This essay was commissioned by Alain Ruche. It was initially published in my 2021 collection of essays called Contagion: Living with and through the plague. It has been slightly modified.
As modern civilization edges towards possible extinction we are trapped in orthodoxies that exist in a gold-encrusted reliquary of obsolete worldviews and derived world-systems. Yet they intrude on our sense-making and relationships to such an extent that trauma so often prevails while sanity takes flight.
Our reliance on these metanarratives to guide human purpose, reflected in a theatre of disparate activities that resist reform, many of which appear to be turning feral, is a clear and near danger in terms of human survival. Assembled over centuries, these metanarratives cannot adjust rapidly to new circumstances. Indeed, they reify into quasi-permanent myths in the collective subconscious.
Many constructs in which we put so much faith have become decoupled from the realities of the human condition - its terrestrial nature, autopoietic functioning, difficulty managing cumulative layers of complexity, and fall into self-indulgence, extravagance and division.
While new technologies tumbling off production lines inevitably has massive exponential impact, our capacity to 'make sense' of how best to apply the most advanced of these tools, in what is fast becoming a perfect storm of crises, has flat-lined. The speed of change is accelerating - but our learning metabolism has not kept pace.
Divergence
Over the past 75 years society's most prevalent worldviews compacted into just two great mono-cultural stories - the Occidental and the Oriental. Features from archaic, geographically specific worldviews - like the Indic, Ubuntu, and Aztec traditions - were absorbed into today's dominant traditions, or faded in substance, along with their now defunct civilizations.
1. Inclining West
The genesis of the Occidental worldview in Western cosmology gradually expanded to embrace explicit ideas from the European Enlightenment - Cartesian logic, reason, scientific rationalism, and linear progress. Conveyed with evangelistic fervour, this worldview became omnipresent on the back of slavery, colonialism and genocide, along with other equally predatory rituals, such as those encouraged by the neoliberal economic and political paradigm, and mostly conveyed by male gerontocracy.
Various shades of world-system were plagiarized from this source. Propagated by mainstream media, most versions exhibited analogous traits incorporating the cult of the individual (especially concerning the ownership of resources) sovereignty, explicit rights such as freedom of expression and liberty, and democracy.
The resilience of this worldview, achieved by absorbing certain elements from other and older narratives, trampling over more transcendent indigenous systems, was remarkable. It explains why this paradigm was able to advance a modern world order built on the catechism of law.
The Western narrative also spawned three interwoven concepts that would eventually become key to the contemporary dystopian predicament in which we find ourselves today:
Exceptionalism - the concept that humans are in a class of their own - different from, and superior to, other species. This notion has also been applied within the context of nation-states, with many assuming the possession or acquisition of economic and military power grants them authority over others less fortunate or rapacious.
Separation - of humans from the natural environment, and detachment from each other, has led to a commonly held belief that we exist 'apart' from (and above) nature.
Objectification - the act of treating a person, or an animal, as an object that can be bought or sold, thereby disavowing the humanity of others and degrading other species.
2. Gazing East
The re-emergence of China on the world stage since around 1970 has shifted the spotlight onto the Oriental (and specifically Sinic) worldview - in direct contrast to the Occidental narrative. Sinic cosmology is essentially secular - entwined with Daoist principles which Confucianism implicitly accepts. In this ancient system, the universe comes into being as the separation of chaotic cosmic energy into two essential qualities: yin (soft, yielding, dark, passive and feminine) and yang (hard, assertive, bright, active and masculine).
It's important to note that this differs from the 'duality' to be found in Cartesian logic, where one element is favoured over another. Yin-Yang energy has much more to do with maintaining a fine balance between two polarities than in choosing one over the other. Derived from the identical and original cosmic force, yang and yin are not 'good' and 'evil' in opposition, with the potential of one overwhelming the other. There will always be yang, and there will always be yin. The truth is not an absolute state, but a process of ever-changing blends of yang and yin.
