Being in the Republic of Fear

Pic, courtesy www.dailymirror.lk

Just over a year ago terrorists adhering to the Islamic faith (as interpreted by them), i.e. the National Thowheeth Jama'ath or ‘National Monotheism Organization,’ executed several brutal attacks that left over 300 people dead, an equal or more number injured, caused much damage to the establishments targeted and wrecked the tourist industry.

The following is a part of some observations that my niece, Duranya Freeman, penned from Colorado, USA: ‘Every terrorist has a goal: to make us fear what we love the most. To force us to feel that nowhere is safe. Yet terrorists only truly succeed when they divide us. When our inner fear turns outwards and we start pointing fingers at one another.’

Today, we are faced with a different kind of threat. There’s no identifiable terrorist here, but terror there certainly is. The effect is the same even though there’s no real ‘objective’ that we can discern. It has, in Duranya’s words, ‘made us fear what we love the most, forced us to feel that nowhere is safe.’ It can and in certain ways has divided us. And we do see inner fear turning outwards. There’s enough finger-pointing too.

Eran Wickramaratne, pastor cum politician, made an interesting point in an interview recently. The caption under the link to the relevant YouTube video read, 'හරි ගියහම ආණ්ඩුව, වරදුනහම ජනතාව -- එරාන් හතර අතට නෙළයි.’ [hari giyahama aanduwa, veradunahama janathaava — eran hathara athata nelai]. The point Eran makes is interesting and true. When things go right, the government takes the credit, but when things go wrong it’s the people who are at fault,’ he states and the statement is ‘flourished’ so to speak by his fans for whom Eran has whacked left and right.

It is correct, but it’s only part of the story. Flip it and Eran doesn’t quite look the hero his fan(s) believe he is: ‘When things go right, it’s the people (security forces, police, others in the public sector, especially medical personnel) but when things go wrong, it’s the Government.’

That’s finger-pointing and possibly prompted by fear/arrogance that have little to do with Covid-19.  The more serious manifestation is ostracizing particular categories of people. Stigma. That’s the word. The first detection of an infected person  was ‘news’ of course. The first death too. Certain sections of the media pounced on it. The particular individual’s basic right to dignity and self-respect was brushed aside. Sure, fear might have played a role, but that doesn’t explain the shameless salivating exhibited by certain media houses. It was as though they were reporting about a mass murderer, not a patient.

Then it was the Muslims who were ostracized on account of the identity of several of those among the first to succumb to the virus, helped in no small measure of course by certain fundamentalist Muslim groups who raised a hue and cry over the method of disposing bodies. There was fear there, one might argue, worry over divine wrath if you will as per particular readings of religious texts, but politics had a hand too.

Now it is the turn of the security forces, in particular the Navy simply because some sailors picked up the virus in the course of duty, a duty which was part of a national drive to protect the entire citizenry, mind you.

Of course, the nature of the virus does indicate that no one is safe and there are no safe places to hide. What we need to understand however is that we don’t help ourselves or each other by letting fear dictate our choices, be it word or deed.

Now there is a fairly broad protection regime that has been recommended. ‘Stay home’ captures much of it. Outside of the specifics, however, there is a term that might help us dig deeper into the dilemma and obtain more wholesome answers. Dasein.

Dasein is a German word [da as in ‘there’ and sein meaning ‘being’. Pronounced as daːzaɪn, it means, ‘being there,’ or ‘presence.’ Apparently it is translated into English as ‘existence.’ The German philosopher Martin Heidegger is said to have used the word to refer to the experience of being that is peculiar to human beings. Now that would be broad and rather embarrassing. For our (as in the human species) ‘being’ has been a threat to the entire planet, its flora and fauna, natural cycles and indeed overall health, not to mention a threat to ourselves as well.

Can’t we just be? We have been forced to reconsider ourselves, our behavior, our ‘non-negotiables’ even. And in the collapse of the dimensions of our collective ‘being’ species threatened by the systems we have put in place or are forced to live within, are actually breathing better. And it’s not just the creatures we have as a collective treated as dispensable in the pursuit of objectives; Colombo’s air and water quality have improved, for example.

