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Pandemic Metaphysics: Is the Individual Efficacious? Or Helpless?

By Walter Donway

May 17, 2020

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We are sharing a rare experience, today, one that dramatizes how different fundamental philosophical premises about the individual and reality may clash.

We are sharing a rare experience, today, one that dramatizes how different fundamental philosophical premises about the individual and reality may clash. The conflicting premises themselves are always present. Philosophers clothe them in various terms, but, to put it bluntly: Is the human individual inherently (by nature, fundamentally) able to prevail in the world (existence, reality) or is he buffeted by deterministic forces and circumstances?

Today, that conflict is dramatized in America and much of the world by the coronavirus pandemic, the spread of COVID-19. Why should a new strain of virus from central China—the latest in a succession of threats such as the SARS and MERS viruses—rise to the status of a battle over our fundamental views of human existence? In brief, of course, the answer is that the clash is not over the virus but the responses to it.

What may be distinctive, in America, is that the coronavirus fell into a veritable petri dish of American partisan politics. The 2016 election of Donald Trump as U.S. president drove the Left from heaven, pitching headlong down to a self-proclaimed hell, where they have howled their distress for four years. What is perceived, by them, as a life-and-death struggle is the need to enforce a “politically correct” culture, educational system, and polity in America.

The branch of philosophy that investigates the fundamentals of human nature and its relationship to nature is metaphysics.

The branch of philosophy that investigates the fundamentals of human nature and its relationship to nature is metaphysics. Metaphysics does not ask if given individuals in given circumstances find happiness, and in other eras, other circumstances, find suffering. The question is not about accidentals but fundamentals. Is the human individual endowed by nature with a capacity to reason (operate on the conceptual or abstract level of awareness), learn, understand, create, and  direct his actions by choice, equipped to survive, succeed, and achieve happiness in the reality in which he finds himself? Or not?

The evolution of humans across diverse epochs in earth’s history—their survival, prosperity, and triumphant creative mastery of the planet to advance their survival—with huge gains in average lifespan and comfort—are irrefutable evidence that on the fundamental level we are capable of prevailing.

Philosophy does not ignore the suffering, but it avoids unwarranted generalizations. Human reason, with the tools of science and technology, its capacity to benefit from society, its protean inventiveness—its capacity to conceive living on other planets around other stars—attest overwhelmingly and decisively to human nature’s ample capacity to prevail.

 

What Difference Does Our View Make?

If the individual is systematically defeated by what life brings, baffled in seeking to survive, frustrated in seeking happiness—then his only hope is to be directed, regulated, required by law and the dictates of government to do what he must to survive.

If, however, the individual by nature can face reality and prevail, achieve happiness by exercising man’s natural gifts, then our natural condition is to be free to judge and act on our judgment. Political dictation in the form of laws, policies, and regulations—except for those that safeguard our right to freedom of action—interfere with survival and prospering.

Speaking chiefly of America, I observe everywhere a society clashing over a metaphysical issue.

Speaking chiefly of America, I observe everywhere a society clashing over a metaphysical issue. On one side are those comfortable, “in their element,” with the supposed helplessness of people threatened with illness and death, (allegedly) unable to go to their jobs, attentive for hours every day to politicians and the “media elite” for information and guidance. It is impossible not to notice how politicians, bureaucrats, and “opinion makers” glory in this role. Look at the parade:

  1. Among the first to declare that the pandemic “spirit” must become permanent has been the “catastrophic climate change” lobby. They view the population of the earth as drifting for decades toward global disaster. The pandemic merely shakes us awake to the decades of emergency measures required against the threats of economic growth and industrial production.
  2. A coterie of power-seeking governors, foremost among them NYS Gov. Andrew Cuomo, now daily spend hours on TV reporting on “the emergency,” the “crisis”—admonishing, handholding, preening in the role of savior, champion of “the people.”
  3. After putting everyone out of work with “lockdown” decrees (although President Trump never went along with the idea of a federal lockdown), Congress and President Trump put the United States into another $3.0-trillion in debt to rescue the “locked down” with checks drawn on the credit of their children and grandchildren.
  4. Night news and specials parade cumulatively thousands of stories of “helpless” families—often with mothers holding babies—sometimes weeping, sometimes angry, describing their plight. Of course, it is helplessness against governors who have locked down their states, quarantined them, shuttered their businesses, their employers.
  5. The New York Times daily offers opinion articles with indistinguishable titles on how things must change in the wake of the emergency. These quotations, from an article beginning on the positive note that the Black Death helped to free the serfs, captures the spirit of hundreds of other articles:

“This is truly a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” said Janelle Jones, a managing director at Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive economic policy group. “Policymakers need to focus on restructuring our economy in a way that rebalances power toward workers.”

