A Changing World

“The crisis is a tough time to think through all the pieces that are necessary.” That was an intriguing point by Bill Gates in his recent interview with Ezra Klein. It is a point that is too significant to escape the nose of a sober philosopher or the minds of persons who may be concerned about mental health or how to think in such a tough time. To contextualise Bill Gates’ statement here we may shorten it as “[it] is a tough time to think…”

Our major question is ‘how can or should we think when it is a tough time to think?’

There are other questions we may need to consider before we could derive an answer to our major question. Such questions include:

1. Why is it a tough time to think?
2. How is it a tough time to think?

Bill Gates’ statement already answers the first question saying that there is a crisis that makes it tough to think. Almost everyone knows that something is wrong in the world at the moment. It is most likely that even babies in wombs could sense that a virus is currently wreaking severe havoc in the world that will soon host them. COVID-19 is making it a tough time to think.

Now that we know why it is a tough time to think we are left with the second question: How is it a tough time to think? This may not be straightforward to people who rightly think that the virus is not an infection of the brain or the nervous system, but rather an infection of the lungs. If it is not affecting the nervous system, so how does it affect thinking?

A recent article “Knowledge as the Working and Walking Narrative”, mentions that there are two basic processes of knowing which are called the Dual Carriageway of Knowing. On one way, the mind is working towards reality, the individual is directing herself (maybe by thinking) to acquire certain knowledge. On the other way, the reality is walking towards the mind, knowledge is entering the individual’s mind without the individual trying to acquire the knowledge. The individual is often in control of the former and the latter is often beyond the control of the individual. So how is this relevant?

During this challenging period, while we are trying to think about particular things and direct our minds to know somethings, our thoughts could be overwhelmed by the realities that flood our minds. It is almost impossible now for a day to go without news about Coronavirus. It is presently an overwhelming reality of everyday life and it creates a difficulty to concentrate on other things that we try to know. Social media and various outlets consistently flood our minds with the realities of COVID-19 even beyond what we would want to know. At the introductory phase of the virus, there were different descriptions from political leaders. For example, the President of China (Xi Jinping) calls the virus a “pneumonia epidemic”. The President of France (Emmanuel Macron) calls it “the invisible, elusive and advancing enemy”. The Prime Minister of Russia (Vladimir Putin) calls the virus a “common threat”. The (lucky) Prime Minister of the UK (Boris Johnson) calls it an “invisible killer” while the President of the US (Donald Trump) calls it “the Chinese virus”. These descriptions are followed by different statistics of deaths, of infections, disparities in infections and survival rates among other things. When these unavoidable torrents of information flood our minds, it is so difficult to concentrate on other aspects of life. It is indeed a tough time to think. Now, what can man do when it is tough to think?

It is not an option for a man to stop thinking because, as Michel Foucault puts it, “man is a thinking being”. Though it is tough to think, human beings must think. It is, however, important to be more thoughtful about thinking whenever it is tough to think because thinking often has a boomeranging effect. A religious personality once mentioned that “Man is a thinking being: what and how we think largely determines what we are and what we will become.” But our thinking will not only affect us as individuals; it also affects people around, specifically how we relate with them. So how can we be ‘thoughtful’ with our thinking when it is tough to think but we must think?

In 1637 the French philosopher René Descartes came up with Cogito ergo sum to argue for the attainment of certain knowledge. Cogito ergo sum means ‘I think therefore I am’. Bringing this Cartesian statement to context here, we may say that we can have a thoughtful approach to our thinking in tough times by starting the thinking with ourselves. We should make the ‘I’ come before the ‘think’. If we cannot avoid the influx of thoughts on Coronavirus, then we should personalise the thoughts. Let the thinking about Coronavirus starts with you:

What are the significances of the various thoughts on coronavirus for you as a person?

What are you identifying or knowing about yourself during the phase(s) of the virus?

Who do you think you are in the context of the coronavirus?

And what is the significance of who you are on others around you?

