 će se na koncu povući, ali prijetnja zaraznih bolesti je trajna. Naša reakcija na nju određuje smjer za budućnost. Javni život, komunalni život, život zajedničke fizikalnosti smanjivali su se kroz nekoliko generacija. Umjesto kupovine u dućanima, mi imamo dostavu u kuću. Umjesto hrpe djece koja se igraju napolju, mi imamo dječje igraonice i digitalne avanture. Umjesto javnog trga, mi imamo online forum. Želimo li se i dalje još više izolirati jedni od drugih i od svijeta?

Nije teško zamisliti, pogotovo ako se socijalno distanciranje pokaže uspješnim, da Covid-19 potraje dulje 18 mjeseci koliko nam je rečeno da očekujemo da bude njegovo trajanje. Nije teško zamisliti da će se pojaviti novi virusi kroz to vrijeme. Nije teško zamisliti da će izvanredne mjere postati normalne (kako bi se spriječila mogućnost novog izbijanja epidemije), baš kao što je izvanredno stanje, proglašeno nakon 9/11, još i danas na snazi. Nije teško zamisliti da je (kao što nam je rečeno) reinfekcija moguća, tako da bolest nikada neće doći svome kraju. To znači da privremene promjene u našem načinu života mogu postati trajne.

Kako bismo reducirali rizik od sljedeće pandemije, hoćemo li odabrati da živimo u društvu bez zagrljaja, rukovanja i daj-pet, zauvijek? Hoćemo li odabrati da živimo u društvu u kojem nema više masovnih okupljanja? Hoće li koncerti, sportska natjecanja i festivali biti stvar prošlosti? A djeca se više neće igrati s drugom djecom? Hoće li se svi ljudski kontakti odvijati posredstvom kompjutora i maski? Nema više plesnih tečajeva, nema više karate treninga, nema više konferencija, nema više crkvi? Treba li reduciranje smrti biti standard za mjerenje napretka? Da li ljudsko napredovanje znači odvajanje? Je li to budućnost?

Isto pitanje odnosi se na administrativne alate nužne za kontrolu kretanja ljudi i protoka informacija. Dok ovo pišem, cijela zemlja se kreće prema blokadi. U nekim zemljama, za izlazak iz kuće potrebno je odštampati formular sa vladine web stranice. To me podsjeća na školu kada je lokacija učenika uvijek morala biti službeno odobrena. Ili na zatvor. Da li si predočavamo budućnost s elektroničkim iskaznicama, sustav gdje slobodom kretanja u svakom trenutku trajno upravlja državni administrator i njihov softver? Gdje se svaki pokret evidentira, bilo kao dozvoljen ili zabranjen? I gdje su, u cilju naše zaštite, informacije koje prijete našem zdravlju (o čemu, ponovo, odlučuju razni autoriteti) cenzurirane za naše vlastito dobro? Suočeni s izvanrednom situacijom, poput ratnog stanja, mi prihvaćamo takve restrikcije i privremeno se odričemo naših sloboda. Slično kao 9/11, Covid-19 potiskuje sve prigovore.

Po prvi put u povijesti postoje tehnološke mogućnosti za ostvarivanje takvih vizija, barem u razvijenom svijetu (na primjer, korištenje lokacije mobitela za nametanje socijalnog distanciranja; također pogledaj ovdje). Nakon grube tranzicije, mogli bismo živjeti u društvu gdje se gotovo sav život odvija online: kupovina, sastajanje, zabava, socijaliziranje, posao, čak i ljubavni sastanci. Je li to ono što želimo? Koliko spašenih života to vrijedi?

Siguran sam da će mnoge od kontrola koje su danas na snazi biti djelomično olabavljene za nekoliko mjeseci. Djelomično olabavljene, ali spremne. Sve dok zarazna bolest ostaje s nama postoji vjerojatnost njihovog ponovnog nametanja, iznova i iznova u budućnosti, ili mogu postati samo-nametnute u obliku navika. Kao što kaže Deborah Tannen, suradnica magazina Politico, u članku o tome kako će korona virus  trajno promijeniti svijet, “Mi sada znamo da dodirivanje stvari, bivanje s drugim ljudima i udisanje zraka u zatvorenom prostoru, može biti rizično … Mogla bi nam postati druga priroda da uzmičemo pred rukovanjem i dodirivanjem lica – a pranje ruku bi mogao postati opsesivno-kompulzivni poremećaj široko prisutan u društvu, poremećaj koji ćemo svi naslijediti jer nitko od nas ne može prestati prati ruke.” Nakon tisuća godina, milijuna godina dodira, kontakta i zajedništva, hoće li vrhunac ljudskog napretka biti da prestanemo s takvim aktivnostima zato jer su previše riskantne?

Život je zajednica

Paradoks programa kontrole je da njegov progres rijetko vodi bliže cilju. Unatoč sigurnosnim sustavima u gotovo svakom domu više srednje klase, ljudi nisu ništa manje zabrinuti i nesigurni nego što je bila prethodna generacija. Unatoč sofisticiranim mjerama zaštite, u školama se ne događa manje masovnih ubojstava. Unatoč fenomenalnom napretku medicinske tehnologije, ljudi su tijekom zadnjih trideset godina, ako išta, postali manje zdravi, kronične bolest su se umnožile i očekivani životni vijek stagnira, dok je u SAD-u i Britaniji počeo opadati.

Jednako tako, mjere koje su bile uvedene radi kontrole Covida-19 mogle bi na kraju uzrokovati više patnje i smrti no što ih sprečavaju. Minimizirati broj smrti znači minimizirati smrti koje znamo kako predvidjeti i mjeriti. Nemoguće je mjeriti dodatne smrti koje bi mogle biti uzrokovane depresijom induciranom izolacijom, na primjer, ili očajanjem zbog nezaposlenosti ili smanjenog imuniteta i urušavanja zdravlja koje može uzrokovati kronični strah. Pokazalo se da samoća i nedostatak socijalnog kontakta doprinosi upalama, depresiji i demenciji. Prema dr. Lissi Rankin, zagađenost zraka povećava rizik smrtnosti za 6%, pretilost za 23%, zloupotreba alkohola za 37%, a samoća za 45%.

Još jedna opasnost koja nije na popisu jeste opadanje imuniteta uzrokovano pretjeranom higijenom i distanciranjem. Nije samo socijalni kontakt nužan za zdravlje, nego također i kontakt sa svijetom mikroba. Općenito govoreći, mikrobi nisu naši neprijatelji, oni su naši saveznici u zdravlju. Raznovrsni crijevni biom koji sadrži bakterije, viruse, gljivice i druge organizme, ključan je za dobro funkcioniranje imunosnog sustava, a njegova raznovrsnost se održava putem kontakta s drugim ljudima i živim svijetom. Pretjerano pranje ruku, pretjerana upotreba antibiotika, aseptična čistoća i nedostatak ljudskog kontakta mogli bi učiniti više štete nego koristi. Posljedične alergije i autoimuni poremećaji mogli bi biti gori od zaraznih bolesti koje zamjenjuju. Socijalno i biološki, zdravlje dolazi od zajednice. Život ne cvjeta u izolaciji.

Promatranje svijeta u terminima mi-protiv-njih čini nas slijepima za činjenicu da se život i zdravlje događaju u zajednici. U slučaju zaraznih bolesti, na primjer, mi propuštamo pogledati dalje od zlog patogena i upitati, koja je uloga virusa u mikrobiomu? (Također vidi ovdje) Koji su tjelesni uvjeti u kojima se štetni virusi množe? Zašto neki ljudi imaju blage simptome,  a neki ozbiljne (ne uzimajući u obzir ono prijemčivo kvazi-objašnjenje o “niskoj rezistenciji”)? Koju pozitivnu ulogu mogu igrati hunjavice, prehlade i druge ne-smrtonosne bolesti u održavanju zdravlja?

Razmišljanje u stilu rat-protiv-mikroba donosi rezultate istovjetne onima u Ratu protiv terorizma, Ratu protiv kriminala, Ratu protiv droge i beskonačnim ratovima koje vodimo politički i među-osobno. Prvo, takav način razmišljanja generira beskonačni rat; drugo, skreće pažnju sa stvarnih prilika iz kojih se rađaju bolest, terorizam, kriminal, droga i ostalo.

Unatoč vječne tvrdnje političara da vode rat radi postizanja mira, rat neizbježno rađa još više rata. Bombardiranje zemalja radi ubijanja terorista ne samo da ignorira stvarne uzroke terorizma, već pogoršava te uzroke. Zatvaranje kriminalaca ne samo da ignorira uvjete koji rađaju kriminal, već te uvjete potiče razbijanjem obitelji i zajednice i asimilacijom zatvorenika u kriminal. A režimi antibiotika, cijepljenja, antivirusne terapije i drugi lijekovi uništavaju tjelesnu ekologiju koja je temelj snažnog imuniteta. Izvan tijela, opsežne kampanje prskanja sprejom inicirane Zika virusom, Denga groznicom i sada Covidom-19, nanijet će neizrecivu štetu ekologiji prirode. Da li je itko razmišljao koji će biti učinci na ekosustav kada ga zalijemo antivirusnim smjesama? Takve mjere (koje se provode na različitim mjestima i Kini i Indiji) zamislive su jedino iz svjetonazora odvojenosti koji ne razumije da su virusi integralni dio mreže života.

