Or Can Coronavirus Begin to Reverse the Anger, Hate, and Division of the Last Decade?
Apr 13, 2020
Member-only
Save
For the last month or so, we’ve been living, suddenly, in a different world. Suddenly, the animals took over the parks and the fish returned to the canals and streams. You and I? Locked down, at home, sometimes frightened, often wondering, huddling together for consolation. Will things ever be the same? But should they be?
Maybe, just maybe, Coronavirus is the kick in the pants we needed. I know — that’s a gross thing to say. I don’t mean to minimize the pain. I do want to talk about the other side of pain, though: growth.
One of the themes I’ve been discussing is the need for a rapid evolution of human consciousness — at least if we want civilization to endure and persist through the 21st century. You’d be forgiven for thinking I was talking abstract theoretical nonsense — until, well, now. Because you’ve felt it now, too.
The sudden sense of togetherness.Clapping, for humble nurses and doctors. Songs breaking out from balconies. Entire nations united, for the first time in a very long time. The average person, mostly, exercising a little bit of wisdom, restraint, courage. All those are tiny glimmers of human consciousness expanding. Don’t you feel different these days? Sure — you’re bored, maybe. Anxious, restless, weary. We all are. But don’t you also feel, well, little closer to those you love? As if time counts again, in deeper ways? As if you’re rediscovering the things that matter again? As if courage and truth and purpose all seem to really count, once more?
So. The evolution of human consciousness. I mean things like this — and yes, I reallymeanthem: planetary scale empathy, intimacy amongst us at an existential scale, a sense of beauty between us so profound it shakes us to our core, the idea that every being is equal to any other one, the innate knowledge that every single being on this planet, from you and me to a tree to a bee deserves dignity, worth, freedom, the feeling that happiness doesn’t come from who you can look down on in a social hierarchy of money and status, but from what you have created, made, discovered, revealed, expressed, shared, in societies where money and status and resources aren’t kept artificially scarce.
I am talking — like a fool, perhaps — about titanic shifts in what you might call our basic human competencies, our emotional limits, our powers, from empathy to truth to wisdom to courage to nobility. I mean the way that we are taught to think and feel about ourselves and the world and everything in it has to mature and expand, now, fast. Why? Well, otherwise, we stay on the same path we’ve been on, which is…a fast descent into the abyss, at the hands of lunatics, sociopaths, and morons who’d make Caligula blush, like…the entire Trump family.
So first let me discuss what the evolution of human consciousnessisn’t.You’d have to be a fool or a pundit to have missed it — but I repeat myself: the tide of authoritarian-fascism which swept the globe over the last decade or so. Americans elected Trump, the lunatic, who’s now overseeing death on a mass scale. Brits Brexited, and nastiness towards Europeans became a thing to be proud of. Indians elected Modi, Filipinos Duterte, and so forth. The list is endless. Even in wise Europe, fascists walk the halls of the Bundestag.
This is the withering, the shrinkage, the reduction of human consciousness. To what? To a dark ember, burning bright — of pure self preservation. “Only I matter! My tribe! We will be Great Again!! Those dirty, filthy others are the source of all our problems — and if I help get rid of them, daddy will love me the most!” Daddy, being, of course, Trump, Farage, Putin, Modi.
What I mean by the reduction of human consciousness, then, is this.Regression towards infantile narcissism, which is what the thought pattern above really is. Ego takes over, and regresses straight back to a wounded infantile state, fighting for significance, meaning, the sense that one matters and counts. For the love of an omnipotent, omniscient father figure — which is the greatest reward there is to such a mind (which, incidentally, is why youstillcan’t argue with Trumpists, Brexiters, and other kinds of hyper-nationalists. They are not thinking at all: they are only wounded children, seeking Daddy’s love and protection)
Why would people be seeking the love and protection of father figures — who are lunatic despots, cruel and wicked demagogues, cartoon villains? It should tell us something: how desperate people have grown. Because societies the way that we have built them deny us both the sense that we matter — the feeling of being loved — and the sense that we are safe, the feeling of being secure.
Hence, we’ve become gigantic balls of insecurity.I don’t just mean the nationalists. I mean all of us. We’re trapped in a kind of rat race, which, over the last few decades, went technologically thermonuclear. It was bad enough when capitalism made you compete for a certain kind of car, house, kitchen, or else made you feel like you were nobody. But today, the situation is much worse.
