COVID-19
The United Nations describes the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), which the World Health Organisation characterises as a pandemic, as a global health crisis. The United Nations, also describes COVID-19 as a human, economic and social crisis. It is a crisis that is attacking societies at their core.
As such, there is a general frustration and people clamour for us to return to normalcy. This is in the wake of social distancing protocols, quarantines, self-isolation, orders for shelter-in-place, interminable lockdowns and a halt on living life as we know it. This consequently affects school, work, travel, leisure and entertainment.
However, what is the normalcy that we are clamouring to return to? Were our lives before COVID-19 indeed normal? Does the effect of COVID-19 on our lives affirm the absurdity of life?
The Philosophy of Absurdism
To answer the above-mentioned questions, we will take a look at the philosophy of absurdism. This philosophy refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek the inherent value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any in a purposeless, meaningless universe. According to the philosophy of absurdism, this universe is also chaotic and irrational.
The Algerian French absurdist philosopher, Albert Camus, in his philosophical essay, “The Myth of Sisyphus”, uses the analogy of the Greek Myth of Sisyphus to exemplify the pointlessness of existence. Sisyphus, in the myth, is condemned for eternity to roll a rock up a hill. However, the rock rolls down to the bottom of the hill each time he rolls it up. He therefore has to start all over again.
Camus presents the ceaseless and pointless toil of Sisyphus as a metaphor for modern lives that we spend on working at futile jobs. He states that the workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks. As such, this fate is no less absurd than that of Sisyphus. We see this in how people live their lives as if they are not aware of the certainty of death. However, death is a mathematical certainty. Camus goes on to state that this is tragic only at the rare moment that one is conscious of it.
In the Myth of Sisyphus, Camus states that he is interested in Sisyphus at the moment when Sisyphus pauses and has to go down the hill after the rock falls back down the hill. At this moment, Sisyphus is forced to pause and reflect. Camus therefore claims that when Sisyphus acknowledges the futility of his task and the certainty of his fate, he is freed to realise the absurdity of his situation. Thus, he reaches a state of contented acceptance.
A Pause in our Daily Lives
The shelter-in-place and lockdown orders that Governments worldwide have imposed as a result of COVID-19 have resulted in a pause in our daily lives. This pause offers us, like Sisyphus, the opportunity to engage in a sober reflection of our lives. Stuck in our various homes with nowhere to go, the monotony of life and boredom becomes more apparent. Feelings of alienation, dread and lack of freedom run rampant. While the daily routine of our lives at home seem monotonous and absurd, we also realise the similar routine of our daily lives before COVID-19. We ponder on how we were stuck in the rat race cycle of life.
The drastic changes in our lifestyle make us realise how we unduly complicate our lives. We also contemplate the absurdity of the situation. As we go without the social amenities that we are used to, we realise the fact that we still exist despite the lack of familiar trappings. Suddenly, in the wake of quarantine and self-isolation, we understand that material things are of no value. As such, consumerism takes a nosedive. For instance, where do you drive your brand new car? Furthermore, where do you wear your designer clothing to? Therefore, what is the purpose of materialism in the face of a pandemic?
Does the Effect of COVID-19 Affirm the Absurdity of Life?
The pandemic has caused a countless number of deaths. As a result, this brings to the fore, the mathematical certainty of death. COVID-19 has also caused a high level of unemployment. This shows the hopelessness all around us. When a person loses his or her job, this results in the loss of the livelihood of that person and the dependants of that person. Consequently, this leads to an increase in poverty with a resultant increase in crime.
The aforementioned instances persuade us to view life as a vicious cycle and chaotic. It is difficult to understand life. There is a contradiction between the human desire to understand life and to find value and meaning in it and the human inability to achieve this in an irrational world. This consequently leads to absurdity. Can we therefore say that the effect of COVID-19 on our lives affirms the absurdity of life?
We follow shelter-in-place or lockdown orders and go through the same motions day in and day out, waiting for the scourge of COVID-19 to end. This reminds us of the play, “Waiting for Godot”. Samuel Barclay Beckett, the Irish novelist and playwright, wrote this play.