We have discovered ways of being that are, well, ‘not all that bad,’ even though we’ve had to do without dozens of things and activities which we previously believed are of utmost import for a meaningful existence (or ‘being’). All of a sudden, the ‘imperative’ of a corporate/profit driven set of processes (for the betterment of one and all via ‘trickle down effect’ barring of course the thousands that have to starve or be killed for reasons of sustaining these systems) looks silly. It is interesting that such entities and their apologists are even now clamoring for bailouts from governments in the name of those they exploit. ‘We can’t afford to have businesses closing down because this means people will be out of jobs and won’t be able to feed their families,’ they cry.

Their ‘being’ and the ’being/beings’ of the system they are part of, advocate and thrive in are very different from the being of the ordinary citizen and of course the ‘being’ of the earth.

We have to be. Our ‘being’ has to be different. In fact it may have to be the polar opposite of the being we’ve experienced, championed and thought was inevitable. Maybe that is the real fear. We may be terrified that things will not be the same ever again. However, if we stepped back or even stopped in our tracked and reflected on ‘being’ (or even decided ‘to be’ in a different kind of way) we might be less worried.

The entire world has realized that we live in a Republic of Fear. We can however decide to live in a Republic of Being. A county called Dasein in the most wholesome, compassionate and humble reading of that word.





This article was first published in the DAILY MIRROR [March 30, 2020]


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The Theory of Three Chillie Plants

I have a friend. Let me call him Nadesan. Now Nadesan left Sri Lanka more than 25 years ago when he was just five years old. The LTTE had robbed his family of the only asset they owned, a tractor. They managed to flee to Canada where life turned out to be very harsh. Nadesan made it through those tough years. Then he decided to visit Sri Lanka. And he decided this is the country where he wants to spend the rest of his life.

Young, endowed with an absolutely brilliant mind and possessed by a rare determination to set right every wrong he noticed, Nadesan, now married and with two children (at the time I first met him) talked to anyone and everyone he thought could help. Let me not get ahead of his epic story which, in a way, is just starting. Instead let me relate an observation he shared with me.

‘My father-in-law has grown chillies for many years. I figured that if enough households grew chillies, we can bring down the price and everyone will save a little bit of money.

‘I have met lots of people who complain about things. They say “the government didn’t do this, didn’t to that.” So I ask them “have you grown anything in your life?” And if they haven’t I ask them, “if you can’t even grow three chillie plants, what right do you have to complain?” And I give them some plants.’

Now all this was long before anyone had heard of Covid-19. This afternoon my wife related a ‘growing’ story. She had visited a nursery nearby. The person who ran it had said he had 50,000 rupees worth of vegetable plants which no one had wanted to buy. In fact he had offered free vegetable plants to people who came to buy flowering plants and that hadn’t worked either. Came Covid-19 and after a few weeks, he had managed to clear his stocks! 

Sri Lanka, then, has started growing in ways long abandoned when we embraced a different kind of ‘growth’. Growth of per capita GDP. Growth in the production of goods and services. Growth in capital goods, labor force, technology and human capital. Growth in aggregated market value.

All of these things went hand in hand with depletion. Depletion of forest cover. Depletion in community integrity. Depletion in solidarity. Depletion in the use of traditional technologies. Depletion in food security. Depletion in the earth’s capacity to maintain natural cycles. Depletion in fertility. Species depletion. Depletion in the ability to demand from and supply to the market.

There was ‘growth’ too, it must be acknowledged. Growth in CO2 emissions. Growth in wars. Growth in pollution. Growth in the production of weapons of mass destruction. Growth in the number and frequency of natural disasters. Growth in arrogance.

Covid-19 forced us to stop, metaphorically and literally. We stopped. We looked around. We looked ahead and things looked bleak. We looked behind and found a multitude of errors. We saw pathways abandoned so long ago that it was hard to even detect trace.

And we discovered or rather we are discovering that we got growth all wrong. We are realizing that growth took us up the garden path and away from the vegetable plots. The road taken glittered so much that we went blind. 

Three chillie plants. Think about it. We were reluctant to plant just one, weren’t we? We had hundreds of reasons not to, hadn’t we? We were high on complaints, low on self-reliance, weren’t we?

Three chillie plants. It would be very rare for anyone not to have the space to grow three chillie plants. Forget three chillie plants. How about just one?  Let that be a little something that gives you a little (not absolute) right to whine over things you don’t have (a lot of which you probably don’t need).