Another key difference relates to the notion of progress. In the West progress is about step-by-step linear advancement. Progress in the Sinic narrative has more to do with the liquid nature of transition. This posits a universe in an eternal, ever-renewing evolution - a state in flux where no entropy is present. The ebb and flow of life is constant, natural, healthy, energizing.
As with the Occidental myth, the Chinese narrative has given rise to some remarkable concepts, capable of creating friction with the Western narrative. Although these are mostly cultural rather than metaphysical, they help to explain why so many people wedded to the Western worldview are troubled by the rise of a neoteric Chinese empire:
Relational thought - rather than being in opposition, ideas exist in relation to one another. This often creates partial solutions, semi-closures, and ambiguous moral attitudes - at least from the standpoint of those immersed in Western culture.
Contextual layers - while Western development is predicated on the shift away from one state towards an 'other' (more preferred) state, the Sinic model asserts that the seeds of the new are secreted within the current state.
Partial resolution - seeks harmony and balance rather than the elimination of unwanted forces. The Western arc of 'development-climax-resolution' - experienced most palpably in the classical symphonic literature - is not usuallypresent in the Sinic narrative - meaning conversations and actions can often feel unfinished.
The point I am making is that there are fundamental differences between Oriental and Occidental beliefs (worldviews) and praxis (world-systems). There is nothing wrong with such a divergence, as long as unifying factors - such as all humans being an integral part of one family in nature - remain intact and ultimately more compelling than conflicting views, and as long as divergence does not warp into unrelenting antagonism in the form we see exhibited by the US towards China today. Open hostility only becomes likely if the Occidental penchant for reducing complexity to a binary logic, combined with an irrational fear of the 'other' and the willful evasion of pluriversal realities, pits democracy against autocracy in an existential battle for what some in the West assume to be best for 'the world' as a whole.
Multipolarity
Since the 1970's, China suppressed its natural inclination for self-determination in order to benefit economically from working in partnership with the West. At some stage that was sure to impede China's rampant economy and aspirations. As confidence grows and memories of the humiliation felt during the Opium wars fade, their new-found assertiveness indicates a move away from those earlier dependencies.
China's unique political structure puts the Communist Party ahead of both state and government agencies. The Party -which boasts 92 million members and epitomizes the soul of the people - is designated by the constitution to define, direct, and set an example for the socialist system that runs the country. Of course this puts China at odds with democratic states. But China is not going to change course. The success of the model has been amply demonstrated. We can expect the gap with the West to widen, with a subsequent clash of beliefs lingering for some time.
A political system with Chinese characteristics, one that is incompatible with democratic ideals, is now expanding its footprint across Europe and the rest of the world - purchased through the Belt & Road Initiative. Gradual acceptance of the Sinic model by a range of countries, particularly across the Global South, set against the erosion of moral authority in the West over the past century, is increasing social, geopolitical, cultural, economic and military tensions, particularly between the US and China who are the two major protagonists in this hegemonic tango.
As nascent multipolarity comes more fully into being, key nations in the existing rules-based order must now reflect on their reduced capacity to effect change within the system they helped build.
The rise of China, in combination with mounting demographic challenges developed countries face, and their declining share of global GDP, is tipping the scales. Beijing is seizing the moment, as is its legitimate right, leveraging structural advantages to effect further change in alignment with its own (mainly socio-economic) aspirations.Â
These differences help to explain growing frictions between China and the US, particularly related to increasing tensions over Taiwan.
Universality
But what characteristics (if any) do these world-systems have in common? Is humanity already too fractured to claim universality for the human family? It is probably valid to claim that the modes of exceptionalism, objectification and separation noted earlier, that are so intrinsic to the Western paradigm, have spread their own ideological contagion across the world. Appreciating the many connections between humans, animals and the environment, and the ways we interact with wildlife, will be vital in dealing with any future pandemics.
Because we are clever inventors of tools, yet naive with respect to the planet, it is impossible to predict where the next pandemics will come from or how severe they will be. Much will depend on the responsibility we take for our impact on the environment. History shows that advances in technology, while improving our ability to deal with pandemics, can also be the very things that trigger them and fuel their diffusion in the first place.