In the play, which is an example of the Theatre of the Absurd, two men, Vladimir and Estragon, wait for a third man, Godot, who never arrives. We describe the people waiting as representing mankind whereas Godot apparently represents the unknown. When we consider how COVID-19 has brought the world to a standstill, can we say that the world is waiting for Godot? Can we deduce that the effect of COVID-19 on our lives affirms the absurdity of life?
Conclusion
Although the philosophy of absurdism scorns hope, we note that, there are bound to be better days ahead. This is in accordance with the proverbial saying that “Every cloud has a silver lining”. Hope is all that we have left now. We must cling to hope with fervour in order not to lose our sanity.
There has to be light at the end of this tunnel, even if it is a faint glimmer.
*The writer seeks to draw similarities between the effect of COVID-19 on our lives and some aspects of the philosophy of absurdism. The aim is not to promote the philosophy of absurdism as a whole.
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Good piece. However, long before Camus, Solomon had espoused the same ideas in the book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. When we look for the purpose and meaning of life in the wrong places,we arrive at the wrong conclusions. COVID-19 has shown how simple life can be and the resilience of the human spirit. It’s showing our ability to rise to the occasion, deal with difficult situations and to work together to find solutions.Time to be together and learn how to show love.
So true.
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? Covid has interrupted what looked to be like a military regime-change operation in Venezuela – perhaps imperialist wars are also one of those things we might relinquish in a future of global cooperation. 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. 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. Initially, the argument for social distancing was that it would save millions of lives by preventing a sudden surge of Covid cases from overwhelming the medical system. Now the authorities tell us that some social distancing may need to continue indefinitely, at least until there is an effective vaccine. 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 destruction of small business, 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.
COVID-19 has changed the ways of humanity forever … Thanks my dear for such a thought provoking topic.
Didn’t know my learned Snr. is a philosopher as well. I couldn’t agree with you more. Indeed, the past few weeks have caused us to pause and take a second look at what we consider priorities and how vain some of them have become. As you said, to every cloud, there is a silver lining. Hopefully, we will not miss that.
Yes, we pray we will not miss that.
A master piece with a beautiful philosophical approach to awaken an individual to do self introspection. Indeed, the “unexamined life is not worth living.” And in Descartesian thought, I think, therefore, I am “Cogito ergo sum.” Definitely, your article is a must read for all. Thank you, Madam.
Thanks for the compliment Counsel.
Truly this pandemic affirms the absurdity of life. It has firmly affirmed that life is not all about amassing wealth that we have thought of. I believe Providence has permitted this pandemic to impel us to prioritize the basics, Divine Purpose, Family and Health.
Great piece Heidi.
Thanks a lot!
A master piece with a beautiful philosophical approach to awaken an individual to do self introspection. Indeed, the “unexamined life is not worth living.” And in Descartesian thought, I think, therefore, I am “Cogito ergo sum.” Definitely, your article is a must read for all. Thank you, Madam.
Intresting piece. We compete and chase material things but it is all vanity.
An interesting piece, Heidi. The Covid-19 and the auxiliary developments associated with it bring out the frailty and limitations of man. Society is very likely to appraise issues using a different yardstick after the pandemic.
So true George.
As long as we understand that there is a meaning to and a purpose for our existence here on planet Earth, we will ALWAYS find a meaning to our lives irrespective of our circumstances and situations Essence/Meaning is not found without but essentially within. Your life, life, must certainly mean something to you as life is not just waking up from bed, going to work and coming back home to sleep.
True. Grateful for your comment.
So true and thanks.
Yes, all is vanity.
Hmmmmm thought provoking. Indeed “HOPE is all that we have left”
Yes it is.
Great work. Keep it up
Thanks
An interesting and thought-provoking question. This takes me right back my good old days of my struggles in philosophy class. It was as if I was playing back Rene Descartes’ meditations, where he was struggling to find one “truth” in his beliefs to hold on to.
Yes, thought-provoking.
Heidi, you write very beautifully. Good job !
For me, Covid-19 reminds us of the sovereignty of the Almighty God and cautions us not to take God’s grace for granted.
Very insightful piece. God richly bless you
Thanks for your compliment Franklina. Your comments are appreciated.