One chillie plant. Can we start there? Gut feeling: it will lead to two chillie plants and then three. And then other plants.

Nadesan doesn’t see himself as a visionary. He’s a hands-on, feet-rooted kind of person. He does not whine. Let’s raise a cheer to that young man who wishes to remain anonymous but has said and done something quite profound. No one has called it ‘Nadesan’s Theory of Three Chillie Plants.’ Not yet.  Forget the theory. Remember the plant. Remember to plant. 

Other articles in the series 'In Passing...':  [published in the 'Daily News']   

 

The story of an aththamma and an aththa

The underside of sequestering

Potters, named and unnamed

Eyes that watch the world and cannot be forgotten 

Gunnepana: Planet Earth's new name

Melodies in and out of the 64 squares

Let's raise an army of rain-makers

Happy birthday Raj Amirthiah

Let's not stop singing in the lifeboats
When the Welikada Prison was razed to the ground 
Looking for the idyllic in dismal times    
Water the gardens with the liquid magic of simple ideas, right now    
There's canvas and brush to paint the portraits of love    
We might as well arrest the house!
The 'village' in the 'city' has more heart than concrete
Vo, Italy: the village that stopped the Coronavirus    
We need 'no-charge' humanity 
The unaffordable, as defined by Nihal Fernando

Liyaashya keeps life alive, by living 

Heroes of our times Let's start with the credits, shall we? 
The 'We' that 'I' forgot 
 'Duwapang Askey,' screamed a legend, almost 40 years ago
Dances with daughters
Reflections on shameless writing
Is the old house still standing?
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Distance is a product of the will
Akalanka Athukorala, at 13+ already a hurricane hunter
Did the mountain move, and if so why?
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How far away are the faraway places?
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malindasenevi@gmail.com

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The underside of sequestering

You can't just suit up and keep deprivation away

 Curfews, lockdowns, quarantining and other forms of sequestering are not all bad. There are positives. There are signs that limited human activity is improving the health of the planet. Marginally of course and we really don’t know for how long. There’s a greater awareness of how utterly selfish we have been as a species. If there were doubts about over-consumption, they’ve been laid to rest. Needs and wants are scrambling to their true values. Collective has acquired greater value vis-a-vis the individual. We are rediscovering the world, the nation, the community, the neighborhood, the family and ourselves.

All good. 

We need to focus on positives. We need to keep the spirits high and depression at bay. We have to keep perspective. Abiding by and affirming the Sathara Brahma Viharana seems all the more sensible. The logic of conduct framed by compassion, loving kindness, rejoicing in others’ joys and equanimity is clearly compelling. 

There are thousands of feel-good stories. There are thousands of stories about people and the things they do or say, people who don’t make the news usually.

I heard about a female employee of the Colombo Municipal Council being interviewed on Derana TV. She said ‘me wasangathe iwara wunaama api hemotama awurudu ne, nedda mahattayo?’ [Once this pandemic is done it will be ‘avurudu’ for all of us, isn’t that so, sir?]

There’s softness, innocence, equanimity and conviction in those simple words. And then there are stories without quotes. Or names. People helping people. Not just the rich helping the poor. That also happens of course. It’s ‘news’ because, well, that’s not normal, for CSR projects are about brand-building mostly and target awards. It’s different when the humble think of sharing or giving.

All feel-good stuff. And yet, there’s an underside which romanticized rendition or rendition of the romantic can hide. There are the anomalies. Indeed there is the accentuation of anomalies and related deprivation.

If it’s about basics then it’s about food and medicine, assuming there is a roof over your head and you are clothed. Think of the urban poor. There’s no space to grow food. Everything has to be purchased. Now think of a person who is dependent on a daily wage. Curfew and other restrictions have effectively put a full stop to income earning opportunities.

Three-wheel drivers, mechanics, lorry drivers, bus conductors and those who labor in a myriad other ways don’t really earn enough to save. They don’t have disposable incomes. They can cut down on non-essentials, they can adjust consumption patterns, but they quickly run out of bucks. 

Let us not forget that the service sector dominates our economy. Let us not forget that a sizable portion of the population can neither demand from nor supply to the market. Let us not forget how big our informal sector is. Let us remember that a significant percentage of the people in these ‘areas’ are in a hand-to-mouth mode of existence.

