On Normal and Nihilism

We like to think we've returned to normal, but Covid and climate change will become more and more of a challenge to ignore.

Biorisk consultant Conor Browne responded to a post about "this universally adopted phenomenon of people never mentioning the Covid word is really mind-blowing," with this comment: 

"And also tells you exactly that Covid has not been normalised. Quite the opposite, in fact - if Covid truly had been normalised, the word would, by definition, not be taboo. Not mentioning the word tells me how much the disease is still considered exceptional. . . . No-one would think twice about saying, 'I had the flu a month ago,' but they're much less likely to say the same about Covid. Why? Because flu is normalised and Covid is not."

I think that's such a good point! It's so not normal that we can't even raise it as a possibility when we know people suddenly struggling to do tasks that used to be easy, or suddenly unable to get out of bed, or suddenly dying of heart attacks at a young age, which are all ascribed to some mystery, that can't possibly be figured out. It's similar to how not normal AIDS was that nobody talked about it for years until activists forced it into public awareness.

In the comments some suggest we all have PTSD and can't bring ourselves to say the word for fear of being triggered by it. That explains the level of anger out there if the word is mentioned or if you're spotted in a mask. It's triggering a buried trauma. Others suggest it's a matter of "consciousness of guilt" that is too painful to endure. Many people know they might have spread this to someone before knowing they were carrying it, and they haven't worked through the guilt that raises. And others point out that if Covid were over, we wouldn't be playing make believe like this; we'd test and rule it out. 

Part of the problem with the word is that insurance companies believe Covid is a very real, very disabling and fatal disease, and they won't insure people who take unnecessary risks with it, so celebrities who choose to go on have to insist it's just a cold and refuse to test. It's a bit of insurance fraud that could be stopped if they demand testing in order to maintain your policy. 

I think it's all our fear of death overriding our sensibilities. It's so similar to trying to talk about climate change with people. They don't want to hear about it and definitely don't want to think of how they contribute to it. And because of that, they won't acknowledge how to reduce contributing to it. Many books have been written about the need to insist it's all about political will and not about personal behaviour in order to try to get more people on board, but the reality is, with climate and Covid, it's always both. We need better leadership, absolutely, but we also need to change how we live or else suffering the consequences. We are so uncomfortable with grief and guilt that we're going to do that other thing. Worse, we're going to let our kids suffer the consequences.

Psychologist Jonathan Douglas responded to a post that more than half of young people think 'humanity is doomed' due to climate change with this comment: 

"This is ridiculous. It's only POSSIBLE that humanity is doomed. Certain, though, if we give in to nihilism." 

Comments there: 

"Note that rates are higher in countries where the effects of climate change are a lot more noticeable. . . . My 20-something son doesn't intend to have kids and no longer takes any Covid precautions, as far as I know. He doesn't think humanity will be around in 40 years time and doesn't want to talk about the future. He plans for no more than a few years out. . . . Considering the gross incompetency exhibited by our leaders as of late the corruption and grift levels are all available for us to witness on social media. Better to see what's coming than fool yourself with dreams fed to us by the elite."

Another great point in that mix is why should we even bother if the world is going to shit anyway. If a 20-something figures they won't make it the next 40 years because of climate change, then why not just get Covid over and over again? I did that same risk assessment as a teen as a sitting duck living between the USSR and US during the cold war and spent a few years inebriated as a result. I look back on that as a selfish decision. I didn't notice how much it was affecting my folks until my sister told me that my mom didn't think I'd make it to 20.  

Now I can think of two reasons to choose life: 1. to extend a healthy life as long as possible in order to experience as much joy as possible and be there for others, and 2. because it's just the right thing to do. 

In a super simplistic and poorly supported thread of an argument, I suggest that it's better to prolong life when we know how to, and we do, than to live for today in ways that shorten the lives of ourselves and others. Lots of philosophers have made this argument for not being alive just to survive and gravitate to immediate pleasures, following our wiring like all the other animals, but thinking about the effect our lives have on others: to give our best to the world every day without attaching to the outcome, or, at the very least, by doing no harm. 

So, like Dr. Douglas suggested above, we live best, a most virtuous life, if we continue to act rightly despite the possibility that it all ends tomorrow, because there's always the possibility it could end tomorrow. Or today for that matter! And, as he says, many embrace nihilism in a downward spiral: seeing the end may be nigh, they taking a hedonistic stance that further draws the end towards us even sooner. 

Nihilism is about evading reality, pretending Covid isn't a thing, pretending climate change won't affect us, and getting a sense of powerfulness or joie de vivre, by having louder, longer parties in the face of it all. By flying more often and going to restaurants more and eating more meat and gathering more without mitigations and tempting death to come. It's a belief in nothing beyond today's enjoyment. It's a reversal of the highest values of caring about one another's continued survival. 

That's an illusion of power, though, a façade of power that hides our fear of our own weakness in the face of the end. 

Author and philosophy professor Nolen Gertz explains, 

"Nihilism is all about hiding from despair. . . . Nihilists fall into the morality of pity, which is not about helping others, but about elevating oneself by reducing others, by reducing others to their neediness, to a neediness that we do not have and that reveals how much we do have by contrast. Pity is nihilistic insofar as it allows us to evade reality, such as by allowing us to feel that we are better than we are, and that we are better than those in need. . . . We act as if life doesn't matter, but we do this because we believe that death doesn't matter. To recognize that we could die at any moment would require that we take every moment of our lives seriously, as seriously as if it were our last."

And he continues with de Beauvoir's concept of the spirit of seriousness that she sees when adult bring their childlike expectations of freedom into adulthood:

"Serious people turn themselves into children, wanting nothing more than definitions to learn and rules to obey. They thus require some external authority that can provide such rules. However no external authority can prevent either children or serious people from having to confront the ambiguity, the volatility, and the inexplicability of life. . . . To be a serious person is to try to escape anxiety by outsourcing the responsibility of freedom to an external authority. To be a nihilist is to try to annihilate anxiety by annihilating freedoms, and to do so by denying the meaningfulness of decision-making. . . . 

Arendt defined nihilism as thinking turned against thinking, the desire to find results that would make further thinking unnecessary. . . . Nihilism is dangerous not only because it is self-destructive but also because it can be contagious. . . . Nihilism in an individual is a disorder, but nihilism in a society is a disease. . . . To the extent that the nihilist succeeds in enjoying life like a child, it is not from finding a new parent as the serious person believes is required, but simply from adopting the uncaring attitude of a child. . . . By persuading him of his individual value, one stifles the awakening of a collective spirit in him."

Nihilism is a sort of defence mechanism that allows people to ignore the lack of meaning in their lives.

It reminds me of Kierkegaard's ethical stage and Aristotle's political stage in which people follow rules blindly and feel very good about their decisions because they're following all the rules, without actually thinking about the rules. Arendt would put Adolph Eichmann in this stage as well. Most of society is, and appears to always have been, openly hedonistic (aesthetic/vulgar). The "serious" people might number 20-30% (ethical/political), but very few hit the thinking stage (religious/contemplative, or Kolhberg's post-conventional stage). 

The alternative to nihilism is confronting the end on this balmy February morning that portends a brutal summer. Confronting the reality that we could all burn up in the next few decades with our brains turned to mush from Covid would make any thinking person want to do everything possible to prevent our demise. We can't prevent it without looking at it, and it's a problem for us all that confronting death is too scary for too many.