Da bismo razumjeli argument o baznim uvjetima, razmotrimo neke statistike o smrtnosti u Italiji (izvor National Health Institute), bazirane na analizi stotina smrtnih slučajeva uzrokovanih Covidom-19. Od ukupnog broja analiziranih manje od 1% nije patilo od ozbiljnih kroničnih bolesti. 75% je patilo od hipertenzije, 35% od dijabetesa, 33% od srčane ishemije, 24% od fibrilacije atrija, 18% od disfunkcije bubrega, uz druge bolesti koje nisam uspio odgonetnuti iz talijanskog izvještaja. Gotovo polovica preminulih imala je tri ili više tih ozbiljnih patologija. Amerikanci, ugroženi pretilošću, dijabetesom i drugim kroničnim boljkama, ranjivi su bar koliko i Talijani. Trebamo li onda okriviti virus (koji je ubio tek nekoliko inače zdravih ljudi) ili ćemo okriviti postojeće loše zdravlje? Ovdje također vrijedi analogija s napetim užetom. Zdravlje milijuna ljudi u modernom svijetu je nestabilno i dovoljno je nešto, što bi u normalnoj situaciji bilo trivijalno, da ga opasno naruši. Naravno, kroz neko kratkoročno razdoblje mi nastojimo spasiti njihove živote; opasnost je u tome da se gubimo u beskonačnom slijedu kratkoročnih razdoblja, boreći se protiv jedne zarazne bolesti za drugom, a nikada se ne baveći stvarnim prilikama koje su ljude učinile tako ranjivima. To je mnogo teži problem jer se stvarne prilike neće promijeniti borbom. Ne postoji patogen koji uzrokuje dijabetes ili pretilost, ovisnost, depresiju ili PTSP. Njihovi uzroci ne predstavljaju Drugog, nisu to neki virusi odvojeni od nas čije smo mi žrtve.

Čak i kod bolesti poput Covida-19, gdje možemo imenovati patogeni virus, stvari nisu tako jednostavne poput rata između virusa i žrtve. Postoji alternativa teoriji o mikrobima uzrokovanih bolesti koja drži da su mikrobi dio šireg procesa. Kada su uvjeti primjereni oni se množe u tijelu, ponekad ubijajući domaćina, ali također, potencijalno, popravljajući uvjete koji su im pogodovali na početku, na primjer, čišćenjem akumuliranog otrovnog otpada putem izlučivanja mukusa ili (govoreći metaforički) spaljujući ga povišenom tjelesnom temperaturom.  Ponekad nazivana “teorija terena”, ona kaže da su mikrobi prije simptomi, a ne uzrok bolesti. Kako to objašnjava jedna uzrečica: “Riba vam je bolesna. Teorija mikroba: izolirajte ribu. Teorija terena: očistite akvarij.”

Moderna kultura zdravlja pati od neke vrste šizofrenije. U jednu ruku, postoji rastući pokret wellnessa koji obuhvaća alternativnu i holističku medicinu. Taj pokret zagovara ljekovite biljke, meditaciju i jogu u cilju jačanja imuniteta. On vrednuje emocionalne i duhovne dimenzije zdravlja kao što su moć stavova i vjerovanja da uzrokuju bolest ili da iscjeljuju. Sve to kao da je nestalo pred tsunamijem Covida, vraćajući društvo na staro pravovjerje.

Konkretni slučaj: jedan akupunkturist u Kaliforniji bio je prisiljen zatvoriti ordinaciju klasificiranu kao “ne-nužna”. To je savršeno razumljivo iz perspektive konvencionalne virologije. No, kako je primijetio jedan akupunkturist na Facebooku, “Što će biti s mojim pacijentom s kojim radim na liječenju ovisnosti o opioidima koje je uzimao za bolove u leđima? Morat će ih ponovo početi uzimati.” Sa stanovišta medicinskih autoriteta, alternativni modaliteti, socijalna interakcija, satovi joge, dodaci prehrani i tako dalje, bezvrijedni su kada se radi o pravim bolestima uzrokovanim pravim virusima. U vremenima krize oni se protjeruju u eteričnu sferu “wellnessa”. Uskrsnuće pravovjerja uslijed Covida-19 toliko je intenzivno da bilo što, imalo nekonvencionalno, kao što je intravenozni C vitamin, uopće nije dolazilo u obzir u Americi do prije dva dana (još ima obilje članaka koji “razotkrivaju” “mit” da vitamin C pomaže protiv Covida-19). Također nisam čuo da CDC – Centar za kontrolu i prevenciju bolesti, propovijeda o dobrobitima ekstrakta bazge, medicinskih gljiva, reduciranju unosa šećera, NAC (N-acetyl L-cysteine), astragalus čempresa ili vitamina D. To nisu samo budalaste spekulacije o “wellnessu” nego ih podupiru opsežna istraživanja i psihološka objašnjenja. Na primjer, dokazano je da NAC (opće informacije, dvostruko slijepo placebo-kontrolirano ispitivanje) radikalno reducira pojavu i ozbiljnost simptoma bolesti srodnih gripi.

Kao što ukazuju statistike o autoimunim bolestima, pretilosti itd., koje sam naveo ranije, Amerika i moderni svijet općenito, suočavaju se s krizom zdravlja. Je li odgovor u tome da radimo isto što i dosad samo temeljitije? Odgovor na Covid je zasad bio udvostručiti pravovjerje i odgurnuti nekonvencionalne prakse i drugačije stavove. Drugi odgovor mogao bi biti proširivanje vidika i propitivanje cijelog sustava, uključujući tko za njega plaća, na koji način je osigurana dostupnost, kako se financiraju istraživanja, ali također i proširenje opsega, tako da budu obuhvaćena i marginalna područja poput biljne medicine, funkcionalne medicine i energetske medicine. Možda bismo mogli iskoristiti ovu priliku za ponovnu procjenu prevladavajućih teorija o bolesti, zdravlju i tijelu. Hajde da zaštitimo bolesnu ribu najbolje kako trenutno znamo, ali možda sljedeći puta nećemo morati izolirati i liječiti toliko riba, ako možemo očistiti akvarij.

Ne govorim vam da smjesta otrčite i kupite NAC ili neki drugi dodatak prehrani, niti da mi, kao društvo, trebamo naglo promijeniti svoj odgovor, smjesta prekinuti socijalno distanciranje i umjesto toga započeti uzimati dodatke prehrani. Ali možemo iskoristiti prekid normalnog, ovu stanku na raskršću, da svjesno odaberemo stazu kojom ćemo krenuti naprijed: kakvu vrstu zdravstvenog sustava, koju paradigmu zdravlja, koju vrstu društva. Ta reevaluacija se već događa, dok ideje kao univerzalno besplatno zdravstvo u SAD-u dobivaju novi zamah. A ta staza također ima račvanja. Koja vrsta zdravstvene skrbi će bi dostupna svima? Hoće li  biti na raspolaganju svima ili obavezna za sve – svaki građanin pacijent, možda s barkodom tetoviranim nevidljivom tintom potvrđujući da je osoba ažurna s cijepljenjima i kontrolnim pregledima. Tek tada možete krenuti u školu, ukrcati se na avion ili ući u restoran. To je jedna staza u budućnost koja nam je dostupna.

Na raspolaganju je sada još jedna opcija. Umjesto udvostručavanja kontrole mogli bismo konačno prihvatiti holističke paradigme i prakse koje su čekale na marginama, čekale da se centar rastopi tako da ih, u našem stanju poniznosti, možemo dovesti u središte i izgraditi novi sustav oko njih.

Koronacija

Postoji alternativa raju savršene kontrole kojem je naša civilizacija tako dugo težila, a koja iščezava tako brzo kao naš napredak, kao fata morgana na horizontu. Da, možemo nastaviti dalje stazom prema većem odvajanju, izolaciji, dominaciji i separaciji. Možemo normalizirati povišene razine separacije i kontrole, vjerovati da su nužne za našu sigurnost i prihvatiti svijet u kojem strahujemo biti blizu jedno drugome. Ili možemo iskoristiti prednost ove pauze, ovaj prekid normalnog da bismo skrenuli na stazu ponovnog ujedinjenja, holizma, obnavljanja izgubljenih veza, popravljanja zajednice i ponovnog uključivanja u mrežu života.

Hoćemo li udvostručiti napore da zaštitimo odvojeno sebstvo ili ćemo prihvatiti poziv u svijet u kojem smo svi u ovome zajedno? Ne susrećemo to pitanje samo u medicini: ono nam se nameće politički, ekonomski i također u našim osobnim životima. Uzmite na primjer problem gomilanja koji utjelovljuje ideju, “Neće biti dovoljno za sve, pa ću osigurati da ima dovoljno za mene.” Drugi odgovor bi mogao biti, “Neki nemaju dovoljno, pa ću podijeliti s njima ono što imam.” Hoćemo li biti oni koji preživljavaju ili oni koji pomažu? Čemu služi život?

Ljudi sada na široj razini postavljaju pitanja koja su do sada vrebala na aktivističkim marginama. Što bismo trebali učiniti u vezi beskućnika? Što bismo trebali učiniti u vezi ljudi u zatvorima? U slumovima trećeg svijeta? Što bismo trebali učiniti u vezi nezaposlenih? A što je sa sobaricama po hotelima, vozačima Ubera, vodoinstalaterima i vratarima i vozačima autobusa i blagajnicama koji ne mogu raditi od kuće? I sada konačno cvjetaju ideje poput ukidanja studentskog duga i univerzalnog osnovnog dohotka. “Kako ćemo zaštiti one podložne Covidu?” nameće nam pitanje, “Kako skrbimo za ranjive ljude općenito?”