And let’s not assume that they want handouts. I know many people in these categories who have told me that they are not beggars waiting for the government to give them food stamps. They want the opportunity to go out and earn some money. They are proud. They do understand the nature of the threat and the logic of restrictions, but they are the frontline of the hunger-army, so to speak. They get hit first.

In the USA and even here in Sri Lanka, the talk of ‘stimulus packages’ is about ensuring that corporates survive. It’s the trickle-down logic and one is reminded of that classic Beetle Bailey cartoon where the observation is made that money doesn’t trickle down, ‘only pain does.’

What happens to the nurse, the attendant, the person pumping petrol, the drivers of lorries that deliver vegetables, meats, eggs, other things essential and non-essential, the choon-paan malli, the other deliverers of everything and anything, from pizzas to gas, the pharmacy-assistant, the policeman and soldier at checkpoints, the PHI and the undertaker? What of their families?

Is it enough to say ‘you are our heroes!’? Is it enough to say ‘Kudos to our public service,’ and add, ‘we are sorry we vilified you guys left, right and center all the years’? And how long will it take to forget after we are through all this, hopefully soon? 

There’s an element of elitism in romanticizing the situation, lifting spirits and being positive notwithstanding. There’s an element of class privilege. And in the rush we forget or brush aside the structures that generate poverty. We ignore the laws, processes and institutional arrangement which inevitably create these conditions.

There’s an underside that’s not pretty. It’s an underside that doesn’t get written. It’s an underside, it can be argued, which is the bedrock on which glittering edifices are constructed. It is an underside that enables privilege. It can crumble and bring the mountains down. It can revolt and reorder the earth in more wholesome ways.

It won’t go away.  And while it exists, it should not be forgotten or buried in the romanticization or over-fragranced in the bloomage that is class privilege.

Other articles in the series 'In Passing...':  [published in the 'Daily News']   

 

Potters, named and unnamed

Eyes that watch the world and cannot be forgotten 

Gunnepana: Planet Earth's new name

Melodies in and out of the 64 squares

Let's raise an army of rain-makers

Happy birthday Raj Amirthiah

Let's not stop singing in the lifeboats
When the Welikada Prison was razed to the ground 
Looking for the idyllic in dismal times    
Water the gardens with the liquid magic of simple ideas, right now    
There's canvas and brush to paint the portraits of love    
We might as well arrest the house!
The 'village' in the 'city' has more heart than concrete
Vo, Italy: the village that stopped the Coronavirus    
We need 'no-charge' humanity 
The unaffordable, as defined by Nihal Fernando

Liyaashya keeps life alive, by living 

Heroes of our times Let's start with the credits, shall we? 
The 'We' that 'I' forgot 
 'Duwapang Askey,' screamed a legend, almost 40 years ago
Dances with daughters
Reflections on shameless writing
Is the old house still standing?
 Magic doesn't make its way into the classifieds
Small is beautiful and is a consolation  
Distance is a product of the will
Akalanka Athukorala, at 13+ already a hurricane hunter
Did the mountain move, and if so why?
Ever been out of Colombo?
Anya Raux educated me about Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA)
Wicky's Story You can always go to GOAT Mountain
Let's learn the art of embracing damage
Kandy Lake is lined with poetry
There's never a 'right moment' for love
A love note to an unknown address in Los Angeles
A dusk song for Rasika Jayakody
How about creating some history?
How far away are the faraway places?
There ARE good people!
Re-placing people in the story of schooldays   
When we stop, we can begin to learn
Routine and pattern can checkmate poetry
Janani Amanda Umandi threw a b'day party for her father 
Sriyani and her serendipity shop
Forget constellations and the names of oceans
Where's your 'One, Galle Face'?
Maps as wrapping paper, roads as ribbons
Yasaratne, the gentle giant of Divulgane  
Katharagama and Athara Maga
Victories are made by assists
Lost and found between weaver and weave
The Dhammapada and word-intricacies
S.A. Dissanayake taught children to walk in the clouds
White is a color we forget too often  
The most beautiful road is yet to meet a cartographer

malindasenevi@gmail.com

Read more

Gota, Parliament and the Question of Representation

Long before the 2019 Presidential Election, stalwarts of the United National Party (UNP) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and of course their closet lackeys painted Gotabaya Rajapaksa as a monster. Gotabaya was a Rajapaksa, after all, and Rajapaksas are the villains of the piece, as far as these worthies are concerned. From their point of view, then, it was a valid fear. Except for a few uncomfortable truths which they feign ignorance of. Let’s nutshell them.