On the one hand, societies have massive deficits of public goods, which means the average person’s life has grown more insecure in real terms. How can you be secure about your health or retirement or income or savings when, like the average American, you don’t have much if any social systems to provide it?
On the other hand, technology has wired us together in ways that are deeply toxic for the human soul.We look at someone pretending to be perfect on Instagram or Facebook, a rush of envy surges through us — that’s dopamine and serotonin both leaving the system — and so we chase that perfection ourselves. I’ve got to have an Instagram ready body, home, wardrobe, life. If everyone doesn’t click “like” — am I worth anything at all? I’ll do anything for the validation of the crowd, the mob, the masses. I’ll coat my feelings in irony and cynicism, I’ll never let on how I really feel. Meanwhile, the poor sap — the “influencer” — who’s the linchpin of this mess is just as miserable as you are, because guess what, likes don’t add up to a life.
Let’s call all that parasocialization — a kind of sociality that looks like the real thing, but is in fact it’s opposite, because it doesn’t really give us the things true sociality does, like trust, worth, meaning, purpose, bonds, and ultimately, happiness.
Put these two forces together — economic stagnation and technological parasocialization — and you have a recipe for a disaster in human consciousness. Both create a kind of perfect storm of narcissism, regressing us right back to the wounded children most of us never really learned how to stop being. Capitalism’s artificial scarcities make self-preservation paramount materially — you have to fight everyone else, over and over again, like in America, just to have a chance at healthcare, retirement, education, income and so forth. And parasocial technology does the same thing in the soul: it creates artificial scarcities of trust, respect, worth, meaning, purpose. Why do you have to click “like”, anyways? See how the assumption is scarcity? That you probablydon’tlike that person, thought, idea, expression? In that way, our “social” technologies are actually antisocial.
That perfect storm of narcissism resulted, predictably, in a tidal wave of authoritarian fascism sweeping the globe, in record time.Just a decade ago, you would have laughed at the idea that Donald Trump as President presides over concentration camps and raids and purges and dehumanization written into law. And yet here we are. So none of this is abstract or theoretical. It is all very real.
What happens when a civilization denies people worth, purpose, meaning — and suddenly, there’s a demagogue cooing at them that they’ll be Great Again, that he can give them all that and more? Bang! Many of them believe it, and will do anything he asks — anything — for it. Like Brexiters, like Trumpists.
Now think about the ways, suddenly, we have grown.Or at least the glimmers of growth we’ve seen over the last few weeks — and how different they are from the last few years. Instead of hating who the demagogues tell us to — Europeans in Britain, Mexicans in America, Muslims in India, Christians in the Arab world — we clap from our balconies for the doctors and nurses, whoever they might me. Instead of cheering on the dehumanization of the hated other, we look at pictures of animals sunning themselves in parks — and smile. Instead of shouting down even people on our own side, over, say, gender pronouns, like the leftists tell us to — we admire the bravery and ethic of the simple delivery crew. Instead of lionizing the tycoon and billionaire, suddenly, we’re awed by the courage of the humble check-out worker. We worry about money, it’s true, still — and yet there we are, surrounded by the ones we love, and suddenly, there’s a feeling we haven’t had enough of in a long, long time. What is that feeling?
We are learning what happiness is.We are learning what trust is. What meaning is, what purpose is. We are rediscovering the true nature of sociality.
Western thinkers often wonder what happiness “is.” This way of thinking amuses someone like me, who’s just as comfortable with Eastern thought. Isn’t it obvious? Think of the examples above, from watching the animals sunning themselves in the park, to the courage of the checkout worker. All these things “make us happy” — and so they tell us what happiness is, too. Happiness is just me witnessing you realizing your potential. The potential of that little adorable guy sunning himself in the park, whether badger or kangaroo, isn’t just to hide away from us, and desperately try to eke out living. It’s freedom. It’s self-expression. It’s to nurture and raise and cherish their families, too. We see that happening — and whoosh: we’re happy.
We see the checkout worker, displaying such courage, strength, self-discipline. We’re happy, in a different way, this time, a steely admiration, a profound recognition.