“… the public health case is just so obvious and strong,” said Kristen Harknett, one of the leaders of the Shift Project and a sociologist at the University of California, San Francisco. “We’ve never before had such evidence for how this collectivizes the problem….”

  1. Nightly performances showcase minstrels of human sorrow, which they have sung ever since the Great Depression (the previous great clash over human helplessness in the face of economic catastrophe brought about by government policies).
  2. And the slogans, of course, are ceaselessly repeated about “we are in this together,” “we will get through this,” and “you are not alone,” we are “all with you.” The individual without the collective is helpless, lonely, terrified.
  3. And our “heroes” are those professions that provide their valuable services to us in times of illness and death. They not “heroes,” except in the metaphysics that sees masses of helpless sufferers and “heroes” who respond to the catastrophe that is the supposed human condition. A clip shows a tickertape parade for Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, who commanded the successful D-Day invasion that began the defeat of Nazi Germany but doctored to make it seem to celebrate New York City health professionals, who are only doing their jobs—and not in dire risk. .

 

Most telling is the theme that this must continue. Not the epidemic, but the new relationship between metaphysically helpless mankind and those destined to save them—and rule them.

Most telling is the theme that this must continue. Not the epidemic, but the new relationship between metaphysically helpless mankind and those destined to save them—and rule them. Gov. Cuomo, seizing the political opportunity offered by the epidemic, leads the way. He has announced that the future of New York State’s economy, kneecapped by his own lockdown, must be “reimagined.” Voices everywhere reaffirm a new commitment to America where need is the justification for a metastasizing welfare state.

Yes, there is another side. It is the American sense of life. Philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand has characterized it as the conviction that success is the metaphysical norm, that the proper response to a challenge is a “can do” attitude, and, relevant today, “Don’t push me around!”

In what I call an “Age of Politics,” the clash of metaphysical premises about human nature inevitably has political champions. In general, Democratic Party governors, mayors, and congressmen gravitate toward political dictates. We will tell you when you can return to work. We will tell what medicines are safe to take. We will tell you when to return to school. To your local park. Tune in daily to hear what you can do and when. Airtime that for political ads would cost millions, is free, now. And Democrats charge Cuomo with manipulating the state’s primary election to block apparent Democratic nominee Joseph Biden. And, with unlimited “face time,” Cuomo campaigns for the nomination.

Also on the other side is President Donald Trump. Is that because he achieved success as a businessman in the brutally tough New York City construction industry? That his career and wealth are built on risk taking, producing, and profiting? The only real businessman to be president of the United States for a century?

One need not glorify him to acknowledge that he has emerged as advocate of individual responsibility and choice. He never decreed a federal lockdown. Yes, he has warned, cautioned, and guided Americans. But ultimately, he has rejected government dictates.

He is assailed by the media and Democratic politicians for changing his mind on the crisis. But change characterized the unfolding evidence of the origin, seriousness, and required response to the novel coronavirus. Do his detractors boast that they never have changed their minds on the epidemic?
 

Out of the metaphysical clash has arisen a protest movement, still surprisingly tame, against the “lockdown.”

Out of the metaphysical clash has arisen a protest movement, still surprisingly tame, against the “lockdown.” No emergency can be overcome by denying Americans their livelihoods. Applaud charity pantries, but no pantries of earnest volunteers can sustain 328 million Americans. If government prevents Americans from doing their jobs, disaster is the only result. In just two months, more than 33 million Americans have lost their jobs. That wipes out all job gains of the past decade. In May, about half of all “working” Americans might not have a paycheck.

President Trump has become national spokesman of getting America back to work. Opening the stores, the businesses, the jobs. His political risk is acute. If opening of the United States economy results in a resurgence of COVID-19 deaths, then President’s Trump’s political enemies will try to use that to destroy him. They have tried everything else.

But Trump, if he is honest, has no choice. No public health crisis in American history has been used to justify the “lockdown” of the economy. It never has happened, until now. Those whose livelihoods are shuttered may be fodder for the media—parading their helplessness, the tragedies that have overwhelmed life—or they may fight to restore freedom.