This is not a call for some irrational solipsism or untamed anthropocentrism. It is rather a call for a sincere self-examination. Despite all misgivings, the virus has presented humanity with a sober mirror to re-evaluate itself. Taking time before that mirror and painstakingly examining who we are individually is the best way to think now when it is difficult to think. Socrates rightly advised that “Man [and woman] know thyself. An unexamined life is not worth living.” Perhaps it is an advantage that the virus is offering us all the lockdown so we can pause and examine ourselves before we continue with the next phases of our lives. An example in this blog is the interesting article [https://blogs.qub.ac.uk/happ/2020/05/11/just-some-lockdown-thoughts/] by Rachel Thompson about how she recognised how less grateful she was for some benefits that she now realised that she is having. We should all take that bold stance to put up ourselves before the sober mirror of COVID-19 and check out who we really are, particularly in relations to others.

Many of us typically create a mental identity of being busy, we barely spend minutes with our families. We are now realising that we have only been using the workplace as an escape from the challenges at home. During the lockdown, we are now caught up with disagreements, misunderstandings and disputes that we have failed to address and have used our works as an excuse to avoid. Some of us believe that we are self-sufficient. We act, speak and think like we are the only ones existing in the world. We never believe we would need anyone in our lives but now we seek to communicate with people although virtually and we desire a reciprocal reaction from everyone. We are beginning to see that no one is an island, we are all social beings very much in need of ourselves. Some of us have enjoyed a lifestyle of discrimination, whether it is age, class, gender, language, race or what have you. We look down on certain people and implicitly or explicitly consider them as underprivileged. We think we are rich whereas health (not money) is the real wealth! We smile at peoples’ shabby dresses and feel satisfied that such people have already lost any competition with us for a good life. But who says life is a competition where the downfall of one is essential for the success of the other? Now the whole world is in a classroom, nature sombrely walked in as the teacher and slowly wrote the course title on the board: “COVID-19”. One of the learning outcomes is “That human beings will know that whether they are black, brown, yellow or white, they are all bloody humans. The only possible difference is that they can either be bad or good.”

Many of us are keen to have many things for ourselves notwithstanding if we need them or even to the detriment of those in dire need. Others consider us as greedy but it sounds derogatory and unacceptable to us. However, now we are learning that many of those things that we struggle to acquire are mere wants and not needs. Now that we can only pick three things per item at the stores and we still survive till another opportunity to leave the queue and enter the grocery stores; we are beginning to see that we have often used our wants to starve others of their needs. We now understand that what we really need in life is our health and the struggle to acquire more than needed is unhealthy. Now we agree with Immanuel Kant that, “we are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.”

There are some of us in positions of ‘power’ to make decisions about the success or failure of some persons under us. We forget that we are not the first and we will not be the last persons to occupy such a position. We happily, though surreptitiously, victimise or oppress those under us, we believe that it is the way to command respect. That is the way to show we are the boss. We sometimes boast that the promotion or success of certain persons is over our dead body. That is, as long as we are alive, such persons cannot have a promotion or some benefits that they deserve. Fortunately, we are now learning that the same air that keeps the victim alive also keeps the victimizer alive. And that a change can happen by tiny challenges in the puff of air we take in or out. We are all at the mercy of something above and beyond every one of us.

While we have been busy looking at our differences, nature is seeing us as one. Life, at least on earth, is similar for everybody. It is simply a journey from the womb to the tomb or from birth to death. We are part of each other and the best we can be is not about the best we can achieve but the best we can give to ourselves. There is a commonness in the humanness of our humanity which evolution may never be able to explain. We hear about death rates and we feel sorry even though it may be unlikely for us to be directly affected. But the empathy we show is a tacit admittance of the reality that anyone that goes out of existence is part of humanity, part of ourselves. And it is a sign that we too will go someday even if we become another Methuselah.