Happiness is a kind of infection, too.It courses from me to you. It is a river flowing between all living things. I see the tiniest life expressing itself, realizing itself, reaching its potential — from a hummingbird to a bee — and suddenly, for no reason I can “explain”, I’m happy. But the explanation is simple. We are moral creatures.
We are social beings. It is our nature. Nobody can excise it from us. That is why we suddenly grow happy seeing anyone or anything, from the very smallest and humblest, realize their potential. That iswho we are.
Now. Why am I trying to teach you all this? Well, because it takes a lifetime — or more — to learn it. And that journey we call human consciousness: it’s growth, expansion, realization. That voyage we call maturity.
Let me explain. In my twenties — like you, perhaps — all my relationships were about my happiness. Did this person want to be with me in this way? Was I smart enough, talented enough, handsome enough, rich enough? And so on. It wasn’t until I almost died, in my thirties, that I learned to have a relationship where the other person’s happiness came first. Reader, I married her. But I don’t say that to toot my own horn, or moralize. I’m still a fairly terrible person, as my brave and wonderful doctor wife will tell you. I say that to draw out a lesson.
Happiness is a paradox: it comes from witnessing growth, participating in it, but not from hoarding it, or even trying to “have” it.You see, the immature mind, the regressed mind, the infantile mind, imagines that happiness is simply being safe and warm and taken care of by Mommy and Daddy forever. But when we try that approach in life, as we grow up, it fails. Our partners do not want to be our Mommies and Daddies. Neither does the planet, the animals, the world around us. They all want to be our equals.
But we haven’t been capable of living that way. Our systems and structures force us into “lifestyles” which are profoundly exploitative and abusive. Exploitation and abuse trickle down, just as in America, where the middle class middle manager’s real job is to find some poor schmuck to overcharge for healthcare or finance and so on, and the billionaires job is to exploit the middle class family trying to make ends meet.
That way of life is coming to an end. That chapter of human history is now closing. We cannot go on living that way.What happens when we do? We regress further and deeper. The insecurities and wounds of that kind of way of life — battling each other, over and over, every single day, for healthcare, retirement, education, worth, purpose, meaning — they leave us genuinely traumatized, broken in the spirit. We turn to demagogues and fascists for validation, safety, comfort. We become wounded children, turning to omnisicent, omnipotent Daddy — and and we’ll do anything to earn his love and validation, even hating our neighbours and friends.
Wham!! And then, out of nowhere, while the steps of this fatal dance are played out, catastrophe strikes. Why? Because a civilization of wounded children eagerly pandering to vain and cruel surrogate father figures cannot take care of anything.Anything. It’s planet. It’s societies. It’s future.Itself.
Think about all that for a moment. How we were — maybe not you personally — but as societies, just a few months ago. How hateful and anxious and embittered the feeling and sentiment was — and how huge portions of us seemed to have no other purpose in life left but to please our new surrogate father figures. Themoreabusive they grew. Think of how wounded children act like that, in spite and rage. And now think of how different we seem. Those sudden glimmers of growth. The applause from the balconies, the togetherness, the sudden intimacy, the sense of sudden, explosive empathy, grace, courage, truth, beauty, wisdom, pouring through us.
Think of how we are rediscovering what happiness itself really is — me seeing you grow, and you seeing me realize myself. How that teaches us what we truly are: social beings, in the truest and most profound sense there is. Alone, we begin to wither, like plants without sun, like a sea with no rivers. We are being taught, my friends, what maturity really is. About the kind of people we need to keep on becoming, in order for the 21st century to be a good one, a one worth living in.
I’m not just saying that. Stop for a moment, and really think about that, until you begin to see it, too. Why? So you get the point.
Coronavirus is teaching us something. The kind of people we need to become.It put a sudden stop to our descent into regression, egotism, self-preservation — the one forced on us by a perfect storm of failed systems. And instead, gave us a chance to mature, to grow, to remember what the journey of human consciousness has always really been about. We have always been striving to be more expansive. More loving. More empathic. More noble, kind, just, fair, free. That is who we are.
That is why the human storyisone at all.
The question this century is whether we remember all that — or whether, as this crisis fades, we go back to trying desperately to forget who we have always been, and why they took it away from us to begin with. (The answer is: there’s nothing that makes a cruel man richer than taking away another person’s soul.) Maybe, in that strange way, Coronavirus is the kick in the pants we needed.
UmairApril 2020