To je impuls koji se budi u nama, bez obzira na površnost naših stavova o ozbiljnosti Covida, porijeklu ili najboljim mjerama za njegovo suzbijanje. On kaže, budimo ozbiljni brinući jedni o drugima. Sjetimo se kako smo svi mi dragocjeni i kako je dragocjen život. Napravimo  inventar naše civilizacije, ogolimo je do kosti i pogledajmo možemo li sagraditi jednu ljepšu.

Dok Covid potiče naše suosjećanje, sve više nas shvaća da se ne želimo vratiti natrag u normalno koje nam tako bolno nedostaje. Sada imao priliku osmisliti novo, suosjećajnije normalno.

Obilje je znakova koji bude nadu da se to događa. Vlada Sjedinjenih država, koja je dugo vremena izgledala kao zatočenik bezdušnih korporativnih interesa, oslobodila je stotine milijardi dolara za direktna plaćanja obiteljima. Donald Trump, ne baš čuven po svojoj suosjećajnosti, stavio je moratorij na ovrhe i deložacije. Cinični stav prema ovim mjerama je moguć; no, one ipak utjelovljuju princip skrbi za ranjive.

Sa svih strana svijeta čujemo priče o solidarnosti i iscjeljivanju. Jedan prijatelj je pričao da šalje po 100$ svakoj nepoznatoj osobi koja je u prijekoj potrebi. Moj sin, koji je do prije nekoliko dana radio u pekari Dunkin’ Donuts, rekao je da su ljudi davali peterostruke napojnice u odnosu na normalne – a to su ljudi iz radničke klase, mnogi od njih hispanoamerički vozači kamiona koji su i sami u ekonomski nesigurnoj situaciji. Doktori, medicinske sestre i “neophodni radnici” drugih profesija, riskiraju svoje živote u službi javnosti. Evo nekih primjera erupcije ljubavi i dobrote, uz dopuštenje portala ServiceSpace:

Možda upravo živimo usred te nove priče. Zamislite akciju talijanskih zračnih snaga uz Pavorattija, španjolsku vojsku u činu služenja i prometnu policiju koja svira na gitari – kako bi *ohrabrila*. Korporacije koje neočekivano isplaćuju povišice plaća. Kanađane koji pokreću akciju “Kindness Mongering” (Preprodaja dobrote). Šestogodišnjaka u Australiji koji daruje novac dobiven od Zubićvile, osnovnoškolca iz Japana koji je izradio 612 maski i srednjoškolce koji posvuda obavljaju kupovinu za starije. Kuba šalje armiju “bijelih kuta” za pomoć Italiji. Stanodavac stanarima oprašta neplaćanje stanarine, pjesma irskog svećenika postaje viralna, aktivisti invalidi proizvode sredstvo za dezinfekciju ruku. Zamislite. Ponekad kriza odražava naše najdublje impulse – da uvijek možemo odgovoriti suosjećajnošću.

Kao što Rebecca Solnit opisuje u svojoj odličnoj knjizi Raj izgrađen u paklu (Paradise Built in Hell), nesreća često oslobađa solidarnost. Ljepši svijet svjetluca tik pod površinom, izvirujući kad god sustav koji ga drži ispod vode, olabavi svoj stisak.

Dugo vremena smo mi kao kolektiv bespomoćno stajali suočeni sa sve bolesnijim društvom. Bilo da je to narušeno zdravlje, raspadanje infrastrukture, depresija, samoubojstvo, ovisnost, ekološka degradacija ili koncentracija bogatstva, simptomi civilizacijske boljke u razvijenom svijetu jasno su  vidljivi, no mi smo bili zaglavljeni u sustavima i obrascima koji su ih uzrokovali. Sada nas je Covid obdario prilikom za resetiranje, povratak na početno stanje.

Pred nama leže milijuni staza koje vode u raznim smjerovima. Univerzalni osnovni dohodak mogao bi značiti kraj ekonomske nesigurnosti i procvat kreativnosti milijuna ljudi oslobođenih od posla za koji je Covid pokazao da je manje potreban no što smo mi mislili. Ili bi, zbog desetkovanja malih poduzetnika, to moglo značiti ovisnost o državnoj naknadi koja dolazi pod strogim uvjetima. Kriza bi nas mogla uvesti u totalitarizam ili solidarnost; medicinski prijeki sud ili holističku renesansu; veći strah od svijeta mikroba ili veću otpornost sudjelovanjem u njemu; trajne norme socijalnog distanciranja ili obnovljenu težnju približavanju.

Što nas može voditi, kao pojedince i društvo, dok hodamo ‘vrtom razgranatih staza’ (Borges)? Na svakom raskršću možemo biti svjesni kuda smjeramo: strahu ili ljubavi, samo-očuvanju ili velikodušnosti. Hoćemo li živjeti u strahu i graditi društvo na njegovim temeljima? Hoćemo li živjeti da očuvamo svoje odvojeno sebstvo? Hoćemo li iskoristiti krizu kao oružje protiv svojih političkih neprijatelja? To nisu pitanja tipa sve-ili-ništa, samo ljubav ili samo strah. Stvar je u tome da sljedeći korak u ljubav leži pred nama. Naizgled smion, ali ne nepromišljen. Korak koji cijeni život, ali prihvaća smrt. I pouzdaje se da će se sa svakim novim korakom ukazati onaj sljedeći.

Molim vas, nemojte misliti da se odabiranje ljubavi umjesto straha može postići samo snagom volje, niti da se i strah može pobijediti poput virusa. Virus s kojim se ovdje suočavamo je strah, bilo da je to strah od Covida-19 ili strah od totalitarističkog odgovora na njega, i taj virus također ima svoj teren. Strah kao i ovisnost, depresija i mnoštvo fizičkih bolesti, cvijeta na terenu odvojenosti i traume: naslijeđene traume, traume iz djetinjstva, nasilja, rata, zlostavljanja, zanemarivanja, sramoćenja, kažnjavanja, siromaštva, te prigušena, normalizirana trauma koja pogađa skoro svakoga tko živi u monetiziranoj ekonomiji, tko je podvrgnut modernom školovanju ili živi izvan zajednice ili povezanosti s mjestom. Taj teren može se promijeniti iscjeljivanjem traume na osobnoj razini, sustavnom promjenom prema suosjećajnijem društvu i transformiranjem osnovnog narativa odvojenosti: odvojeno sebstvo u svijetu drugog, ja odvojen od tebe, čovječanstvo odvojeno od prirode. Biti sam je iskonski strah, a moderno društvo sve nas više ostavlja same. No, vrijeme Ponovnog ujedinjenja je stiglo. Svaki čin suosjećanja, dobrote, hrabrosti i velikodušnosti liječi nas od priče o odvojenosti jer i činitelja i svjedoka uvjerava da smo u ovome svi zajedno.

Završit ću pozivajući se na još jednu dimenziju odnosa između ljudi i virusa. Virusi su sastavni dio evolucije, ne samo ljudi, nego i svih eukariota. Virusi mogu prenositi DNK od organizma do organizma, ponekad umećući je u liniju zametnih stanica (gdje ona postaje nasljedna). Poznat pod nazivom horizontalni prijenos gena, ovo je primarni mehanizam evolucije koji omogućava puno bržu evoluciju života no što je to moguće slučajnom mutacijom. Kao što je Lynn Margulis jednom rekla, mi smo naši virusi.

A sada mi dozvolite da se upustim u teoretsko razmišljanje. Možda su velike bolesti civilizacije ubrzale našu biološku i kulturalnu evoluciju ostavljajući nam u nasljeđe ključne genetičke informacije i nudeći kako osobnu tako i kolektivnu inicijaciju. Bi li sadašnja pandemija mogla biti upravo to? Novi RNK kodovi šire se od čovjeka do čovjeka, prožimajući nas novim genetičkim informacijama; u isto vrijeme primamo druge, ezoterične “kodove” koji jašu na leđima onih bioloških, narušavajući naše narative i sustave na isti način kao što bolest narušava tjelesnu fiziologiju. Ta pojava slijedi obrazac inicijacije: odvojenost od normalnosti koju slijedi dilema, slom ili kušnja, koju slijedi (da bi bila potpuna) reintegracija i svečanost.

Sada se pojavljuju pitanja: Inicijacija u što? Koja je specifična priroda i svrha te inicijacije? Popularno ime ove pandemije nudi odgovor: korona virus. Korona je kruna. “Nova pandemija korona virusa” znači “nova krunidba za sve nas.”

Već sada možemo osjetiti snagu onoga što bismo mogli postati. Istinski suveren ne bježi u strahu od života ili smrti. Istinski suveren ne dominira niti osvaja (to radi njegov arhetip sjene, Tiranin). Istinski suveren služi ljudima, služi životu i poštuje suverenitet drugih ljudi. Koronacija označava pojavljivanje podsvijesti u svijesti, kristalizaciju kaosa u red, transcendenciju prisile u izbor. Mi postajemo vladari onoga što je vladalo nama. Novi svjetski poredak, kojeg se boje teoretičari zavjere, ‘sjena’ je veličanstvene prilike za suverena bića. Kada više ne budemo vazali straha, moći ćemo uvesti red u kraljevstvo i sagraditi ciljanu zajednicu na ljubavi koja već sjaji kroz pukotine svijeta odvojenosti.