The COVID-19 period is like humanity is crawling through a dark long tunnel and unfortunately, many persons will not see the end of the tunnel. But it is not just about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. It is about what you would look like when you get to the end of the tunnel. At the moment, humanity is acknowledging its frailty and there are many things that we cannot change. It is probably unhelpful to dwell much on what we cannot change at the expense of what we can and, even, ought to change. Take a bold step to assess yourself in the sober mirror and change what you ought to change while you still have the time. I will start to conclude with some apt lines by Shawn Carter (Jay-Z), in the song ‘Forever Young’: “So we live life like a video…when the [D]irector yells cut, I’ll be fine…” That you will be fine when the Director yells cut depends on you to now start thinking about yourself: Take a careful and reflective look at yourself in the mirror of life. Perhaps it is time to admit like Thomas Nashe (of blessed memory) that “Heaven is our heritage, Earth but a player’s stage” and agree with James Shirley that “Only the actions of the just, Smell sweet and blossom in their dust.”

Now that it is tough to think let the thinking starts with you!

Science is quite rightly seen as systematic and based on logic and reason. Counter-intuitively, a core tool used by scientists is the opposite: randomness,

Cause and effect

In order to identify cause and effect, scientists rely on the simple idea of random selection. Imagine that 100 patients are involved in a study I am conducting to figure out if a particular drug works. I write the names of the 100 people on small bits of paper and put them all in a hat. I close my eyes and pluck out one of the names. I do this again and again until I have 50 names. I call this group of 50 ‘the treatment group’. I give them the new drug that I wish to test. The other 50 people, still in the hat, are my ‘control’ group. I don’t give them the new drug.

After a while I see how my 100 patients are doing. If those in my treatment group are healthier than those in my control group I conclude that my drug works.

It’s all a tad more complicated than this, and computers have overtaken hats. But the basic logic is that via the use of non-reason (random allocation) we can achieve systematic results.

Prevalence

A second, and distinct, use of randomness is to try and figure out how widespread something is in the entire population of the country. For instance, what proportion of the whole population supports Manchester United? Or are happy with the government? Or have a particular disease?

This time a much bigger hat is needed. The name of everyone in the country goes into it on separate bits of paper. You put aside a few hours of your time. You close your eyes and pluck out, one by one, a thousand names. This 1000 are the people you wish to examine, either asking them questions in a survey or conducting a test of some sort on them. By simple virtue of the fact that they were randomly picked, they are a miniature version of the entire population. What we find out about this thousand will be true of the entire population (give or take a few percentage points). So, if 40 percent of our 1000 rather misguidedly support Manchester United, we will know that somewhere between 37 and 43 percent of the entire county will support Manchester United.

This information does not give us a strong handle on causation, it mainly describes how widespread something is. And it enables us to describe variation in prevalence: support for Manchester United is greater in the Manchester region than elsewhere and greatest among young males.

Randomly escaping Covid-19

Our response to Covid-19 crucially relies on these twin powers of random selection: understanding cause and describing prevalence.

The world is focusing on identifying an effective drug that causes us not to get the disease. A potential vaccine will only be declared effective if it passes the test of a randomly controlled trial, if patients randomly assigned to the treatment group show better health outcomes than those in the control group. All else is speculation.

As we await the development of an effective vaccine, we need to make policy decisions on how to regulate our social and economic behaviour. To relax human contact rules we need to have an accurate picture of how widespread the disease is in the population. We can’t examine every single human and so we take the shortcut of examining a random selection of several thousand. From the information from the several thousand we can paint a portrait of the entire country. From this information we can calculate whether it is wise to ease lockdown rules and allow more human contact, or whether doing so is likely to increase virus transmission to a level that places unsustainable pressure on the health service. The information can also inform how we may vary policy in different regions given the information about how prevalence varies in different geographical areas.

Beautiful contradication

How humans escape from Covid-19 will be the story of the collaboration of random and reason. Scientists, in both the natural and social sciences, leverage the simple notion of chance to generate knowledge. As we quite rightly seek logical reasons for the next steps we take in addressing the pandemic we may reflect on the fact that the reasoning will, very reasonably, be based on the anithesis of reason: randomness.

