The Corona virus pandemic: curse or learning challenge for a sustainable world

In his article entitled 'We can't go back to normal: how will coronavirus change the world?' Peter Baker suggests that the current pandemic is a "once-in-a-generation chance to remake society and build a better future" (The Guardian, 31/3/2020). He also notes that it can make existing imbalances worse, and we can indeed see now that in some countries attempts are made to enshrine new control structures, or, as we can see with Hungary's president, to use it to undermine democratic principles and grab the presidency for life.

At the same time, there is another story. Considering the strong link to immunity, the Covid-19 challenge can also be regarded as a litmus test of our current states of emotional and ecological sustainability. If we get seriously sick, we may have to conclude and accept that we have indeed endangered our health through harmful lifestyles, neglected our emotional integrity, lost our work-life balance, and neglected our physio-emotional self-regulation to a dangerous degree, behaviours that increasingly more of us have to engage in to survive in increasingly exploitative and inhumane societies.

What, then, can we learn from the current pandemic? And will we, in hindsight, regard what is now mainly perceived as a catastrophe, also as a driver for the long-overdue increase in ecological awareness and a restructuring of our economic activities. After all, it is remarkable that this virus pandemic has achieved in a few months what decades of urging by ecologists has not been able to achieve: a significant reduction of our ecologically unsustainable hyper-consumption and exploitation and pollution of the planet (see for example Bahro, 1994; Nadeau, 2006; Victor, 2008).

Sadly, but also predictably, the currently emerging massive reduction in consumption and pollution is not socially equitable and has the potential to lead to unnecessary and counterproductive economic and social destruction. When a conscious and equitable downsizing of our economy would have enabled us to avoid hardship, the current fear-driven managed collapse of our economy has the potential to drive many economically vulnerable citizens into homelessness and severe mental health problems.

This article presents five learning challenges that, I believe, we have to embrace if we want to tackle the current pandemic and avert ecological catastrophes and the final collapse of our ecosystems and humanness through even more violent ones to come.

Learning from the virus

When researching how bacteria protect themselves from the effects of medication seeking to destroy them, the German biologist Wolfgang Pollmann discovered in the 1970s that they achieve resistance by modifying some of their genetic code (Pollmann, 1982). They then also share these altered code fragment by docking onto other bacteria to provide them with the code thereby bestowing them with immunity. Some of us could learn a lesson from these socially-minded bacteria. This so-called horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is, not surprisingly, an integral part of nature's self-regulation and adaptation mechanisms. According to Pollmann, the dissemination of viruses is another way of sharing genetic code. They contain gene fragments used by the same and different species to share vital information needed to adapt to ecological changes. As we can read on the Antimicrobial Resistance Learning Site, "[t]he advent of molecular biological approaches proved that resistance genes are also horizontally transferred among bacteria at a rate that was greater than previously expected" .

Marine biologists have also found that in our oceans 90% of the biomass is microbial and viruses assist in modifying 20% of the DNA of this biomass daily. All this is done for the sole purpose of the survival and thriving of nature (see also Hunter, 2010).

The learning challenge for us here is to adopt an ecological and biological view of viruses and infection and abandon the current profit-driven medical view that has distorted ecological and biological understandings of nature's regulation systems into a 'fighting the enemy' and 'dodging the bullet' discourse to promote cures of illnesses rather than their prevention through conscious and ecologically sustainable living. After all fighting viruses seems pretty pointless if we accept that "there may be a hundred million times more viruses on Earth than there are stars in the universe". Ironically, the current emphasis of cures over prevention contradicts the view held in population health that most lasting positive health changes have been preventative, not curative, with the introduction of sewage systems only one famous example.

It takes two to tango

While the currently necessary, but also lopsided, 'dodging the bullet' isolation approach promoted by health officials and enforced by politicians is undoubtedly necessary to limit the number of deaths by matching the infection rate with the available medical resources, it is suggested here that this containment approach with its associated challenges should only be one of three necessary approaches to the pandemic. Widely missing are campaigns explaining to citizens the importance of increasing their immunity to infection and how to achieve this. After all, if viruses were hostile monsters out to get us, most people getting infected would also get seriously sick and possibly die. That this is not so demonstrates that our compromised immune systems caused by ubiquitous stress and unhealthy lifestyle choices are the main problem.