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Grief and Carbon Reductionism

The Revolution is Love

Kind is the New Cool

What We Do to Nature, We Do to Ourselves

From Nonviolence to Service

An Experiment in Gift Economics

Misogyny and the Healing of the Masculine

Sustainable Development: Something New or More of the Same?

The Need for Venture Science

The EcoSexual Awakening

“Don’t Owe. Won’t Pay.”

Harder to Hide

Reflections on Damanhur

On Immigration

The Humbler Realms, Part 2

The Humbler Realms

A Shift in Values Everywhere

Letter to my Younger Self

Aluna: A Message to Little Brother

Raising My Children in Trust

Qualitative Dimensions of Collective Intelligence: Subjectivity, Consciousness, and Soul

The Woman Who Chose to Plant Corn

The Oceans are Not Worth $24 trillion

The Baby in the Playpen

What Are We Greedy For?

We Need Regenerative Farming, Not Geoengineering

The Cynic and the Boatbuilder, Revisited

Activism in the New Story

What is Action?

Wasting Time

The Space Between Stories

Breakdown, Chaos, and Emergence

At This Moment, I Feel Held

A Roundabout Endorsement

Imagine a 3-D World

Presentation to Uplift Festival, 12.14.2014

Shadow, Ritual, and Relationship in the Gift

A Neat Inversion

The Waters of Heterodoxy

Employment in Gift Culture

Localization Beyond Economics

Discipline on the Bus

We Don’t Know: Reflections on the New Story Summit

A Miracle in Scientific American

More Talk?

Why Another Conference?

A Truncated Interview on Racism

A Beautiful World of Abundance

How to Bore the Children

Post-Capitalism

The Malware

The End of War

The Birds are Sad

A Slice of Humble Pie

Bending Reality: But who is the Bender?

The Mysterious Paths by Which Intentions Bear Fruit

The Little Things that Get Under My Skin

A Restorative Response to MH17

Climate Change: The Bigger Picture

Development in the Ecological Age

The campaign against Drax aims to reveal the perverse effects of biofuels

Gateway drug, to what?

Concern about Overpopulation is a Red Herring; Consumption’s the Problem

Imperialism and Ceremony in Bali

Let’s be Honest: Real Sustainability may not make Business Sense

Vivienne Westwood is Right: We Need a Law against Ecocide

2013: Hope or Despair?

2013: A Year that Pierced Me

Synchronicity, Myth, and the New World Order

Fear of a Living Planet

Pyramid Schemes and the Monetization of Everything

The Next Step for Digital Currency

The Cycle of Terror

TED: A Choice Point

The Cynic and the Boatbuilder

Latent Healing

2013: The Space between Stories

We Are Unlimited Potential: A Talk with Joseph Chilton Pearce

Why Occupy’s plan to cancel consumer debts is money well spent

Genetically Modifying and Patenting Seeds isn’t the Answer

The Lovely Lady from Nestle

An Alien at the Tech Conference

We Can’t Grow Ourselves out of Debt

Money and the Divine Masculine

Naivete, and the Light in their Eyes

The Healing of Congo

Why Rio +20 Failed

Permaculture and the Myth of Scarcity

For Facebook, A Modest Proposal

A Coal Pile in the Ballroom

A Review of Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years

Gift Economics Resurgent

The Way up is Down

Sacred Economics: Money, the Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition

Design and Strategy Principles for Local Currency

The Lost Marble

To Bear Witness and to Speak the Truth

Thrive: The Story is Wrong but the Spirit is Right

Occupy Wall Street: No Demand is Big Enough

Elephants: Please Don’t Go

Why the Age of the Guru is Over

Gift Economics and Reunion in the Digital Age

A Circle of Gifts

The Three Seeds

Truth and Magic in the Third Dimension

Rituals for Lover Earth

Money and the Turning of the Age

A Gathering of the Tribe

The Sojourn of Science

Wood, Metal, and the Story of the World

A World-Creating Matrix of Truth

Waiting on the Big One

In the Miracle

Money and the Crisis of Civilization

Reuniting the Self: Autoimmunity, Obesity, and the Ecology of Health

Invisible Paths

Reuniting the Self: Autoimmunity, Obesity, and the Ecology of Health (Part 2)

Mutiny of the Soul

The Age of Water

Money: A New Beginning (Part 2)

Money: A New Beginning (Part 1)

The Original Religion

Pain: A Call for Attention

The Miracle of Self-Creation, Part 2

The Miracle of Self-Creation

The Deschooling Convivium

The Testicular Age

Who Will Collect the Garbage?

The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies

You’re Bad!

A 28-year Lie: The Wrong Lesson

The Ascent of Humanity

The Stars are Shining for Her

All Hallows’ Eve

Confessions of a Hypocrite

The New Epidemics

From Opinion to Belief to Knowing

Soul Families

For Whom was that Bird Singing?

The Multicellular Metahuman

Grades: A Gun to Your Head

Human Nature Denied

The Great Robbery

Humanity Grows Up

Don’t Should on US

A State of Belief is a State of Being

Ascension

Security and Fate

Old-Fashioned, Healthy, Lacto-Fermented Soft Drinks: The Real “Real Thing”

The Ethics of Eating Meat

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Charles Eisenstein

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The Coronation

For years, normality has been stretched nearly to its breaking point, a rope pulled tighter and tighter, waiting for a nip of the black swan’s beak to snap it in two. Now that the rope has snapped, do we tie its ends back together, or shall we undo its dangling braids still further, to see what we might weave from them?

Covid-19 is showing us that when humanity is united in common cause, phenomenally rapid change is possible. None of the world’s problems are technically difficult to solve; they originate in human disagreement. In coherency, humanity’s creative powers are boundless. A few months ago, a proposal to halt commercial air travel would have seemed preposterous. Likewise for the radical changes we are making in our social behavior, economy, and the role of government in our lives. Covid demonstrates the power of our collective will when we agree on what is important. What else might we achieve, in coherency? What do we want to achieve, and what world shall we create? That is always the next question when anyone awakens to their power.

Covid-19 is like a rehab intervention that breaks the addictive hold of normality. To interrupt a habit is to make it visible; it is to turn it from a compulsion to a choice. When the crisis subsides, we might have occasion to ask whether we want to return to normal, or whether there might be something we’ve seen during this break in the routines that we want to bring into the future. We might ask, after so many have lost their jobs, whether all of them are the jobs the world most needs, and whether our labor and creativity would be better applied elsewhere. We might ask, having done without it for a while, whether we really need so much air travel, Disneyworld vacations, or trade shows. What parts of the economy will we want to restore, and what parts might we choose to let go of? And on a darker note, what among the things that are being taken away right now – civil liberties, freedom of assembly, sovereignty over our bodies, in-person gatherings, hugs, handshakes, and public life – might we need to exert intentional political and personal will to restore?

For most of my life, I have had the feeling that humanity was nearing a crossroads. Always, the crisis, the collapse, the break was imminent, just around the bend, but it didn’t come and it didn’t come. Imagine walking a road, and up ahead you see it, you see the crossroads. It’s just over the hill, around the bend, past the woods. Cresting the hill, you see you were mistaken, it was a mirage, it was farther away than you thought. You keep walking. Sometimes it comes into view, sometimes it disappears from sight and it seems like this road goes on forever. Maybe there isn’t a crossroads. No, there it is again! Always it is almost here. Never is it here.

Now, all of a sudden, we go around a bend and here it is. We stop, hardly able to believe that now it is happening, hardly able to believe, after years of confinement to the road of our predecessors, that now we finally have a choice. We are right to stop, stunned at the newness of our situation. Because of the hundred paths that radiate out in front of us, some lead in the same direction we’ve already been headed. Some lead to hell on earth. And some lead to a world more healed and more beautiful than we ever dared believe to be possible.

I write these words with the aim of standing here with you – bewildered, scared maybe, yet also with a sense of new possibility – at this point of diverging paths. Let us gaze down some of them and see where they lead.

* * *

I heard this story last week from a friend. She was in a grocery store and saw a woman sobbing in the aisle. Flouting social distancing rules, she went to the woman and gave her a hug. “Thank you,” the woman said, “that is the first time anyone has hugged me for ten days.”

Going without hugs for a few weeks seems a small price to pay if it will stem an epidemic that could take millions of lives. There is a strong argument for social distancing in the near term: to prevent a sudden surge of Covid cases from overwhelming the medical system. I would like to put that argument in a larger context, especially as we look to the long term. Lest we institutionalize distancing and reengineer society around it, let us be aware of what choice we are making and why.

The same goes for the other changes happening around the coronavirus epidemic. Some commentators have observed how it plays neatly into an agenda of totalitarian control. A frightened public accepts abridgments of civil liberties that are otherwise hard to justify, such as the tracking of everyone’s movements at all times, forcible medical treatment, involuntary quarantine, restrictions on travel and the freedom of assembly, censorship of what the authorities deem to be disinformation, suspension of habeas corpus, and military policing of civilians. Many of these were underway before Covid-19; since its advent, they have been irresistible. The same goes for the automation of commerce; the transition from participation in sports and entertainment to remote viewing; the migration of life from public to private spaces; the transition away from place-based schools toward online education, the decline of brick-and-mortar stores, and the movement of human work and leisure onto screens. Covid-19 is accelerating preexisting trends, political, economic, and social.

