Cogito Ergo Sum

I was wrong. Unfortunately. In a previous post, in a moment, I can’t say, either of mental weakness or optimistic trust in human nature, I boldly stated that the experience of disasters, like Covid-19 outbreak, might boost social changes, as communities naturally come together in order to help one another. In short, the worse the situation is, the better people become. Of course, somebody commented that it was more likely to be exactly the other way round, namely, people would have much more easily given way to their evil instincts, like in Saramago’s “On Blindness”, in such circumstances, but nobody even remotely imagined that Covid-19 disaster would have actually turned people neither better nor worse, but rather, more stupid, and without even being infected.

Jonathan Swift had always been convinced that human reason was overrated, parlicularly by those among his contemporaries who boasted to be living in the age of  Enlightement. Of course, he couldn’t deny that men were somehow endowed with reason, but his focus was actually on how they used it, so he made his “Gulliver’s Travels” be the perfect place where to pour his thoughts, which can be summed as follows: whether men are dwarfs or giants, cultivated or Yahoos, in whatever latitude and longitude they have organized their more or less advanced societies, the great majority of them lack in one important constituent: wisdom. That is because the force of men’s instinct, their greed for power, their drives are too strong to be effectively and constantly controlled by reason alone:

My little Friend Grildrig. . . . I cannot but conclude the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth. (Gulliver’s Travels. Part II, Chpt VI)

These are the words of a misanthrope, and indeed he has been considered so, but was his vision of man truly so deformed or is there some truth in it? I’m sure, if he could comment our present situation he would say: “Told you!!”  After of 8 months of Covid-19 outbreak we can affirm that little is known about the virus, nothing about future outcomes, no vaccine and only a few certainties: the importance of wearing masks, keeping ourselves distanced and washing our hands, which is exactly what was recommended one hunded years ago for the Spanish flu. These recommendations are the product of reason and science, even if, I must say,  there haven’t been significant developments since 1918/19. Hence, if wisdom were at work, we’d follow what advised by virologists and look forward for a vaccine as soon as possible, wouldn’t we?

But it is not. It seems incredible, at least to me, but thousands of people prefer to believe that wearing masks causes cancer and that this pandemic is just a strategy to control everybody keeping them distanced and at home and that, of course, all this goes against their acquired freedoms and rights of doing …what they want, let alone those who are firmly no vaccine, any vaccine. Even if there is evindence that lockdowns have worked to control the spreading of the outbreak, they would be ready to confute those figures as fake, or that covid does not exist, hence, claiming that our rights are at stake. Why does this happen? I don’t know. I can only say that believing, after all, is effortless. You believe in who/what charms you or sounds convincing – many are ready to believe that the earth is flat too – but proving needs undestanding, hard work, knowledge, wisdom and this is still for a minority.

Of course, with the coming of summer, it has been impossible to deny anybody one last unquestionable right: the right of vacation. After all we have gone through, I guess, it would have been wiser to restrain this impulse for a while, since the virus is still circulating, but no way, the dream of vacation has been stronger than the primordial survival instinct and millions of people have started to move around Europe. Of course, you don’t go on holiday to be distanced and wearing masks, you want to enjoy a full life made of fun, restaurants, beautiful spots, discos and I may understand it. The result is that after having been able to control this outbreak quite well eventually, people are coming back infected and cases are increasing exponentially. Of course, according to a negationist logic there are obscure forces at work that want a new lockdown. “Cogito ergo sum…..” an idiot.

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