Socialised in the current paradigm of 'us and them', and committed to the profit interests of corporate companies and their shareholders, most politicians seemingly cannot afford to point out that the main causes underlying our current immunity and other mental and physical health problems are the increasingly unbearable and dangerous levels of exploitation that dominate the emotional and social lives of most of us. Who is not experiencing these days ongoing rounds of 'rightsizing' at their workplaces? Who is s not working in a casualised workforce or the so-called gig economy, or even experiencing prolonged phases of unemployment because jobs are outsourced or increasingly performed by machines? Who is not because of these and other reasons chronically distressed, often using illicit or prescription medication to get through the day? We have been indoctrinated to believe that it is possible to continuously increase 'shareholder value' through increasing exploitation without eventually creating a response in the form of a social revolution or, as we are seeing now, a pandemic with widely fear-driven responses such as hoarding. It is also possible that future research, when viewed in the context of the current changes, will show that the current 'irrational' fears may be our unconscious fears of living in an uninhabitable world (see Havenaar, 2002; Wallace-Wells, 2019) and shame about leaving this world to our children and future generations.

The challenge here for all of us is to learn to lead sustainable lives and to vote for politicians passionate about social and ecological change that can lead to a long-term reduction of exploitation and stress rather than those who offer us little perks to bribe us before elections.

Separating the wheat from the chaff

The third major learning challenge arising from the current situation described here is the necessity to learn to differentiate between ecologically and socially useful and superfluous or even harmful industries. One industry that we can safely abandon is the part of the advertising industry that manipulates our self-esteem problems for the creation of desires for unsustainable 'wants'. In a sustainable and equitable society that has to function under the current strong ecological pressures, there can no place for advertising that goes beyond informing people about the value and availability of essential goods and services. The people working in this field may need to retrain to be able to work in current and future industries that are required for the survival of modern societies. Managing the rapidly increasing ecological deterioration and the emotional and social challenges emerging from it will require from us to be able to build whole new cities when the old ones submerge (e.g., Jakarta and Miami), fortify disappearing coastlines, storm-proof millions of existing dwellings, and work in the mental and physical health sector, to mention just a few areas. Regarding the Covid-19 pandemic as a shot across the bow would challenge us to make these necessary transitions to a more sustainable living oriented economy.

Stabilising our mood

If the current way of running our economy and fast and hectic lives were a mental illness, it would be Bipolar Disorder, previously known also as Manic Depressive Disorder.

A typical feature of being in the manic state is our inability to recognise it. Lacking the ability to regulate their emotions, we are run consistently on high energy levels without the ability to slow down, often engage in risk-taking and addictive behaviours, and promote and pursuit unrealistic ideas. It is only now as we are rapidly sliding past 'normal' into the depressive phase of fear that we rediscover these long phone calls with friends and conversations with other family members, the books that we never got around to reading, and the leisurely pottering around in the home and garden. While the CO2 output is decreasing, the fish are coming back to Venice, and the smog over cities is rapidly dispersing. It is joyful again to walk in forests without the constant plane noise overhead. We are now getting a glimpse of living in a more sustainable world without the busy-ness and hype of our manic compensation of self-esteem problems through incessant 'retail therapy'.

If politicians were conventional psychiatrists, they would prescribe mood stabilisers to help people avoid going back to the next manic episode. If they had a more holistic orientation, they would teach people how to lead sustainable lives and help strengthen their natural self-esteem. The learning challenge for us here is for all of us to address the self-esteem issues underpinning our compensatory consumption through counselling and psycho-education seminars. Health professionals, community leaders, and politicians need to promote and facilitate these activities to avoid the next bouts of mania that often get increasingly severe.

The healing power of illness

Many psychosomatically literate health professionals view the symptoms of an illness and the curative efforts required as direct and symbolic guides to its causative factors (Dethlefsen, 1984; Dethlefsen & Dahlke, 1990). This view highlights features such as:

• The strong interdependence of all beings on this planet;
• The necessity for governments to spend less of our money on supporting the wealthy but more on funding health care and people's ability to lead emotionally and ecologically sustainable lives;
• A more generous approach in dealing with the vulnerable members of our society;
• The still prevailing inability of current governments and individuals addicted to compensatory consumption to create a paradigm shift towards a sustainable form of living on this planet;
• People's need to get more enjoyment from relationships and simple, small-scale activities; and
• The necessity to live a less driven and work-dominated life in a cleaner natural environment.

The learning challenge for us as a society is to learn from the changes that crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic force upon us. We now have the opportunity to create a more psychosomatically and ecologically literate society. After all, paradises are built in hell (Solnit, 2009).