While all the above are, in the short term, justified on the grounds of flattening the curve (the epidemiological growth curve), we are also hearing a lot about a “new normal”; that is to say, the changes may not be temporary at all. Since the threat of infectious disease, like the threat of terrorism, never goes away, control measures can easily become permanent. If we were going in this direction anyway, the current justification must be part of a deeper impulse. I will analyze this impulse in two parts: the reflex of control, and the war on death. Thus understood, an initiatory opportunity emerges, one that we are seeing already in the form of the solidarity, compassion, and care that Covid-19 has inspired.

The Reflex of Control

At the current writing, official statistics say that about 25,000 people have died from Covid-19. By the time it runs its course, the death toll could be ten times or a hundred times bigger, or even, if the most alarming guesses are right, a thousand times bigger. Each one of these people has loved ones, family and friends. Compassion and conscience call us to do what we can to avert unnecessary tragedy. This is personal for me: my own infinitely dear but frail mother is among the most vulnerable to a disease that kills mostly the aged and the infirm.

What will the final numbers be? That question is impossible to answer at the time of this writing. Early reports were alarming; for weeks the official number from Wuhan, circulated endlessly in the media, was a shocking 3.4%. That, coupled with its highly contagious nature, pointed to tens of millions of deaths worldwide, or even as many as 100 million. More recently, estimates have plunged as it has become apparent that most cases are mild or asymptomatic. Since testing has been skewed towards the seriously ill, the death rate has looked artificially high. In South Korea, where hundreds of thousands of people with mild symptoms have been tested, the reported case fatality rate is around 1%. In Germany, whose testing also extends to many with mild symptoms, the fatality rate is 0.4%. A recent paper in the journal Science argues that 86% of infections have been undocumented, which points to a much lower mortality rate than the current case fatality rate would indicate.

The story of the Diamond Princess cruise ship bolsters this view. Of the 3,711 people on board, about 20% have tested positive for the virus; less than half of those had symptoms, and eight have died. A cruise ship is a perfect setting for contagion, and there was plenty of time for the virus to spread on board before anyone did anything about it, yet only a fifth were infected. Furthermore, the cruise ship’s population was heavily skewed (as are most cruise ships) toward the elderly: nearly a third of the passengers were over age 70, and more than half were over age 60. A research team concluded from the large number of asymptomatic cases that the true fatality rate in China is around 0.5%. That is still five times higher than flu. Based on the above (and adjusting for much younger demographics in Africa and South and Southeast Asia) my guess is about 200,000-300,000 deaths in the US – more if the medical system is overwhelmed, less if infections are spread out over time – and 3 million globally. Those are serious numbers. Not since the Hong Kong Flu pandemic of 1968/9 has the world experienced anything like it.

My guesses could easily be off by an order of magnitude. Every day the media reports the total number of Covid-19 cases, but no one has any idea what the true number is, because only a tiny proportion of the population has been tested. If tens of millions have the virus, asymptomatically, we would not know it. Further complicating the matter is the high rate of false positives for existing testing, possibly as high as 80%. (And see here for even more alarming uncertainties about test accuracy.) Let me repeat: no one knows what is really happening, including me. Let us be aware of two contradictory tendencies in human affairs. The first is the tendency for hysteria to feed on itself, to exclude data points that don’t play into the fear, and to create the world in its image. The second is denial, the irrational rejection of information that might disrupt normalcy and comfort. As Daniel Schmactenberger asks, How do you know what you believe is true?

In the face of the uncertainty, I’d like to make a prediction: The crisis will play out so that we never will know. If the final death tally, which will itself be the subject of dispute, is lower than feared, some will say that is because the controls worked. Others will say it is because the disease wasn’t as dangerous as we were told.

To me, the most baffling puzzle is why at the present writing there seem to be no new cases in China. The government didn’t initiate its lockdown until well after the virus was established. It should have spread widely during Chinese New Year, when every plane, train, and bus is packed with people traveling all over the country. What is going on here? Again, I don’t know, and neither do you.

Whether the final global death toll is 50,000 or 500,000 or 5 million, let’s look at some other numbers to get some perspective. My point is NOT that Covid isn’t so bad and we shouldn’t do anything. Bear with me. Last year, according to the FAO, five million children worldwide died of hunger (among 162 million who are stunted and 51 million who are wasted). That is 200 times more people than have died so far from Covid-19, yet no government has declared a state of emergency or asked that we radically alter our way of life to save them. Nor do we see a comparable level of alarm and action around suicide – the mere tip of an iceberg of despair and depression – which kills over a million people a year globally and 50,000 in the USA. Or drug overdoses, which kill 70,000 in the USA, the autoimmunity epidemic, which affects 23.5 million (NIH figure) to 50 million (AARDA), or obesity, which afflicts well over 100 million. Why, for that matter, are we not in a frenzy about averting nuclear armageddon or ecological collapse, but, to the contrary, pursue choices that magnify those very dangers?

Please, the point here is not that we haven’t changed our ways to stop children from starving, so we shouldn’t change them for Covid either. It is the contrary: If we can change so radically for Covid-19, we can do it for these other conditions too. Let us ask why are we able to unify our collective will to stem this virus, but not to address other grave threats to humanity. Why, until now, has society been so frozen in its existing trajectory?

The answer is revealing. Simply, in the face of world hunger, addiction, autoimmunity, suicide, or ecological collapse, we as a society do not know what to do. Our go-to crisis responses, all of which are some version of control, aren’t very effective in addressing these conditions. Now along comes a contagious epidemic, and finally we can spring into action. It is a crisis for which control works: quarantines, lockdowns, isolation, hand-washing; control of movement, control of information, control of our bodies. That makes Covid a convenient receptacle for our inchoate fears, a place to channel our growing sense of helplessness in the face of the changes overtaking the world. Covid-19 is a threat that we know how to meet. Unlike so many of our other fears, Covid-19 offers a plan.

Our civilization’s established institutions are increasingly helpless to meet the challenges of our time. How they welcome a challenge that they finally can meet. How eager they are to embrace it as a paramount crisis. How naturally their systems of information management select for the most alarming portrayals of it. How easily the public joins the panic, embracing a threat that the authorities can handle as a proxy for the various unspeakable threats that they cannot.

Today, most of our challenges no longer succumb to force. Our antibiotics and surgery fail to meet the surging health crises of autoimmunity, addiction, and obesity. Our guns and bombs, built to conquer armies, are useless to erase hatred abroad or keep domestic violence out of our homes. Our police and prisons cannot heal the breeding conditions of crime. Our pesticides cannot restore ruined soil. Covid-19 recalls the good old days when the challenges of infectious diseases succumbed to modern medicine and hygiene, at the same time as the Nazis succumbed to the war machine, and nature itself succumbed, or so it seemed, to technological conquest and improvement. It recalls the days when our weapons worked and the world seemed indeed to be improving with each technology of control.

What kind of problem succumbs to domination and control? The kind caused by something from the outside, something Other. When the cause of the problem is something intimate to ourselves, like homelessness or inequality, addiction or obesity, there is nothing to war against. We may try to install an enemy, blaming, for example, the billionaires, Vladimir Putin, or the Devil, but then we miss key information, such as the ground conditions that allow billionaires (or viruses) to replicate in the first place.

If there is one thing our civilization is good at, it is fighting an enemy. We welcome opportunities to do what we are good at, which prove the validity of our technologies, systems, and worldview. And so, we manufacture enemies, cast problems like crime, terrorism, and disease into us-versus-them terms, and mobilize our collective energies toward those endeavors that can be seen that way. Thus, we single out Covid-19 as a call to arms, reorganizing society as if for a war effort, while treating as normal the possibility of nuclear armageddon, ecological collapse, and five million children starving.

The Conspiracy Narrative

Because Covid-19 seems to justify so many items on the totalitarian wish list, there are those who believe it to be a deliberate power play. It is not my purpose to advance that theory nor to debunk it, although I will offer some meta-level comments. First a brief overview.

The theories (there are many variants) talk about Event 201 (sponsored by the Gates Foundation, CIA, etc. last September), and a 2010 Rockefeller Foundation white paper detailing a scenario called “Lockstep,” both of which lay out the authoritarian response to a hypothetical pandemic. They observe that the infrastructure, technology, and legislative framework for martial law has been in preparation for many years. All that was needed, they say, was a way to make the public embrace it, and now that has come. Whether or not current controls are permanent, a precedent is being set for:

  • • The tracking of people’s movements at all times (because coronavirus)
  • • The suspension of freedom of assembly (because coronavirus)
  • • The military policing of civilians (because coronavirus)
  • • Extrajudicial, indefinite detention (quarantine, because coronavirus)
  • • The banning of cash (because coronavirus)
  • • Censorship of the Internet (to combat disinformation, because coronavirus)
  • • Compulsory vaccination and other medical treatment, establishing the state’s sovereignty over our bodies (because coronavirus)
  • • The classification of all activities and destinations into the expressly permitted and the expressly forbidden (you can leave your house for this, but not that), eliminating the un-policed, non-juridical gray zone. That totality is the very essence of totalitarianism. Necessary now though, because, well, coronavirus.