When lockdown was announced there were many things that I, and others like me, worried about – how to get groceries and medications, if my family would be safe, and what this would mean for my field work. One thing I did not worry about was how to get online. But more so than ever, we rely on the internet for all kinds of access. We use it for Covid-19 news and guidance, food delivery services, communication with families and friends, work and school. But not everyone has such easy access to the internet or the equipment needed to access it like smartphones, laptops and tablets. Without these things, lockdown causes further isolation and disadvantages. 

This has become clear during my research with a women’s space that caters to asylum seekers and refugees here in Belfast. When lockdown began, I was impressed with the speed and agility with which the group adapted and moved online using Zoom. Not only have they continued to offer several regular classes, but they also expanded their offerings in response to the women’s requests and interests. Five days a week, women come together online to practice English, learn Chinese auto-massage, do yoga, or to cook together. And during these Zoom calls they also catch up and connect with one another. While these online activities could never fully replace in-person social activities, the women do feel they help them feel less alone and isolated. The problem is that while a core group of women do participate regularly, many more women do not have the technology or connectivity they need to participate.

Many women lack WiFi and the money to acquire it. That means they have limited opportunities to connect to the world outside their home. Before the lockdown, women would go to cafes, libraries and other public spaces with free WiFi for hours a day. That is no longer possible. And as a result, these women and their families are dramatically isolated from services, resources, friends and family. Children are home without access that would allow them to continue their education. Many also lack televisions, games, and other things we take for granted to keep ourselves entertained. Imagine being home with children for weeks on end, trying to keep them indoors but having nothing to keep them busy. On top of that, these women are separated from family members in other countries – unable to speak to husbands, children, mothers, etc. if they have no WiFi that makes regular calls affordable.

The problem of digital connectivity for marginalized populations is not new, but coronavirus has heightened the problem for the most vulnerable. Internet connectivity has become a necessity, especially during a prolonged lockdown.

Evening sunshine,

Empty street, I close my eyes,

Imbibing the warmth.

I’ve always been a walker. From being a well-exercised toddler with a mother who didn’t drive, I progressed to being teenager who furiously pounded the pavements before exams to handle the stress. My devotion to walking frequently saw me walking from my home in the South side of Dublin to my university on the North side, an ideal opportunity to listen to my favourite music (and save on bus fare).

I took a very cautious stance at the beginning of the lock-down, resolving to limit my exercise to my ancient treadmill. This didn’t last however, and before the first week had ended, I was back on the pavements, dashing out the door at the end of a day’s work after making the vital podcast/audiobook/music decision. In the intervening weeks, my evening walks have become increasingly important, allowing me to process my thoughts and stretch my legs after days that have become increasingly crowded, encompassing research, home-schooling and the sourcing of food and providing of frequent meals to a family and two pets with high standards.  

Walking outside also serves as a reminder that, despite my present narrow horizons, the outside world still exists. Encountering another walker often involves a complex little dance incorporating a rapid appraisal of distance and strategic eye contact in order to go on your way. Occasionally, you may catch the other walker’s eye and ruefully smile, attempting cheeriness despite the changed reality. 

This lockdown seems to pare everyday life down to its essentials – obtaining food takes more effort, there’s a new-found anxiety for the health of our loved ones and certainties about life, work, education and the future don’t seem so certain anymore. Sometimes old and simple pleasures help to remind us of who we are and where we came from in strange and unfriendly times.

My isolated experience thus far has given me a very inward focus on politics. Partially because my dissertation basis and degree program are inherently political, but also because of my emotional and personal desire to understand other people.

To be more in touch with the world, I have exposed myself to communities that I largely disagree with on civic duty, the role of government, collectivism, and what we consider to be fundamentally unnatural. These are all issues that have been latched onto while reconciling our current situation.

I’m really reaching here, but I think I can connect this to my dissertation using some philosophical acrobatics. For background, my thesis is focused on warlordism, and the role of ideological institutions in building military power. This has nothing to do with COVID-19 or what our daily challenges entail but I’m studying political science so let me have this. 

