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Coronavirus: to find peace, be very pessimistic ! Says a philoso
pher
By: Aliph Date: April 4, 2020, 1:24 pm
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In the weekend edition of the israeli newspaper Haaretz (April
2, 2020) I found an inspiring interview with the Swiss-born
British philosopher Alain de Botton
I copied here.
Haaretz, April 2, 2020
To Find Peace in the Time of Coronavirus, Be Very, Very
Pessimistic, Says Philosopher Alain De Botton
The only way to achieve inner peace at times like these is to
focus on the worst-case scenario, claims British philosopher and
author Alain de Botton
It’s amazing how easily a dull, incidental routine morphs into a
dystopia. It’s so weird. What shall we talk about? How’s the
weather over there?
There are a number of things I’d like to say about this crisis.
When you live in the modern world, you believe, essentially,
that science and technology can overcome nature. That’s the
profound belief that underlies the Enlightenment, and we, who
live in that world as modern people, are convinced that we have
conquered nature, that we are the dominant species, the supreme
predator – that the environment is subject to our authority. In
fact, we feel so much in control of our environment that we
allow ourselves to feel sorry for it, even as we destroy it.
We weep over the fate of trees and beaches. That’s the way we
live routinely. But the truth is radically different. First, we
don’t really understand our environment. Our mental resources
are very limited. We are experts on certain topics, but at the
same time we are afflicted with vast islands of ignorance.
Ignorance or neglect?
Both. And also stupidity and arrogance. We are truly very flawed
animals. Tragic animals. The ancient Greeks knew it. The ancient
Jews knew it. The Christians. The Buddhists. It’s been encoded
into our cultural DNA from time immemorial.
But we don’t actually acknowledge this. And now we are all
choking on this huge slice of humble pie. We’re not capable of
swallowing it.
Now we must all eat that pie, and we are stunned and shocked,
even though it’s always been there. The human animal,
regrettably, raised itself up to believe in perfection, in
security, in control. But we are biological creatures; we are
actually thin membranes, exposed and vulnerable to every pest
and every accident. At the same time, the good news is that we
all know how to die.
That’s the good news?!
Of course. That’s the only thing we’ve been doing efficiently
and systematically, for years now. Well, maybe in Israel it’s
different, but here in London we can talk for hours, say, about
how we went to a restaurant and they put the gravy on the side
and not on the food. “Can you believe it? They put my gravy on
the side. Outrageous!” Or we quarrel with our partner over a
hair in the bathtub. The things that make us get angry and
complain are incredible.
And then we go to the doctor and he says, “I’m sorry, it’s
cancer, you have three weeks to live” – and we get frightened,
but simultaneously we accept it. Because we know how to die. And
that’s something that is important to remember, even if we want
to live: that we know how to die.
Stoics’ insight
You find consolation in that?
Yes. Even if it’s a dark sort of consolation. My favorite
philosophers are the Stoics.
I’ve also tried to calm myself by reading Seneca, the
philosopher of the people who suffer from anxiety.
Exactly. The Stoics believe that the way to tranquility is not
to think that everything will work out. On the contrary: All
these people who tell you, “Smile and everything will be okay” –
they’re simply torturing us. The only way to achieve true peace
of mind is to focus on the worst-case scenario, because then, no
matter what happens, everything will be all right, because
you’re ready for it.
Seneca thought we should start every day by thinking deeply
about all the torments of the body and the mind that life can
inflict on us. One must think about everything, expect
everything.
Let’s examine the epidemic like Stoics would. It will encircle
the world. It will take the lives of millions, possibly tens of
millions. Everyone will live off a pittance. Everything will
collapse. We’ll return to basics. That could be what will
happen. We will all lose people we love.
Let’s be even darker: The Stoics also believed that when life
becomes too much for you, you may commit suicide. It’s an
option. Unlike the Christians, they didn’t see anything shameful
in that. Seneca writes that to prove how little is needed for
everything to turn to naught, all we need do is grab our wrists
and look at the delicate veins through which our blood flows.