Economic advances, climate change, and habitat destruction all hasten the spread of viruses. Yet the prevalence of wet markets in many parts of the world, and the manner in which we treat other species - from caged farming and feed lots to the illegal trade in bear bile, poaching for elephant tusks and rhino horn, and the butchering of cats and dogs for meat - all indicate a belief in human preeminence as well as explaining our subsequent disdain for nature.
Several new viruses, including SARS, MERS and Ebola, have emerged from human incursions into previously unexplored environments. A well-known example is HIV. This virus, a zoonotic transfer from primates, entered the human population near Kinshasa, now the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the early 1900s. It was not identified in humans, however, until the early 1980s, having spread with the growth of transport links. The developing area of Kinshasa led to the infrastructure that moved the virus along that route, propelled by various economic activities.
Today, most ontological explanations for the deadly SARS-CoV-2 pandemic that swept the world, including our intuitive responses to the pathogen, contribute to a sense that 'mother' nature has turned her back on humanity. The language we have tended to use in this context is not helpful. Officialdom insisted we were 'at war' with the virus - that it must be 'conquered' in order for humans to feel safe once again.
The metaphysics of such myths are not as confusing as the propaganda emerging from the public health community and the mouths of politicians. The web of life on Earth hinges on tiny colonies of microbial organisms as much as it does phytoplankton and insects. Every species plays its part in sustaining the conditions necessary for our survival. We share our air, food, water and shelter with countless viruses, fungi and bacteria in symbiotic relationships. Most of these are harmlesswhile a few are pathogens that make us sick. Among these is the coronavirus family, which causes severe respiratory infections - from the common cold, and annual flu, to the Covid19 pandemic.
Gifts & cracks
So the seminal issue within the global 'problematique' of our experience, explicitly in our relations with each other and with nature, is a behavioural code, based upon a set of tenets etched into our consciousness, that we were unwilling to discard for fear of putting our hypothesis of 'progress' at risk. That might be changing. Perhaps we actually are becoming more conscious.
The first of these tenets is the unjustified 'gift' of superiority, a moral stance sustained by a radical sense of exceptionalism(conveniently chronicled in the monotheistic religious traditions) setting us apart from others. The second is the social philosophy of objectification that we have come to utilize as a reason for treating other humans and animals dispassionately and callously, as though they are insentient, devoid of thought, and therefore superfluous.
This behavioural code intimates that anthropocentric ethics, aligned purely with the viewpoints of humans to justify a range of constructive and destructive activities, is a force not of nature but of learned selfishness and greed. At the same time, discovering patterns of connection beyond the immediate anthropocentric order, reasoning that is currently considered beyond the pale, could illuminate new epistemological possibilities for framing what it means to be fully alive and human in a post-capitalist future - without reverting to the arid realms of transhumanist cyborgs and the futile quest for immortality and enduring youth - if only we could 'conquer' biology.
The pandemic opened up and amplified cracks in society, exposing niceties of our humanity to which we had given little consideration, and even less tolerance, prior to 2020. There's now also a thirst for healing from the excesses of modernism, and a desire to grow our collective psyche, in ways that have not been quite so evident before.
It is clear that many people are suffering and trying to seek relief from the trauma of everyday life in these early years of the 21st century. Loneliness, anxiety, and other mental health problems are endemic in a social milieu where mask wearing, and social distancing, have become euphemisms for a public health apartheid regime. Meanwhile, there is no viable exit strategy from this plague in those nations determined to achieve zero transmissions. In an unparalleled act of quarantining a healthy population, with borders remaining closed, and lockdowns imposed impulsively at the slightest sign of a new outbreak, we learned two valuable lessons:
We need each other. Social interaction, mingling with others, and the comforting touch of family and friends, are not luxuries we can choose to be without. They are as vital to life as is oxygen.
We couldn't evade this virus, and will not evade similar pathogens in future, or indeed the risk of infection, by isolating one human being from another. We must learn to live in symbiosis with other species as well as other life forms like viruses.