This is juicy material for conspiracy theories. For all I know, one of those theories could be true; however, the same progression of events could unfold from an unconscious systemic tilt toward ever-increasing control. Where does this tilt come from? It is woven into civilization’s DNA. For millennia, civilization (as opposed to small-scale traditional cultures) has understood progress as a matter of extending control onto the world: domesticating the wild, conquering the barbarians, mastering the forces of nature, and ordering society according to law and reason. The ascent of control accelerated with the Scientific Revolution, which launched “progress” to new heights: the ordering of reality into objective categories and quantities, and the mastering of materiality with technology. Finally, the social sciences promised to use the same means and methods to fulfill the ambition (which goes back to Plato and Confucius) to engineer a perfect society.

Those who administer civilization will therefore welcome any opportunity to strengthen their control, for after all, it is in service to a grand vision of human destiny: the perfectly ordered world, in which disease, crime, poverty, and perhaps suffering itself can be engineered out of existence. No nefarious motives are necessary. Of course they would like to keep track of everyone – all the better to ensure the common good. For them, Covid-19 shows how necessary that is. “Can we afford democratic freedoms in light of the coronavirus?” they ask. “Must we now, out of necessity, sacrifice those for our own safety?” It is a familiar refrain, for it has accompanied other crises in the past, like 9/11.

To rework a common metaphor, imagine a man with a hammer, stalking around looking for a reason to use it. Suddenly he sees a nail sticking out. He’s been looking for a nail for a long time, pounding on screws and bolts and not accomplishing much. He inhabits a worldview in which hammers are the best tools, and the world can be made better by pounding in the nails. And here is a nail! We might suspect that in his eagerness he has placed the nail there himself, but it hardly matters. Maybe it isn’t even a nail that’s sticking out, but it resembles one enough to start pounding. When the tool is at the ready, an opportunity will arise to use it.

And I will add, for those inclined to doubt the authorities, maybe this time it really is a nail. In that case, the hammer is the right tool – and the principle of the hammer will emerge the stronger, ready for the screw, the button, the clip, and the tear.

Either way, the problem we deal with here is much deeper than that of overthrowing an evil coterie of Illuminati. Even if they do exist, given the tilt of civilization, the same trend would persist without them, or a new Illuminati would arise to assume the functions of the old.

True or false, the idea that the epidemic is some monstrous plot perpetrated by evildoers upon the public is not so far from the mindset of find-the-pathogen. It is a crusading mentality, a war mentality. It locates the source of a sociopolitical illness in a pathogen against which we may then fight, a victimizer separate from ourselves. It risks ignoring the conditions that make society fertile ground for the plot to take hold. Whether that ground was sown deliberately or by the wind is, for me, a secondary question.

What I will say next is relevant whether or not SARS-CoV2 is a genetically engineered bioweapon, is related to 5G rollout, is being used to prevent “disclosure,” is a Trojan horse for totalitarian world government, is more deadly than we’ve been told, is less deadly than we’ve been told, originated in a Wuhan biolab, originated at Fort Detrick, or is exactly as the CDC and WHO have been telling us. It applies even if everyone is totally wrong about the role of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the current epidemic. I have my opinions, but if there is one thing I have learned through the course of this emergency is that I don’t really know what is happening. I don’t see how anyone can, amidst the seething farrago of news, fake news, rumors, suppressed information, conspiracy theories, propaganda, and politicized narratives that fill the Internet. I wish a lot more people would embrace not knowing. I say that both to those who embrace the dominant narrative, as well as to those who hew to dissenting ones. What information might we be blocking out, in order to maintain the integrity of our viewpoints? Let’s be humble in our beliefs: it is a matter of life and death.

The War on Death

My 7-year-old son hasn’t seen or played with another child for two weeks. Millions of others are in the same boat. Most would agree that a month without social interaction for all those children a reasonable sacrifice to save a million lives. But how about to save 100,000 lives? And what if the sacrifice is not for a month but for a year? Five years? Different people will have different opinions on that, according to their underlying values.

Let’s replace the foregoing questions with something more personal, that pierces the inhuman utilitarian thinking that turns people into statistics and sacrifices some of them for something else. The relevant question for me is, Would I ask all the nation’s children to forego play for a season, if it would reduce my mother’s risk of dying, or for that matter, my own risk? Or I might ask, Would I decree the end of human hugging and handshakes, if it would save my own life? This is not to devalue Mom’s life or my own, both of which are precious. I am grateful for every day she is still with us. But these questions bring up deep issues. What is the right way to live? What is the right way to die?

The answer to such questions, whether asked on behalf of oneself or on behalf of society at large, depends on how we hold death and how much we value play, touch, and togetherness, along with civil liberties and personal freedom. There is no easy formula to balance these values.

Over my lifetime I’ve seen society place more and more emphasis on safety, security, and risk reduction. It has especially impacted childhood: as a young boy it was normal for us to roam a mile from home unsupervised – behavior that would earn parents a visit from Child Protective Services today. It also manifests in the form of latex gloves for more and more professions; hand sanitizer everywhere; locked, guarded, and surveilled school buildings; intensified airport and border security; heightened awareness of legal liability and liability insurance; metal detectors and searches before entering many sports arenas and public buildings, and so on. Writ large, it takes the form of the security state.

The mantra “safety first” comes from a value system that makes survival top priority, and that depreciates other values like fun, adventure, play, and the challenging of limits. Other cultures had different priorities. For instance, many traditional and indigenous cultures are much less protective of children, as documented in Jean Liedloff’s classic, The Continuum Concept. They allow them risks and responsibilities that would seem insane to most modern people, believing that this is necessary for children to develop self-reliance and good judgement. I think most modern people, especially younger people, retain some of this inherent willingness to sacrifice safety in order to live life fully. The surrounding culture, however, lobbies us relentlessly to live in fear, and has constructed systems that embody fear. In them, staying safe is over-ridingly important. Thus we have a medical system in which most decisions are based on calculations of risk, and in which the worst possible outcome, marking the physician’s ultimate failure, is death. Yet all the while, we know that death awaits us regardless. A life saved actually means a death postponed.

The ultimate fulfillment of civilization’s program of control would be to triumph over death itself. Failing that, modern society settles for a facsimile of that triumph: denial rather than conquest. Ours is a society of death denial, from its hiding away of corpses, to its fetish for youthfulness, to its warehousing of old people in nursing homes. Even its obsession with money and property – extensions of the self, as the word “mine” indicates – expresses the delusion that the impermanent self can be made permanent through its attachments. All this is inevitable given the story-of-self that modernity offers: the separate individual in a world of Other. Surrounded by genetic, social, and economic competitors, that self must protect and dominate in order to thrive. It must do everything it can to forestall death, which (in the story of separation) is total annihilation. Biological science has even taught us that our very nature is to maximize our chances of surviving and reproducing.

I asked a friend, a medical doctor who has spent time with the Q’ero on Peru, whether the Q’ero would (if they could) intubate someone to prolong their life. “Of course not,” she said. “They would summon the shaman to help him die well.” Dying well (which isn’t necessarily the same as dying painlessly) is not much in today’s medical vocabulary. No hospital records are kept on whether patients die well. That would not be counted as a positive outcome. In the world of the separate self, death is the ultimate catastrophe.

But is it? Consider this perspective from Dr. Lissa Rankin: “Not all of us would want to be in an ICU, isolated from loved ones with a machine breathing for us, at risk of dying alone- even if it means they might increase their chance of survival. Some of us might rather be held in the arms of loved ones at home, even if that means our time has come…. Remember, death is no ending. Death is going home.”

When the self is understood as relational, interdependent, even inter-existent, then it bleeds over into the other, and the other bleeds over into the self. Understanding the self as a locus of consciousness in a matrix of relationship, one no longer searches for an enemy as the key to understanding every problem, but looks instead for imbalances in relationships. The War on Death gives way to the quest to live well and fully, and we see that fear of death is actually fear of life. How much of life will we forego to stay safe?

Totalitarianism – the perfection of control – is the inevitable end product of the mythology of the separate self. What else but a threat to life, like a war, would merit total control? Thus Orwell identified perpetual war as a crucial component of the Party’s rule.

Against the backdrop of the program of control, death denial, and the separate self, the assumption that public policy should seek to minimize the number of deaths is nearly beyond question, a goal to which other values like play, freedom, etc. are subordinate. Covid-19 offers occasion to broaden that view. Yes, let us hold life sacred, more sacred than ever. Death teaches us that. Let us hold each person, young or old, sick or well, as the sacred, precious, beloved being that they are. And in the circle of our hearts, let us make room for other sacred values too. To hold life sacred is not just to live long, it is to live well and right and fully.

Like all fear, the fear around the coronavirus hints at what might lie beyond it. Anyone who has experienced the passing of someone close knows that death is a portal to love. Covid-19 has elevated death to prominence in the consciousness of a society that denies it. On the other side of the fear, we can see the love that death liberates. Let it pour forth. Let it saturate the soil of our culture and fill its aquifers so that it seeps up through the cracks of our crusted institutions, our systems, and our habits. Some of these may die too.

What world shall we live in?