There is freedom at every point along the way – let’s hope we
won’t have to get there, but I find that thought very appealing.
That darkness. It goes well with laughter, with black humor,
gallows humor. It’s very important. We have to laugh with the
**** storm swirling around us. When you know what the bottom is,
when you understand how bad it could get – you’re ready for it.
A happy Sisyphus
The knowledge that we’re fragile, that everything hangs by a
thread during a period like the present, in which we are all so
fearful – won’t Stoicism, or even Buddhist thought, only
heighten the anxiety?
What is anxiety, actually? It is the mind’s desperate effort to
achieve control over the unknown, over the uncontrollable. The
attempt to control reality is doomed to failure, certainly when
the reality is a pandemic.
The second possibility is to try to “teach” the anxiety that
what it’s trying to achieve is impossible. Everything is in
doubt. There is nothing that confers security upon us; security
doesn’t exist. [French philosopher Michel de] Montaigne once
said, "What a good pillow doubt is for a well-balanced head.”
That’s what we have to do. Sleep on a pillow of doubt. That is
the sort of philosophy we need now. Texts like “The Plague” by
Camus, or his writings on Sisyphus.
“The Myth of Sisyphus,” known popularly as “why not commit
suicide”?
Camus wonders: Just a minute, why wouldn’t Sisyphus be happy? It
sounds like a peculiar thought. But Camus – and this is so sweet
of him – thought that we need to focus on simple pleasures: sex,
swimming, soccer, literature. These and other pleasures are
still available to us, on our journey to darkness. I know there
are people who say it’s only a little virus, that everything
will be okay – and in many senses that is correct: Humanity will
survive.
But what will become of us as individuals? We all have one
common fate, which is death. And before it, suffering. I think
the solution for us now is humor, is love – in the sense of
understanding that other people are also afflicted by the same
suffering now, and need the same thing we need: love and
friendship. Not friendship based on fun, but friendship in a
time of sadness, difficulty and fear.
For some reason we are habituated to believe that friendship is
for sharing the good times, but the opposite is true. Friendship
is for sharing the pain, the fear, the anxiety, the misery. We
will need our friends very much in the months ahead.
As an anxious person, I was surprised to discover that there is
no consolation in the fact that everyone is anxious. Perhaps
there is after all a subterranean current underlying the
irrational anxiety that makes us actually realize that it is
irrational anxiety. Now that anxiety is synchronized with
reality; it’s a bottomless pit.
Indeed, during these times we need, above all, role models.
Someone who is capable of displaying behavior that is difficult
for us to display, someone who captivates us because of such
abilities. We are generally enchanted by people who have
succeeded in making a great deal of money or who always know how
to be the life of the party – but at the moment, that is
pointless and useless nonsense. Actually, it always is.
At the moment we need to look up to people who know how to live
in conditions of grim suffering, so that we can tell ourselves
that this is the way, this is how we should behave. Buddhists,
for example, are constantly asked to imagine what the Buddha
would do or say. That is an effective and good framework of
thought.
What would the Buddha say now about the coronavirus? What would
Michel de Montaigne say? Maybe I can learn to think and behave
like them. There is no doubt that our models for identification,
at the moment, are extremely bad. We should choose others.
‘Fat on the bones’
We are all in a state of suffering at the moment, and I think
that the most tortuous dimension of it is the uncertainty. We
have nothing to cling to, and we are not able to cope with such
absolute, multifaceted uncertainty.
My friends keep asking me: What is going to happen? Where will
we be in September? I tell them, philosophically: Let us imagine
the worst-case scenario. There is no use in being optimistic at
the moment. We can assume that within 18 months science will be
able to overcome all this. I assume that we will not be in
lockdown for 18 months. Probably we will be alternately locked
down and released.
