Human Dilemma, Coronavirus and the Quest for Lost Glory

There are epochs in history when all our dearly-held assumptions go for a toss. When yesterday seems to be a forgone past of halcyon days that have been robbed from us, and when the thought of tomorrow brings anxious foreboding, interspersed with the fleeting hope for a return, for salvation after the ordeal, for the glimmer of a dazzling array of light at the end of the tunnel.

When we witness the crumbling of all grand ‘too big to collapse’ edifices, and the moldering of reliquaries of eternal progress buzzwords and Neo-age gospels of modernity.

At this juncture, either we despondently view the twilight before our eyes, earnestly awaiting a new dawn, or stoically stand up to the moment and defy the absurd by carrying on with our lives and maintaining a semblance of the usual deportment.

Illusionary hopes

Isn’t the gallant saga of human endeavor and fortitude one that has been repackaged and disseminated the most? From modern day motivational bestsellers to the recurrent myth of the underdog who avenges all wrongs and then one fine day rises from ashes like a quintessential phoenix.

The dénouement signifies human yearning for optimism, the desire to find stability at the end of precipice, and the enduring vision of gradual progress, one step at a time, leading us to a final destination and fulfilling the divination of a manifest destiny: And they lived happily ever after!

The theme of return, of mystically being transposed to where we truly belong, no matter how redoubtable the foe of time and how treacherous the vicissitudes of destiny, flames human imagination in all spheres, from the most sublime and arcane, to the banal and quotidian.

But what if, the place of return never was steady?

Welsh has a beautiful word called Hiraeth that has no equivalent translation in any other language. It means longing and nostalgia for a home that perhaps never existed.

Corona reckoning

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the world faces similar predicament.

Not of a return to the hustle-bustle of the city square, a quite promenade in a garden, sipping cappuccino in a nearby café, getting to the workplace after navigating through gridlocks and listening to the cacophony of blaring horns. Or a soiree with colleagues and friends after work, ambling in glittering malls for window shopping, and setting on an impromptu road trip.

These are minor footnotes in the account of irretrievable loss and will be compensated, sooner or later.

The far bigger loss is of the agency of autonomous human, of the idea of efficient, resilient architectures of the mindscape, and re-imagining a world of utmost efficiency, immune to any external shocks.

Aided by technology, buttressed by ingenuity and built by the indefatigable human spirit, the myth of uninterrupted breakneck progress ‘’for the best in all possible worlds’’ has been eroded. If anything compounds the sheer unpredictability of the outbreak and its pervasive reach, it is the manner in which it caught the world off guard — everyone is clueless, other than speculation, trial & error and shots in the dark.

It has attacked at the kernel of human self-belief, impugned inter-generational narratives, exposed the epistemological limits of our pursuits and the underlying fragility that is increasing with inter-connectivity, hyper mobility. And despite all the other vaunted advances and trappings of ‘one small village’ world.

Forging the new?

In the 19th century, during the nascent era of nation-states, industrialization and modernism, when the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said ‘God is Dead’, the metaphor was more profound than what it is commonly and mistakenly assumed today: pronouncement of the triumph of atheistic materialism over belief, tradition and idealism.

What he meant was - old order of ideas, values, social relationships, political formations and the link between individual aspiration and societal superstructure has drastically transformed, so what gave essence and meaning to it is now futile and no redundant.

The constellation had irrevocably changed form and the one who will still rely on it for navigating the starry sky, will be misled.

We are at the same crossroads today and it’s not god but the fetish of unbounded rationalism and chimerical self-seeking growth that is suddenly seeming so hollow and specious. Perhaps the demise of the glorification of human rationality?

Imprints on sand

There are parallels with the outbreak of Spanish Flu Influenza in 1918 and the Bubonic Plague of 14th century and rather prescient analysis of how both of these events played a much larger role in unimaginable social and political transformation, organically set in motion after great misery, ravaging of entire cities, destruction of commerce and streets strewn with cadavers.

Bubonic plague accelerated the demise of the Dark Ages which paved the way for enlightenment and the broadening of the human horizon.

In the same vein, the extravagance and flamboyance of the Jazz Age of the ‘Roaring 20s’ was preceded by the deadly Spanish Flu that devoured millions of lives and wreaked havoc on a colossal scale.

Those perennially optimistic will be quick to deduce a correlation between the cyclic and periodic trajectory of human history, or how pandemics surface after a century and act as catalysts to turn the world anew.

Technopia or history’s curse?

With the rapid and manifold increase in the deployment and utilization of technologies like AI, IoT, Deep Learning, Cloud, Drones, Sensors, the above argument is not entirely without merit.

Coronavirus has spurred digitalization and fastened the embrace of these technologies, which are going to be ubiquitous and render swathes of professionals across sectors unemployed. The Fourth Industrial Revolution it is termed. This grand and invasive remaking of everything will pan out faster than we imagine and then perhaps constant surveillance and data monitoring/ tracking will be as acceptable and legitimized as a heavily armed posse at roadside.

For good or worse, remains to be seen. But overall, the upcoming conundrum and existential dilemma is a fait accompli.

Whether it’s an inexorable process with men merely as instruments and cogs in the wheel, or a few ‘great men’ and extraordinary situations will arise and upturn the dynamics of the game completely, can neither be anticipated nor calculated on any AI-powered gizmo.

What will remain unchanged, however, will be the element of vulnerability to similar outbreaks. More foolproof and sophisticated tech systems we design, the more will be the probability of their abrupt failure and eventual befuddlement and derangement.

The inimitable and brilliant John Gray wrote in an article in New Statesman, “The restoration they have in mind will be an enhanced, re-energized, super duper version of the old order. But however embellished, it will still be the ancién regime. It is a nostalgic vision, and plainly hallucinatory”

History follows a pattern, but seldom the one that we predict or one that is hurled in the direction of any clairvoyant meta-narrative theorizing. The castles that we build are like imprints on sand, and over a period of time, they relapse back into nothingness. And the continuum proceeds with the same rigmarole until one day it is derailed and comes to a juddering halt.

Yet the quest for ‘lost times’ and towards the luminescence of the human destiny continues unabated. History teaches us that we are not equipped to learn from it.