The exhaustion we are feeling from the recent pandemic as well as the potential threat of new strains of Asian flu is aggravated by ambiguity and uncertainty, putting science in contention with an authoritarianism masquerading as public health policy, the power imbalance between men and women in a world designed by men for men, is even more palpable at this time. In the sham of political expediency, power exercised without purpose has become an aphrodisiac driving populist policies that have been confounded by physics (climate change) and biology (the pandemic).
And if all of that were not sufficient to drive us mad, our addiction to growth is becoming more, rather than less, rabid. Genuflecting at the altar of industrial materialism has led to (i) a cognitive decoupling of production with its social and environmental impacts - including climate refugees and increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and (ii) schemes of socio-economic stratification that are inherently unfair - rewarding the wealthy (particularly the extremely wealthy) by conscious design.
Neither is it possible to calculate the price we are paying as a society for the hyper-partisan media and political propaganda that encourages conspiracy theories, covers up misdeeds, invents stuff, and engages in petty vendettas. It is hardly surprising that the fatigue felt by ordinary citizens on so many levels, in such an era of disruptive excess and decadence, has accompanied an erosion of any deeper meaning and the importance of a moral dimension in our lives.
It is in this context that the anxiety felt by the younger generation, fearful that there is no future for them, is resulting in profound stress, illness, dissent, abuse, alienation, and frantic entreaties to incumbent leaders to restore hope. Unfortunately this they simply cannot do.
Looking ahead
Doing the same thing, expecting different results, is usually taken as a sign of insanity. But doing arises from thinking - in the same way that our world-systems (practices) are not unprejudiced and discrete but tethered to a repository of beliefs held captive within our worldviews (narratives). So repeating the same thoughts over and over, using identical cognitive structures, is just evidence of a collective dementia.
Fresh narratives with new meanings are needed by humanity because our practices must adapt in alignment with conditions we have ourselves forced on the planet. It is unlikely these will be found from within present cognitive and philosophical frameworks. Given the resurgence and increasing power of regressive political and economic forces around us, and their very visible ecological and social effects, it is improbable they will come from any orthodox channels. Fresh answers to age-old questions concerning human purpose and identity are waiting to be found in the interstices (and not the glossy surface) of our floating world. But only if we are able to access higher levels of consciousness from within alternative ontological perspectives.
Pretending this is not so, by obstinately continuing with practices that are self-destructive and that invite an acceleration of existential threats, all the while talking to each other in semantics devoid of any transformative capacity, is a form of spiritual autism. It means we can only ever see what we want to see and will always sculpt reality into what we expect.
It is entirely possible that we have reached a threshold in our ability to 'see' beyond the obvious and our ability to break through the many constraints that keep us locked in prisons of our own invention. If so, it is an imperative that we find enlightened pathways capable of taking us beyond the gridlock of our current capacities and expectations. Evolution demands this.
The uncertain future traces of human existence must transcend the vestiges and symbols of past ways of life and the untouchable dogma typified by the hubris of conquerors and corporations.
In so doing we must surrender the supremacy of a purely anthropocentric vision, letting go of all notions of human exceptionalism as a consequence. Hopefully contextual pluralism reinvigorates the conversation we should be having about the relationship between humans and other species.
Mass death events will become far more common in the coming decades without a change of direction. These will include pandemics along with a variety of natural and man-made events. All of these reside within current predictions. And we can also be sure to suffer emotional scars from our experience of their uncertain impact. But how can we face up to such a radical solution as the reimagination and renewal of humanity? Where do we even start given the lack of a global forum for any ideas outside of the most banal visions for a new technopolis?
The transformative life
This theme of societal transformation as a metaphysical (individual and collective) experience for disclosing that which has been hidden from us goes way beyond the bounds of corporations and governments, and far transcends the mission of organisations like the United Nations. In order to bring such ideas to within the scope of a global 'Overton' window, a strategic conversation must ensue, spurred by new perceptions and insights, like the gifts we continue to find in the cracks of the recent contagion, and our experience of the floating world.
What if we could give a voice to the elders of the first nations, earth defenders, climate and war refugees, in addition to the two billion or so dispossessed on our planet? What if we added their cries to those of the bankers, hackers, saboteurs, earth destroyers, military and business leaders, that constantly use their megaphones to divert our attention from any kind of unified response?