How much of life do we want to sacrifice at the altar of security? If it keeps us safer, do we want to live in a world where human beings never congregate? Do we want to wear masks in public all the time? Do we want to be medically examined every time we travel, if that will save some number of lives a year? Are we willing to accept the medicalization of life in general, handing over final sovereignty over our bodies to medical authorities (as selected by political ones)? Do we want every event to be a virtual event? How much are we willing to live in fear?

Covid-19 will eventually subside, but the threat of infectious disease is permanent. Our response to it sets a course for the future. Public life, communal life, the life of shared physicality has been dwindling over several generations. Instead of shopping at stores, we get things delivered to our homes. Instead of packs of kids playing outside, we have play dates and digital adventures. Instead of the public square, we have the online forum. Do we want to continue to insulate ourselves still further from each other and the world?

It is not hard to imagine, especially if social distancing is successful, that Covid-19 persists beyond the 18 months we are being told to expect for it to run its course. It is not hard to imagine that new viruses will emerge during that time. It is not hard to imagine that emergency measures will become normal (so as to forestall the possibility of another outbreak), just as the state of emergency declared after 9/11 is still in effect today. It is not hard to imagine that (as we are being told), reinfection is possible, so that the disease will never run its course. That means that the temporary changes in our way of life may become permanent.

To reduce the risk of another pandemic, shall we choose to live in a society without hugs, handshakes, and high-fives, forever more? Shall we choose to live in a society where we no longer gather en masse? Shall the concert, the sports competition, and the festival be a thing of the past? Shall children no longer play with other children? Shall all human contact be mediated by computers and masks? No more dance classes, no more karate classes, no more conferences, no more churches? Is death reduction to be the standard by which to measure progress? Does human advancement mean separation? Is this the future?

The same question applies to the administrative tools required to control the movement of people and the flow of information. At the present writing, the entire country is moving toward lockdown. In some countries, one must print out a form from a government website in order to leave the house. It reminds me of school, where one’s location must be authorized at all times. Or of prison. Do we envision a future of electronic hall passes, a system where freedom of movement is governed by state administrators and their software at all times, permanently? Where every movement is tracked, either permitted or prohibited? And, for our protection, where information that threatens our health (as decided, again, by various authorities) is censored for our own good? In the face of an emergency, like unto a state of war, we accept such restrictions and temporarily surrender our freedoms. Similar to 9/11, Covid-19 trumps all objections.

For the first time in history, the technological means exist to realize such a vision, at least in the developed world (for example, using cellphone location data to enforce social distancing; see also here). After a bumpy transition, we could live in a society where nearly all of life happens online: shopping, meeting, entertainment, socializing, working, even dating. Is that what we want? How many lives saved is that worth?

I am sure that many of the controls in effect today will be partially relaxed in a few months. Partially relaxed, but at the ready. As long as infectious disease remains with us, they are likely to be reimposed, again and again, in the future, or be self-imposed in the form of habits. As Deborah Tannen says, contributing to a Politico article on how coronavirus will change the world permanently, ‘We know now that touching things, being with other people and breathing the air in an enclosed space can be risky…. It could become second nature to recoil from shaking hands or touching our faces—and we may all fall heir to society-wide OCD, as none of us can stop washing our hands.” After thousands of years, millions of years, of touch, contact, and togetherness, is the pinnacle of human progress to be that we cease such activities because they are too risky?

Life is Community

The paradox of the program of control is that its progress rarely advances us any closer to its goal. Despite security systems in almost every upper middle-class home, people are no less anxious or insecure than they were a generation ago. Despite elaborate security measures, the schools are not seeing fewer mass shootings. Despite phenomenal progress in medical technology, people have if anything become less healthy over the past thirty years, as chronic disease has proliferated and life expectancy stagnated and, in the USA and Britain, started to decline.

The measures being instituted to control Covid-19, likewise, may end up causing more suffering and death than they prevent. Minimizing deaths means minimizing the deaths that we know how to predict and measure. It is impossible to measure the added deaths that might come from isolation-induced depression, for instance, or the despair caused by unemployment, or the lowered immunity and deterioration in health that chronic fear can cause. Loneliness and lack of social contact has been shown to increase inflammation, depression, and dementia. According to Lissa Rankin, M.D., air pollution increases risk of dying by 6%, obesity by 23%, alcohol abuse by 37%, and loneliness by 45%.

Another danger that is off the ledger is the deterioration in immunity caused by excessive hygiene and distancing. It is not only social contact that is necessary for health, it is also contact with the microbial world. Generally speaking, microbes are not our enemies, they are our allies in health. A diverse gut biome, comprising bacteria, viruses, yeasts, and other organisms, is essential for a well-functioning immune system, and its diversity is maintained through contact with other people and with the world of life. Excessive hand-washing, overuse of antibiotics, aseptic cleanliness, and lack of human contact might do more harm than good. The resulting allergies and autoimmune disorders might be worse than the infectious disease they replace. Socially and biologically, health comes from community. Life does not thrive in isolation.

Seeing the world in us-versus-them terms blinds us to the reality that life and health happen in community. To take the example of infectious diseases, we fail to look beyond the evil pathogen and ask, What is the role of viruses in the microbiome? (See also here.) What are the body conditions under which harmful viruses proliferate? Why do some people have mild symptoms and others severe ones (besides the catch-all non-explanation of “low resistance”)? What positive role might flus, colds, and other non-lethal diseases play in the maintenance of health?

War-on-germs thinking brings results akin to those of the War on Terror, War on Crime, War on Weeds, and the endless wars we fight politically and interpersonally. First, it generates endless war; second, it diverts attention from the ground conditions that breed illness, terrorism, crime, weeds, and the rest.

Despite politicians’ perennial claim that they pursue war for the sake of peace, war inevitably breeds more war. Bombing countries to kill terrorists not only ignores the ground conditions of terrorism, it exacerbates those conditions. Locking up criminals not only ignores the conditions that breed crime, it creates those conditions when it breaks up families and communities and acculturates the incarcerated to criminality. And regimes of antibiotics, vaccines, antivirals, and other medicines wreak havoc on body ecology, which is the foundation of strong immunity. Outside the body, the massive spraying campaigns sparked by Zika, Dengue Fever, and now Covid-19 will visit untold damage upon nature’s ecology. Has anyone considered what the effects on the ecosystem will be when we douse it with antiviral compounds? Such a policy (which has been implemented in various places in China and India) is only thinkable from the mindset of separation, which does not understand that viruses are integral to the web of life.

To understand the point about ground conditions, consider some mortality statistics from Italy (from its National Health Institute), based on an analysis of hundreds of Covid-19 fatalities. Of those analyzed, less than 1% were free of serious chronic health conditions. Some 75% suffered from hypertension, 35% from diabetes, 33% from cardiac ischemia, 24% from atrial fibrillation, 18% from low renal function, along with other conditions that I couldn’t decipher from the Italian report. Nearly half the deceased had three or more of these serious pathologies. Americans, beset by obesity, diabetes, and other chronic ailments, are at least as vulnerable as Italians. Should we blame the virus then (which killed few otherwise healthy people), or shall we blame underlying poor health? Here again the analogy of the taut rope applies. Millions of people in the modern world are in a precarious state of health, just waiting for something that would normally be trivial to send them over the edge. Of course, in the short term we want to save their lives; the danger is that we lose ourselves in an endless succession of short terms, fighting one infectious disease after another, and never engage the ground conditions that make people so vulnerable. That is a much harder problem, because these ground conditions will not change via fighting. There is no pathogen that causes diabetes or obesity, addiction, depression, or PTSD. Their causes are not an Other, not some virus separate from ourselves, and we its victims.

Even in diseases like Covid-19, in which we can name a pathogenic virus, matters are not so simple as a war between virus and victim. There is an alternative to the germ theory of disease that holds germs to be part of a larger process. When conditions are right, they multiply in the body, sometimes killing the host, but also, potentially, improving the conditions that accommodated them to begin with, for example by cleaning out accumulated toxic debris via mucus discharge, or (metaphorically speaking) burning them up with fever. Sometimes called “terrain theory,” it says that germs are more symptom than cause of disease. As one meme explains it: “Your fish is sick. Germ theory: isolate the fish. Terrain theory: clean the tank.”

A certain schizophrenia afflicts the modern culture of health. On the one hand, there is a burgeoning wellness movement that embraces alternative and holistic medicine. It advocates herbs, meditation, and yoga to boost immunity. It validates the emotional and spiritual dimensions of health, such as the power of attitudes and beliefs to sicken or to heal. All of this seems to have disappeared under the Covid tsunami, as society defaults to the old orthodoxy.

Case in point: California acupuncturists have been forced to shut down, having been deemed “non-essential.” This is perfectly understandable from the perspective of conventional virology. But as one acupuncturist on Facebook observed, “What about my patient who I’m working with to get off opioids for his back pain? He’s going to have to start using them again.” From the worldview of medical authority, alternative modalities, social interaction, yoga classes, supplements, and so on are frivolous when it comes to real diseases caused by real viruses. They are relegated to an etheric realm of “wellness” in the face of a crisis. The resurgence of orthodoxy under Covid-19 is so intense that anything remotely unconventional, such as intravenous vitamin C, was completely off the table in the United States until two days ago (articles still abound “debunking” the “myth” that vitamin C can help fight Covid-19). Nor have I heard the CDC evangelize the benefits of elderberry extract, medicinal mushrooms, cutting sugar intake, NAC (N-acetyl L-cysteine), astragalus, or vitamin D. These are not just mushy speculation about “wellness,” but are supported by extensive research and physiological explanations. For example, NAC (general info, double-blind placebo-controlled study) has been shown to radically reduce incidence and severity of symptoms in flu-like illnesses.