Apart from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), no political formation has a track record of absolute brutality that can come close to matching the curriculum vitae of the UNP and JVP.

The Mahinda Rajapaksa tenure wasn’t without blemish of course. There are charges of extrajudicial killings in which the military was involved. Compare that with the extrajudicial killings of Tamil combatants and civilians during the 80s and 90s (i.e. during the presidencies of J.R. Jayewardene, Ranasinghe Premadasa and Chandika Kumaratunga).

There are as yet unresolved cases of abduction and/or murder which turned the likes of Upali Tennekoon, Keith Noyhr, Prageeth Ekneligoda, Lasantha Wickramatunga and Wasim Thajudeen into pin-up boys for the UNP and JVP come election time, the last of whom was buried, exhumed, buried and resurrected over and over again. Compare that with the as yet unresolved cases of abduction, torture and murder to the tune of 60,000, not counting proxy arrests, illegal detention and other kinds of harassment at the end of the 80s.

Then there’s the issue of media freedom. Again, Mahinda Rajapaksa was branded as THE Villain. Then again, whatever limits were imposed during his presidency (marked more by a switch from censorship to ownership than rules and/or intimidation) pale to little or nothing when compared with the excesses of the UNP in the 80s on the issue of gagging journalists and media houses. Yes, that was the time of the aadaradeeya sadaadaraneeya piyaano (Ranasinghe Premadasa) of the much inflated but eventually made-to-look-small puthaano (Sajith Premadasa).

The magnitude of the particular wrong or the play of relative merit does not however leave Mahinda Rajapaksa with a clean record. By association and of course because of the fact of temporal proximity, fear or at least mild trepidation about a Gotabaya presidency is certain understandable. The specter of a dictatorship which was conjured by Colombots, Candle Light Ladies, Funded Voices and the Rent-a-Signature Club was of course silly and more indicative of the despair that their favorites were on their way out than anything else. However, Gotabaya was a military man and therefore extrapolations were easy.

Except for a simple fact. 

He was in the end elected by a handsome margin. It was Gotabaya ‘The Doer’ or rather that element of his persona that was most appealing, especially since the yahapalana regime that he ousted by that victory was characterized by rank incompetence, palpable inefficiency and absolute cluelessness, not to mention a zealous desire to hurt the sentiments of the majority community. 

Parliamentary elections were on the cards. Only someone who is absolutely out of touch with Sri Lankan politics would have imagined that Parliament would not be dissolved when it completed 4.5 years in office as per the provisions in the 19th Amendment. So Parliament was dissolved. ‘Too early,’ people said AFTER they knew more about the nature of the Covid-19 pandemic.

So now, with parliament dissolved, elections postponed and with constitutional limitations about reconvening Parliament, we are faced with an additional question. What do we have to say about representation?

So let's talk representation. Let's start with provincial councils. Well, they've been dissolved for quite a while now, years in fact in some cases. No one, not even the most ardent of the devolutionists, has uttered one murmur of concern. 

It must be pointed out that Covid-19 has shown that this is actually a blessing. The USA, for example, is struggling to design and implement uniform policies to fight the pandemic because of its federal structure. The richer states in the USA and the richer provinces in Canada are inwardly focused. They want more face masks for themselves. The country can go to hell, in other words. Just imagine a federal Sri Lanka where the Western Province, clearly the richest, determines something along the following lines: ‘To hell with the other provinces, let’s focus on saving ourselves.’ It won’t help, considering the behavior of the virus, but then the survival chances of the poorer provinces are immediately compromised.

Sri Lanka has, for all intents and purposes, a central command which is all the more accentuated in a situation where there’s no sitting Parliament. Apart from the local government bodies, it is only the office of the President that has representative legitimacy.

