Corona Virus and the Animal Within Us
- By Om Prakash Dwivedi
Modern society, as Byung Chul Han, incisively points out, is a “burnout society,” for it is driven and governed by the unequal structures of capitalism and its deep desire to immunize itself from others—races, cultures, nations—thus making a palpable distinction between the self and the other, the known and the unknown, the native and the alien, so forth and so on.
We live in an age of achievement and progress; the lack of it, therefore, entails panic and depression. The present pandemic crisis of COVID-19 could be a direct result of man’s desire to walk away with deepened pockets. The thing about viruses is that they can be found everywhere and nowhere. Some common viruses are certainly worth mentioning, including human viruses, animal viruses, and computer viruses. Of these, the human virus of greed is the most dangerous, because it has no antidote and it spreads widely.
I am not an epidemiologist; however, it takes little expertise to understand that COVID-19 belongs to the coronavirus family and that it was transferred from animals to humans in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The very ability of the virus to transmit and hit humans has led to unprecedented crisis across the world, with the death rate constantly increasing—3.4% according to the WHO Director General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. This high figure has once again caused a resurgence of stereotypes about of the “sick man of Asia” or the “Chinese virus.” However, to see this pandemic through a racial lens alone would be naïve, as it obfuscates the larger issues that have unfolded from the present crisis. Humans have convincingly demonstrated that the source to all their problems lies in the existence of others, including animals. But what about the humans that are more animalistic in nature, and that have little or no sense of co-existing with nature? Or, for that matter, what triggers the transmission of animal viruses into human beings? Racialists fail to understand that human beings cannot exist in isolation; our lives are interconnected and interwoven on the larger canvas that we call “the world.” Yet our worlding of the world has been too self-centric, and, therefore, problematic. The present crisis is dangerous to such an extent that it isn’t wrong to say that it takes us back to the Leviathan State, “where every man is enemy to every man.” Herein lies the problem: we need to understand that the violence against others, sooner or later, results in violence against the self. The spread of COVID-19 accentuates this phenomenon.
COVID-19, for obvious reasons, has exposed weak public health policies and the attendant social inequities; governments seem to have no option but to close down, and in few cases even seize the borders, to shut down flights, to lock down cities. Testing kits are in severe shortage, forget the vaccines. One must become a carrier of COVID-19 to get tested (assuming, of course, that s/he is alive to get that done). Or, one must be rich and wealthy—recall the recent news conference at the White House where Trump was asked if “the well-connected go to the front of the line.” It is increasingly disappointing to see that governments have learnt very few lessons from the long history of pandemics. They apparently seem to have more money for artificial intelligence than for the human variety(so let’s now ask artificial intelligence to bail us out from this crisis); they cut health care and education, but add more to bail out and fund the fat bellies of the sturdy corporate elites.
This pandemic has exposed the bitter realities of the utilitarian nature, not only of capitalists, but also of certain leaders from across the world. The crisis broke several months ago, yet it has been shocking to witness the absence of adequate testing systems. This is a moment of global crisis and hence demands deeper attention and careful intervention. We need to rethink seriously about the cracks exposed in our health care and economy. To write off the coronavirus emergency simply as a medical crisis would be a Faustian error.
It is, in fact, based on a bigger humanitarian crisis, one which is an outcome of neoliberal policies. A careful look at the working conditions of the workers in China (for China is supposedly culpable of spreading this virus) would make us realise this horrendous reality. Most of them are made to work like animals, devoid of any health care policies, much less favourable salaries or hygenic working conditions. We all know that China is the world’s largest exporter, but very few are sufficiently conscious of the inhuman labour that goes behind that production. While we enjoy Chinese products, we fail to register the sufferings, pain, and loss of lives that resulted in that product. They are subject to the potentially lethal air within coal mines, and large amounts of carbon emissions in their workplaces. Several research studies have suggested that respiratory diseases remains one of the top five causes of mortality in China. COVID-19 could be the latest addition to that list. This state of affairs will continue as long as neoliberal policies are in force, for these policies aren’t bothered in the least about health or social welfare; in fact, what they need are places where labour is cheap, where raw materials are easily available, and where they have the freedom to do away with any kind of environmental regulations.
It is commonplace to suggest that crises like these are also a moment for capitalising gains and profits. Stockpiling things for daily needs, such as food, water and toilet paper has become the new normal. The fear of death is so deep and pervasive that everyone is trying to win out over the other humans in this pandemic moment. Online education has been prioritised, and rightly so, to combat the pressing crisis. One only hopes that this doesn’t become a permanent practice of higher education, for it would result not only in the dilution of education, but also in lay-offs of faculty. In other sectors, thousands have already lost their jobs, and many workers have been forced to go on leave without pay. And then we have Trump, apparently trying to lure German scientists working on the coronavirus vaccines with huge amount of money and US citizenship. There has been a mad rush to develop the first vaccine, not for any noble cause, but for maximising profit it would produce. For this is indeed a time that desperately demands vaccination. But then, this is also a time that demands vaccination from the self-centric nature of capitalism and neoliberal policies. Such a time calls for new forms of imagination, for one must remember that we can only build what we can imagine. There is no need to change the planet, a change of thinking would do us just as well. Failing that, H.G Wells’s premonition—“What on earth was he, man or animal?”—might well turn out to be true.
The pandemic has certainly raised serious questions about where we are headed. Hannah Arendt sees this human progression as dangerous one. She argues that “man may be… on the point of developing into the animal species from which, since Darwin, he imagines he has come.” Seen from the capitalist position, man has become a cog in the machine. Such views are further reinforced by Byung Chul Han, who argues that “the new Human type, helplessly exposed to the excess of Positivity, is deprived of any sense of agency. The depressive person is this animal laborans (working animals) that exploits itself, voluntarily, without coercion. They are both culprit and victim.” It takes little intelligence to understand that post-coronovirus period could spell ominously precarious times ahead for human beings as workers, labourers and producers.
Since nothing in nature is permanent, this too shall pass. But the most pressing question is whether we are ready to learn a lesson from this pandemic and to strive for more awareness about the environment. Our viruses and our environment may be perceived as two different things, but even a cursory look at the human history is enough to suggest a pattern: the more rapid the progress, the bigger the environmental crisis. Progress has forced animals to move into cities and has opened up ways for the transmission of animal microbes to human pathogens. In this regard, an embittered Larry Brilliant writes that, “Outbreaks are inevitable, but pandemics are optional”—all of us have the option of continuing with the disruption of nature or rethinking how to carve out a collective future. Humans cannot live alone, and the present pandemic suggests that even death could be collective. Hence we need to rethink, not only our relationship with nature and animals, but also the animal within us. It is time that we turn our attention to Sri Aurobindo’s “integral philosophy”—a perspective that includes everything and excludes nothing, and in so doing, that caters to the well-being of the entire world.
Remember the choice we make, for this will be the choice that shapes our collective future. We are all equally responsible for the kind of life that we give to our future generations on EARTH.
Om Prakash Dwivedi is the Head of the School of Liberal Arts and Human Science, AURO University, Surat. He is also the Deputy Chair of the international research network, Challenging Precarity: A Global Network. He sits on the advisory board of the international journal, Journal of Postcolonial Writing (London: Routledge). Dwivedi is the author of Re-Orientalism and Indian Writing in English (Palgrave, UK), Human Rights and Postcolonial India (Routledge, UK & India) and Indian Writing in English and the Global Literary Market (Palgrave, UK)