In the news media, protests against the lockdown are characterized as a “rebellion” against authority. Taking advantage of Michigan state laws that permit firearms in the state capitol, some protestors against lockdown arrived with their guns. The demonstration was entirely peaceful. But it made a fundamental point: all laws are enforced, in the final analysis, out of the barrel of a gun. And if those laws make our survival impossible, we may have no choice but to respond in kind—out of the barrel of a gun.

The media, except Breitbart News and Fox News, portrayed the armed demonstrators as threatening violence. Such is the nature of the media today (See Media Wars: The Battle to Shape Our Minds). To my knowledge, no one pointed out that law itself is enforced by guns. Americans delegate to government a monopoly on the use of self-defensive force to bring it under objective control—courts and organized policing circumscribed by procedural safeguards for rights.

When the law no longer protects our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (and property), then the delegation of the use of force to government loses legitimacy. And when withdrawal of legitimacy becomes widespread, the response may be civil disobedience (as when Henry David Thoreau refused to pay taxes to a government enforcing slavery), to rebellion (the Whiskey Rebellion, Shays’ Rebellion), to civil war. The clash over lockdown, with Democratic governors grasping daily at greater power, and with Americans driven by the imperative of earning a living, holds the potential for rebellion.

What offers hope is that the president has become the public figure representing the “must do” spirit—upholding the imperative of getting back to work, “opening” the country. In interviews, media stars press the questions: How do you feel about the Americans who have died? Is there anything you want to say to their families? Does it keep you awake at night?

They were questions repeatedly posed to U.S. generals in World War II, like George Patton, who were known for their “fighting heart.” The answer is the same: I have feelings, but I cannot rely on them to guide my decisions.

I hope that a report in Breitbart News may hint at what is to come.

“Some Pennsylvania business owners are reopening their businesses in defiance of Gov. Tom Wolf’s stay-at-home orders, citing the need to save their livelihoods.

“‘I had to save my business,’ Julie Potter, owner of East Freedom’s Tame Your Mane salon, told NBC Philadelphia. ‘I couldn’t let it end like that.’

“The salon has increased safety precautions, like temperature checks, the use of masks, and increased sanitization, according to the owner.

“Gorilla House Gym in Altoona has also reopened despite the governor’s orders, barring the reopening of ‘nonessential businesses’ like salons and gyms. ‘No one allowed us to do this,’ owner Ray Ross said… ‘We did this on our own. We just decided to do it.’

“‘We didn’t ask permission to do it. We just did it, and we’re going to keep doing it. Someone had to take a stand,’ he added. ‘Enough is enough.’

“‘The governor keeps pushing back the opening day, and it’s pretty obvious this has turned political. Nurses are being laid off, and the hospitals are not overrun,’ he stated, adding they have received an ‘insane’ amount of support from gym-goers.

“Meanwhile, Nichole Missino, owner of Giovanni’s Media Barber Shop in Media, Pennsylvania, said she and her employees have decided they must resume trading, even though the county remains under the ‘red’ phase.

“‘We just all came to the decision. We’re going to have to open because pretty soon we’re going to run out of money to feed our families,’ Missino said.”

Despite lawsuits, Gov. Wolf extended the state’s stay-at-home order to June 4.
 

Recall that the metaphysics of individual helplessness lies at the root of Marxism.

Recall that the metaphysics of individual helplessness lies at the root of Marxism, which portrays men as trapped in misery by the determinism of class warfare. The salvation is the communist state, the dictatorship of the proletariat. For the New Left, the mass of men are trapped in capitalist exploitation of natural resources, depleting the earth; or, more recently, the opposite: capitalist exploitation creating too much economic growth, drowning the world in pollution. For postmodernists (neo-Marxists), men are trapped in racist, sexist, xenophobic societies divided into the exploiters and the exploited.

In that historical context, when the pandemic came along the intellectual, cultural, educational, and political machinery was in place to frame it rendering the mass of men helpless—calling for a collective response dictated by politicians and “opinion leaders.”

Nothing necessitated the “lockdown” response. Nothing shows that it worked better than the immediate universal educational campaign to inform and guide people. No one can calculate total costs of locking down the world’s largest economy.

No, the response is driven by the postmodernist delusion, a delusion rapidly displacing its philosophic opposite, the American sense of life.

Americans face a life-and-death crisis, but it is not the latest health scare.

 
 

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