Now some have clamored for a reconvening of Parliament. Constitutional conundrums aside, this is a joke. The Parliament elected in August 2015 is no longer legitimate. Yes, this also means that the cabinet is illegitimate, but that’s another story. Reconvening a Parliament whose composition does not reflect the sentiments of the voting population is an insult to the spirit of representation. We cannot look back. The problem is that it is not easy to look ahead either.

Holding elections, some have argued, would compromise efforts to combat the spread of the virus. However, there are precautions that can be taken. The basic rules of social-distancing can be adhered to in both campaigning and voting. No meetings, no crowds, not even pocket meetings or door-to-door campaigning in the way we have got used to. Candidates will have to find different ways of reaching the voter, just as vendors have succeeded in reaching the consumer over the past four weeks or so.

That’s all in the land of speculation at this point. There’s a matrix which includes constitutional provisions/limitations and the advice of authorities relevant to fighting Covid-19 based on knowledge of the pandemic (which is getting updated all the time but subject to the caveat, ‘what we know now could be close to nothing compared to what we are ignorant of). And so, we cannot predict how things will unfold. 

In the event  there is a Parliamentary election soon, however, we would get a legislative that is representative (as opposed to one that has long lost its legitimacy and as such its right to represent). Until then, we have Gotabaya Rajapaksa, for good or bad, better or worse. 

Until then, we have a system where the state sector, led by the suvaviruwo, the tri-forces and the police. They are doing a hard but determined and highly commendable job. No question about this. There is a danger, though. If, for example, Sri Lanka succeeds in combating the threat under a Gotabaya Rajapaksa presidency sans a functioning Parliament, there would be many who would consider it proof positive that we can do without one. Indeed, even right now that are people who are thankful that Parliament is dissolved because 'it would be an unnecessary distraction'. Secondly, the ability to overcome a threat of this kind could also plant seeds of ‘legitimacy’ for continued military dominance in civil affairs. 

What needs to be recognized however is that crises such as this are anomalies. Sudden, unexpected and monumental threats may need extraordinary responses which shelve certain protocols but there is a danger of that being turned into ‘the normal state of affairs’ when it comes to governance. 

We need representation. Right now, for all intents and purposes, the best representative we have in terms of overall legitimacy is Gotabaya Rajapaksa. We’ll have to make do with this situation, but we have to a) retain and affirm civic responsibility of holding him accountable, and b) agitate for the full complement of legitimate representation. We need a newly elected Parliament (yes, the provincial councils are no longer legitimate).  It cannot be impossible. Theoretically, parliamentary elections could be held over an entire week (or even two), province by province or else one district in every province on any given day over a period of several days with counting commencing only after all the districts have voted.

We have a representational deficit right now. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, considering that he was elected just a few months ago, certainly has a large slice of representational legitimacy. It may suffice for now, given the pandemic. It would however be dangerous to take our foot off the democratic and of course representative pedals.

We need to have parliamentary elections. Soon. Somehow.

This article was first published in the Daily Mirror [April 16, 2020]

RELATED ARTICLES

Vulnerability, fear and the legitimizing of prejudice

Prioritize the poor and vulnerable

Homovirus and Coronavaccine

The WHO, 'civil society' and the parameters of sanity

Every citizen has to be a ˆsuvaviruwa'

A test run for a better tomorrow

The Coronavirus could sober up the 'Development Intoxicated'  

Lockdown is a key to unlock minds

Let's not stop singing in the lifeboats

When the Welikada Prison was razed to the ground
Looking for the idyllic in dismal times
Avurudu in the time of Covid-19

Let's raise an army of rainmakers 

Water the gardens with the liquid magic of simple ideas, right now  

A heart-note to Italy

There's canvas and brush to paint the portraits of love 

We might as well arrest the house 

Vo, Italy: the village that stopped the Coronavirus

The 'village' in the 'city' has more heart than concrete

We need 'no-charge' humanity

The 'we' that 'I' forgot 

Liaashya keeps live alive, by living 

Heroes of our times

malindasenevi@gmail.com

Read more

Homovirus and Coronavaccine

What celebrities do and say get reported. Thousands follow them on twitter. They have fan clubs. Google their names and you’ll see tons of references. Now Leonardo DiCaprio is a celebrity. Google him and you’ll see what I mean. Well, you don’t have to, you probably know this already.