However, in many ways, going through a pandemic has made me think more harmoniously with warlord ideology. Do I prioritize survival or the common good? What is the line that separates these two? 

Life is predicated on unpredictability; we’ve known this since we were children. My primary deliberation now is how this present situation will affect us going forward. I feel that as a person who grew up with a comfortable life in a western country, this time is my ultimate confrontation with reality. The reality of death, contention, strife, and isolation. 

I think that this whole experience has made me more cognizant of the subjects of my studies. In a paradoxically sociopathic and empathetic way, I better understand what it means to be a warlord. To watch the world collapsing around you, and to appear unwavering. To engorge yourself with as many human comforts possible, and sleep through the inevitable suffering of others. 

Okay, full circle now, the point of my rum-fueled quasi-academic ramblings: I’m curious as to how this period of time will shape our future political ideology. Charles Tilly theorised that the development of our modern state system was artificially built through war, strife, and an intrinsic desire for domination, and now I wonder how we as a society will emerge from a day when the state very profoundly balances the scales of life and death. How will our society address an engrained polarization between inherent trust and obligatory defiance of what our leaders tell us to do? I know a lot of the latter is most vocally in America, trust me we’re not proud of it.

Thinking like a warlord, I am confronted with a societal afront that is nearly impossible to capitalize on. Any effort to gain power must be inadvertently humanitarian and done to alleviate harm. Perhaps we need a crisis to make those in power aware of what power entails. Some will argue that government impositions have made us “fascistic” to curb the liberties of individuals, others will say that stricter governments save more lives. 

In any case, I am excited for the political dialogue to follow. I do not know how we will reconcile endemic socioeconomic issues with our confrontation with partial extinction, but I believe that this crisis will produce incredible ideologs; many of them selfish and narcissistic. People my age will later campaign for political office hailing their pandemic ideals and what they accomplished during “the Dark Time” of 2020. 

There is a warlord in every person. My peers will scheme and conquer, some to support the state and others to bring it down. As a liberal arts major, I’m content to watch.

Death is our new currency. In the back of our minds there is voice that says, “I would kill to be free,” because freedom makes us powerful and dying is an inevitability. How do we teach ourselves about the common good, when goodness is a more nebulous concept than we have seen in out mortal lives?

These questions can’t be answered with science, political or otherwise, and none of us are qualified to give solutions. We will survive, in theory, perhaps in practice, because it is our nature rather than our duty to protect our fellow human beings. That is the warlord narrative that I would like to accept. A world without evil or vice would be fundamentally inhuman, and this crisis has provided me one of the most genuine human experiences that one could wish for.  

 “On days that you feel like the world is against you, you just have to push back harder… Life has a funny way of working things out…” 

Someone special had penned me these words in a card shortly after Christmastime, when I really did think the world was against me. Little did I know what life would bring in the months that followed. In fact, looking back on that time, those problems seem a million miles away from the world we are currently living in today.

It often seems selfish to be thinking of ourselves in times like these. I look at my own life; I live in the beautiful countryside, with a healthy, happy family, and am lucky to still be working and seeing faces each day. Yet still, despite all these privileges that we are so lucky to have, it can sometimes still feel like the world is against us- and that’s ok, that’s human. We all deal with things differently, no matter how big or small our problems, and that is perfectly normal; especially when we are in a pandemic, when life has been completely flipped upside down, when we barely even know what day of the week it is!

As the sun glares through the curtains of my little room in the mornings, I often wake up bursting with energy, with the feeling that I want to achieve something, to better myself, to make the most of this time I have with myself. And these days are great; they are filled with new opportunities to make me feel fantastic and to make lockdown seem not completely awful. Yet other mornings, I waken, feeling like the only solution is to lie in bed with a book and a cup of tea all day, tossing with the idea of maybe going for a walk, but eventually convincing myself that staying in bed is a better option (which in hindsight is never the case). And it always seems easier to be hard on yourself rather than forgiving yourself for having these ‘off’ days. Yet, over the last number of weeks, I have accepted that it is in fact perfectly normal to have chops and changes in my moods and attitudes during lockdown- and it is a perspective that I hope to keep with me even after lockdown. These ‘off’ days are normal, they are ok, and they don’t last forever.