As the statistics I offered earlier on autoimmunity, obesity, etc. indicate, America and the modern world in general are facing a health crisis. Is the answer to do what we’ve been doing, only more thoroughly? The response so far to Covid has been to double down on the orthodoxy and sweep unconventional practices and dissenting viewpoints aside. Another response would be to widen our lens and examine the entire system, including who pays for it, how access is granted, and how research is funded, but also expanding out to include marginal fields like herbal medicine, functional medicine, and energy medicine. Perhaps we can take this opportunity to reevaluate prevailing theories of illness, health, and the body. Yes, let’s protect the sickened fish as best we can right now, but maybe next time we won’t have to isolate and drug so many fish, if we can clean the tank.

I’m not telling you to run out right now and buy NAC or any other supplement, nor that we as a society should abruptly shift our response, cease social distancing immediately, and start taking supplements instead. But we can use the break in normal, this pause at a crossroads, to consciously choose what path we shall follow moving forward: what kind of healthcare system, what paradigm of health, what kind of society. This reevaluation is already happening, as ideas like universal free healthcare in the USA gain new momentum. And that path leads to forks as well. What kind of healthcare will be universalized? Will it be merely available to all, or mandatory for all – each citizen a patient, perhaps with an invisible ink barcode tattoo certifying one is up to date on all compulsory vaccines and check-ups. Then you can go to school, board a plane, or enter a restaurant. This is one path to the future that is available to us.

Another option is available now too. Instead of doubling down on control, we could finally embrace the holistic paradigms and practices that have been waiting on the margins, waiting for the center to dissolve so that, in our humbled state, we can bring them into the center and build a new system around them.

The Coronation

There is an alternative to the paradise of perfect control that our civilization has so long pursued, and that recedes as fast as our progress, like a mirage on the horizon. Yes, we can proceed as before down the path toward greater insulation, isolation, domination, and separation. We can normalize heightened levels of separation and control, believe that they are necessary to keep us safe, and accept a world in which we are afraid to be near each other. Or we can take advantage of this pause, this break in normal, to turn onto a path of reunion, of holism, of the restoring of lost connections, of the repair of community and the rejoining of the web of life.

Do we double down on protecting the separate self, or do we accept the invitation into a world where all of us are in this together? It isn’t just in medicine we encounter this question: it visits us politically, economically, and in our personal lives as well. Take for example the issue of hoarding, which embodies the idea, “There won’t be enough for everyone, so I am going to make sure there is enough for me.” Another response might be, “Some don’t have enough, so I will share what I have with them.” Are we to be survivalists or helpers? What is life for?

On a larger scale, people are asking questions that have until now lurked on activist margins. What should we do about the homeless? What should we do about the people in prisons? In Third World slums? What should we do about the unemployed? What about all the hotel maids, the Uber drivers, the plumbers and janitors and bus drivers and cashiers who cannot work from home? And so now, finally, ideas like student debt relief and universal basic income are blossoming. “How do we protect those susceptible to Covid?” invites us into “How do we care for vulnerable people in general?”

That is the impulse that stirs in us, regardless of the superficialities of our opinions about Covid’s severity, origin, or best policy to address it. It is saying, let’s get serious about taking care of each other. Let’s remember how precious we all are and how precious life is. Let’s take inventory of our civilization, strip it down to its studs, and see if we can build one more beautiful.

As Covid stirs our compassion, more and more of us realize that we don’t want to go back to a normal so sorely lacking it. We have the opportunity now to forge a new, more compassionate normal.

Hopeful signs abound that this is happening. The United States government, which has long seemed the captive of heartless corporate interests, has unleashed hundreds of billions of dollars in direct payments to families. Donald Trump, not known as a paragon of compassion, has put a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. Certainly one can take a cynical view of both these developments; nonetheless, they embody the principle of caring for the vulnerable.

From all over the world we hear stories of solidarity and healing. One friend described sending $100 each to ten strangers who were in dire need. My son, who until a few days ago worked at Dunkin’ Donuts, said people were tipping at five times the normal rate – and these are working class people, many of them Hispanic truck drivers, who are economically insecure themselves. Doctors, nurses, and “essential workers” in other professions risk their lives to serve the public. Here are some more examples of the love and kindness eruption, courtesy of ServiceSpace:

Perhaps we’re in the middle of living into that new story. Imagine Italian airforce using Pavoratti, Spanish military doing acts of service, and street police playing guitars — to *inspire*. Corporations giving unexpected wage hikes. Canadians starting “Kindness Mongering.” Six year old in Australia adorably gifting her tooth fairy money, an 8th grader in Japan making 612 masks, and college kids everywhere buying groceries for elders. Cuba sending an army in “white robes” (doctors) to help Italy. A landlord allowing tenants to stay without rent, an Irish priest’s poem going viral, disabled activitists producing hand sanitizer. Imagine. Sometimes a crisis mirrors our deepest impulse — that we can always respond with compassion.

As Rebecca Solnit describes in her marvelous book, A Paradise Built in Hell, disaster often liberates solidarity. A more beautiful world shimmers just beneath the surface, bobbing up whenever the systems that hold it underwater loosen their grip.

For a long time we, as a collective, have stood helpless in the face of an ever-sickening society. Whether it is declining health, decaying infrastructure, depression, suicide, addiction, ecological degradation, or concentration of wealth, the symptoms of civilizational malaise in the developed world are plain to see, but we have been stuck in the systems and patterns that cause them. Now, Covid has gifted us a reset.

A million forking paths lie before us. Universal basic income could mean an end to economic insecurity and the flowering of creativity as millions are freed from the work that Covid has shown us is less necessary than we thought. Or it could mean, with the decimation of small businesses, dependency on the state for a stipend that comes with strict conditions. The crisis could usher in totalitarianism or solidarity; medical martial law or a holistic renaissance; greater fear of the microbial world, or greater resiliency in participation in it; permanent norms of social distancing, or a renewed desire to come together.

What can guide us, as individuals and as a society, as we walk the garden of forking paths? At each junction, we can be aware of what we follow: fear or love, self-preservation or generosity. Shall we live in fear and build a society based on it? Shall we live to preserve our separate selves? Shall we use the crisis as a weapon against our political enemies? These are not all-or-nothing questions, all fear or all love. It is that a next step into love lies before us. It feels daring, but not reckless. It treasures life, while accepting death. And it trusts that with each step, the next will become visible.

Please don’t think that choosing love over fear can be accomplished solely through an act of will, and that fear too can be conquered like a virus. The virus we face here is fear, whether it is fear of Covid-19, or fear of the totalitarian response to it, and this virus too has its terrain. Fear, along with addiction, depression, and a host of physical ills, flourishes in a terrain of separation and trauma: inherited trauma, childhood trauma, violence, war, abuse, neglect, shame, punishment, poverty, and the muted, normalized trauma that affects nearly everyone who lives in a monetized economy, undergoes modern schooling, or lives without community or connection to place. This terrain can be changed, by trauma healing on a personal level, by systemic change toward a more compassionate society, and by transforming the basic narrative of separation: the separate self in a world of other, me separate from you, humanity separate from nature. To be alone is a primal fear, and modern society has rendered us more and more alone. But the time of Reunion is here. Every act of compassion, kindness, courage, or generosity heals us from the story of separation, because it assures both actor and witness that we are in this together.

I will conclude by invoking one more dimension of the relationship between humans and viruses. Viruses are integral to evolution, not just of humans but of all eukaryotes. Viruses can transfer DNA from organism to organism, sometimes inserting it into the germline (where it becomes heritable). Known as horizontal gene transfer, this is a primary mechanism of evolution, allowing life to evolve together much faster than is possible through random mutation. As Lynn Margulis once put it, we are our viruses.

And now let me venture into speculative territory. Perhaps the great diseases of civilization have quickened our biological and cultural evolution, bestowing key genetic information and offering both individual and collective initiation. Could the current pandemic be just that? Novel RNA codes are spreading from human to human, imbuing us with new genetic information; at the same time, we are receiving other, esoteric, “codes” that ride the back of the biological ones, disrupting our narratives and systems in the same way that an illness disrupts bodily physiology. The phenomenon follows the template of initiation: separation from normality, followed by a dilemma, breakdown, or ordeal, followed (if it is to be complete) by reintegration and celebration.

Now the question arises: Initiation into what? What is the specific nature and purpose of this initiation?The popular name for the pandemic offers a clue: coronavirus. A corona is a crown. “Novel coronavirus pandemic” means “a new coronation for all.”

Already we can feel the power of who we might become. A true sovereign does not run in fear from life or from death. A true sovereign does not dominate and conquer (that is a shadow archetype, the Tyrant). The true sovereign serves the people, serves life, and respects the sovereignty of all people. The coronation marks the emergence of the unconscious into consciousness, the crystallization of chaos into order, the transcendence of compulsion into choice. We become the rulers of that which had ruled us. The New World Order that the conspiracy theorists fear is a shadow of the glorious possibility available to sovereign beings. No longer the vassals of fear, we can bring order to the kingdom and build an intentional society on the love already shining through the cracks of the world of separation.

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