Anyway, there’s an anecdote about the man that I found particularly compelling more than twenty years ago. Yes, before Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It was about the paparazzi. DiCaprio said he had a way of dealing with them:

‘We actually started to follow them after a while. It's an actual science. If you follow them, they get paranoid. You flip the script on them.’

For some reason which I don’t remember now this took my thoughts to ‘The Scream’ a painting by the Norwegian Expressionist Edvard Munch in 1893. 


The original German title given by Munch to the painting was, interestingly, ‘Der Schrei Der Natur’ or ‘The Scream of Nature’.  That’s the ‘expression’ I visualized materializing on the paparazzi when ‘the script was flipped.’  Anguish. Horror. Disbelief.

A doctoral student at that time, I mischievously told the professors on my committee that a researcher in the social science might experience something similar if his/her ‘respondents’ started administering questionnaires to him/her!

Well, nature is screaming now isn’t it? It’s been screaming for a while. All of a sudden, thanks to the Coronavirus, the boot is on the other foot. The script has been flipped. Human beings, perennial paparazzi obsessed with invasion, encroachment and violence have been given a dose of their own medicine. Their lives have been invaded. Their homes have been encroached upon. They are being killed.

And this brings us to a particularly telling meme on the phenomenon: what if humans are virus to this earth and corona is the vaccine?

That’s in-your-face, mind-blowing flip-script if ever there was one, isn’t it? The analogy is apt though.  What have human beings done to this earth but ravage it? No other species has deliberately and wantonly attacked the natural world’s capacities to regenerate. The way we’ve operated has been like a plague that has descended on the earth and all her creatures. Species do naturally become extinct but we have accelerated that process. We have poisoned the earth, the waterbodies and soils. We have poisoned the air. We’ve acted like the worst kind of predator, destroying not on account of self-defense or food procurement but for mindless joys and utter self-indulgence. 

In the case of viruses that infect human beings, we find cures. We develop immunity. So the contention in the meme could be what’s happening. Well even if such things cannot be proven beyond a shadow of doubt and if no one wants to buy into some overarching karmic logic which includes the biotic and abiotic, it is nevertheless a useful analogy.

It is as though the earth has been screaming silently and we ignored the screams because we didn’t have the ears to listen or the eyes to read the earthy equivalent of the expression that Munch painted. We have hounded the natural world like the paparazzi, needling (or worse!), taking pictures on the sly. Well then, the earth seems to have turned tables. Worms have turned.

The world is waiting for a vaccine. Wait, not ‘the world.’  It’s us, the human species that is dying for a cure. Dying for want of a cure. If human beings were a menace, a virus, and the earth was victim, we could say ‘the earth has been waiting for centuries now, desperate for protection, for a cure, a vaccine that would neutralize human beings.’

We don’t know if viruses are self-critical. We don’t know if they can be remorseful. We don’t know if they are too proud to acknowledge the suffering they cause. We do know, however, that in our more humble and wise moments, we can be self-reflective, we can retire arrogance and acknowledge our ignorances and the errors of our ways.

We may beat this early. We may have to let it run its course. If we are successful soon, we may unlearn all that we’ve learned about our conduct on this planet. We may not. We know however that in this period of extended and enforced ‘incarceration’ water quality and air quality are improving. We have recognized that overconsumption sucks. We know that when we are moderate we don’t need so much oil. Less oil, less pollution, less harm to one and all and most of all to the earth. We know now that the basics are enough to obtain happiness. We know that overreaching yields little.

We could do a cost-benefit analysis. There are tons of people schooled in the ‘logic’ of capitalism, the worth of free markets and such who could do it in seconds. They would have to factor that which they did not, could not or would not consider though. 
 
We’ve been misnaming things for years. We’ve seen places, people and things as locations, models and props, respectively. For example.

At the end of the day, the model holds. No, not neoliberalism. That’s dead. So too, capitalism. The model so beautifully captured in the meme: humans constitute a virus to this earth and corona is the vaccine.

There’s a lot of script-flipping for us to do, that much is clear. We might as well begin now, considering the self-incarceration we have brought down on ourselves. DiCaprio would not have trouble understanding and he might even applaud, but I wonder what Munch would make of our predicament. How would he paint it and would he called it ‘Menschenschrei’ [Cry of Man]?

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