And I know that they don’t last forever, because I look at the last eight weeks, and the bad days I’ve had, that are completely outnumbered by the good days, the great days! Like the evenings I have spent laughing with my sister over absolutely nothing, or the days I have spent bonding with my dad as we chopped logs for the winter, and treated ourselves to a cheap can of beer after, or even the sheer appreciation of hearing my granny’s voice over the phone, picturing our first cup of tea together once the lockdown is lifted. It really is the small things that keep us going during these crazy times. I understand that not everybody is on the same boat, but as that special card I mentioned stated, no matter what storm you are facing, you have to push back harder.

I feel like I have really learned a lot about myself during lockdown. I like poetry, I am a good runner, I like oat milk in my coffee; a compilation of tiny elements about myself that I had never discovered before. It has been this time I’ve had with myself that has really got me thinking about things- about what ‘normal’ will be like in the future, about what my own future will look like. But I suppose, what I have learned the most, is that it really is ok to be a little selfish during these uncertain times. We are living in a world that is millions of miles away from our usual comforts, and it is perfectly normal to be feeling uneasy or worried about things, even if they do seem small.

Almost five months after that card was sent, I feel like the words within it resonate with me now more than ever. These are uncertain times we live in, but it is important to look after one another and look after ourselves, mentally and physically.

Not everything is a part of your plan, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t part of the plan. Stay in, stay safe, and save lives.

Belfast in lockdown is loud at night. The sound of a helicopter stirs the darkness, its whirring drones on for what seems like hours outside my window looking west. I ask my friend, Google, why the helicopters are so frequent lately. She replies with an article from 2018:

“If you can’t sleep, too bad. Be thankful it’s not you who has a loved one missing.”

My new guitar arrived today, corralled by cardboard, suffocated in styrofoam. This isn’t how it was supposed to go, you know.

I had a guitar lined up for my fieldwork. Had it lined up a year ago, a girly-pink Daisy Rock hanging on the wall of a friend’s studio. Not my colour, but the price was right. Instead, separated from the Daisy Rock by an ocean, I browsed a website. Disembodied. I realised how woefully unprepared I was for this task, with no one to guide me, no way to see the guitars in person. I nearly bought a left-handed model by accident – a close call. I somehow managed to bumble my way into a decent purchase; it has since been approved by my brother, the rock star.

I watched the UPS delivery tracker the same way I should have been watching the notifications for my flights: When will it get here? Will there be a delay?

If all had gone as planned, I would be flying to the US next week. Well, you know how that goes. I’m hardly the only person grounded by travel bans, answering questions about my fieldwork – my job – with a ‘delayed indefinitely’. It sucks though.

Fieldwork deferred, with no definite end date, feels like a bit of an identity crisis. I am, after all, an anthro-pologist. I do research with people. It’s one of the things I love about my job and my chosen career. While I fully believe in, and support, more social-distancing-friendly fieldwork – virtual research, online interviews – it is still deeply disappointing that my much-planned-for, in-person fieldwork, a project years in the making, has been put on hold. Ordering the guitar felt a bit like admitting defeat.

And so instead I am doing what everyone else is doing right now – learning online, alone, with an amp that plugs into a pair of headphones so as not to disturb my neighbours, or my long-suffering husband in the other room of our tiny apartment. Instead of being guided by a teacher, I am watching short videos of people I’ve never met – and never will meet – explaining string names and fret numbers to thousands of people they can’t see. Instead of rehearsing and performing with a band, I hum twenty-second pop song choruses under my breath to ensure my hand-washing is up to code. My chorus of choice is that to Queen’s ‘Save Me’ – a bit of black humour for days when humour is needed to get by.

This isn’t how it was supposed to go, but like everyone else right now, I am improvising.