What would those previously coerced into silence be telling us? I venture to suggest they would point to their 'realities' rather than the truths sustained by others: the cynical actions of big banks for example; governments that are hand-in-glove with the fossil fuel industry; institutions like the World Bank and IMF that push devastating structural adjustment programmes onto developing countries, resulting in debilitating debt; the indefensible legacy of colonial occupation and the various forms of neo-colonialism that continue to wreak havoc across entire continents.
They would call out the global elites and practices to explain why the worldviews of developed nations underlie so much that is wrong in their world - and in ours.
If everything following perception is interpretation, what can replace the enlightenment view of science as the gold standard for knowledge and truth so highly regarded in both Occidental and Oriental world-systems? If truth through knowledge is the answer to every ailment being suffered by humanity today - philosophy providing a potential counterforce through its own non-scientific, non-technological, agenda for human advancement - dealing with local realities will matter far more than facing up to truths that will not be owned by anyone tomorrow.
If human intentionality has stalled, and our ability for sense-making has flat-lined, we are trapped in cognitive prisons from which escape seems unlikely. Yet the contagion taught us lessons about how to endure and evolve. The reconceptualization of our human being as interbeing - the interwoven connections between all living beings - poses distinct modes of co-existence and co-evolution that relate to the reality of the human condition more than any truth we can imagine or any superstition sculpting our innocence.
The laws of nature cannot be contravened, just as nature cannot be overcome or diminished by the activities of a single species. Evolutionary paths that accept the reality of contagion, along with ancient wisdom traditions, for example, reperceiving these within ontological frameworks aimed at extending, rather than fixating upon (primarily) humanitarian ideals, offer hope where there is currently none.
Humanity is continuing to sow the seeds of its own demise even as it curbs our capacity to adapt. For some plants and animals, it is already too late. Climate change is irreversibly reshaping life on Earth - even if we can manage to controlplanet-heating greenhouse gas emissions. Widespread disease, species extinction, uninhabitable regions, ecosystem collapse, cities swamped by rising sea levels, as well as other devastating climate impacts are accelerating and inevitable. All of this will become painfully obvious well before a child born today turns 20.Â
Dangerous thresholds are much closer than once thought, and grim consequences resulting from decades of unbridled carbon pollution are unavoidable in the short term. But the impacts are also being amplified by many other ways humanshave shattered the stability of planetary ecosystems. These include losses of wildlife habitat and the resilience of natural systems, over-exploitation, the extraction of water from ancient aquifers, pollution, invasive non-native species, soil erosion, and dispersal of pests and diseases.
It is obvious from these scientific forecasts about imminent ecological collapse that we must act fast - radically altering our approach to production and consumption in order to avoid exceeding planetary boundaries. That demands fundamental shifts in almost all industrial activities so as to replace the structures and relations of domination and extraction inherent in capitalism, statism, patriarchy, racism, and human-centredness. That will not be easy. But that's not all.
For if the problems and wounds exposed by the coronavirus contagion were caused by economic and political structures alone, then the solutions would also have to be systemic and fundamental. But if they were also created by inherent flaws in our relationships with each other, and between us and the rest of nature, then massive regenerative transformations, including shifts of mind and heart, will be needed for any healing to occur. These all require time. Time that we do not have.
But perhaps the contagion itself does offer us a unique opportunity. By mimicking its structure we can imagine an infective social agent capable of replicating rapidly amongst humans everywhere. By bringing decentralized grassroots movements more effectively into play - bypassing orthodox channels and institutional inertia, we might be able to rapidly transmit cooperative compassion in and around the world. We could open minds and hearts to a pristine civilizational empathy - using matriarchal wisdom, commoning, rewilding and other ecological linkages for bioregional and urban regeneration.
Paradoxically, by recognizing the material scarcity of the planet and the existential threats we are facing, it becomes easier to embrace a mindset of abundance, where we start caring for each other, and all life, at new levels of consciousness.