The economy will be a total disaster, of course. Very likely
there will be a recession that will cause growth to plummet by
5, 10, 15 percent. Those are huge numbers, but still, there’s
plenty of fat on the bones. We might have to live at the
standard of living we had 15 years ago. We didn’t go to so many
restaurants then. It’s not the end of the world. And when you
make that scenario your anchor, your home – out of the
uncertainty you find a place to reside in.
What truly generates anxiety is that your friends call and say,
“Did you see what they wrote in the paper? Even British Airways
will go bankrupt.” And everyone sinks into a tailspin of
anxiety. Yes, many airlines will go bust. And instead of turning
on the television and seeing that BA has gone bankrupt and then
fainting, we should accept it now. You can see where this is
headed. When they will announce that there will be 40 million
jobless, you’ll be the one who already grasped that. Those are,
of course, not my forecasts, just guesses I make about the
worst-case scenarios.
I assume that most people would be happy to buy into the
possibility that it will all end for them with only an economic
catastrophe. I was astonished by Boris Johnson’s statement:
“Many families will lose their loved ones.” In Israel that
wouldn’t work. With all due respect to the ethos of the Blitz,
to “keep calm and carry on,” how is it possible to swallow a
comment like that at a time like this?
It is totally unacceptable. In my opinion, Boris Johnson is not
right in the head. He is certainly not fit to be a leader. He’s
an extremely flawed person, and it’s a great tragedy of British
politics that he is the person managing this crisis.
In large measure, that blunt assessment fits in with your
recommendation: to go for the worst-case scenario.
Certainly, but chats more important is how we say things, not
what we say. You want to tell your children now, “Be quiet
already, and leave me alone,” but you tell them, “Sweeties, Mom
is a bit busy now.” Same message. Part of the work of leaders at
this time is to mediate things properly. Boris Johnson’s
statement frightened and angered so many people.
Now our government is changing its policy, because it turned out
that they relied on mistaken numbers. They changed their policy
within a few days, because they understood that it would simply
kill millions of elderly people. It’s so scary to think that the
decision makers can’t do the math, don’t know how to choose a
proper mathematical model. The human animal is, after all, the
human animal.
Good vs. bad death
This crisis has exposed the acuteness of the leadership crisis
all over the world. It’s frightening to realize that our fate is
in the wrong hands. You see worthy leaders, such as in France
and Germany, say, and long for that.
There are very few worthy leaders at this time. We are living in
a decadent era, and one of the signs of that decadence is that
we allow ourselves to take risks, because that makes life more
exciting, and we are already bored by the familiar. We see that
attitude underlying the voting in the United States and in many
places in Europe.
People tell themselves: Let’s take a chance with this colorful
character, it’ll be interesting. The result is that in many
countries, there are leaders ruling who would not be elected
today, because they lack the qualities required of leaders,
certainly in this period.
We are being compelled to cope with the fact that we invest
considerable mental resources in denying the transience of our
existence. Our identity, our ability to conduct life correctly,
relies in large measure on our ability to repress our mortality.
I think there is such a thing as a good death and a bad death. I
will tell you what my philosophy is in life. I am 50 years old
now. I have lived quite a bit. Certainly more than many people
throughout history. I have managed to do a lot. Truly terrible
things have happened to me; wonderful things have happened to
me. I have seen many places. Like many people my age, and older,
I would like to live forever. But if this is the end – okay. I
think we need to abandon the thinking that says we need to live
forever.
A person of 50 has been able to do many things in his life.
Sorry if I sound too dark, but at this age my chance of having a
stroke in the next year is 1.5 percent. And there’s cancer.
There are heart attacks. There are horrific diseases. There are
traffic accidents. We are tempted to believe that we are lasting
and solid, like the trees, like the buildings, like the world
outside. That is not the case.
We are, all in all, just visitors. We are as vulnerable as a
piece of paper, we can be torn very easily. We are used to
living, that’s all we know; we have never died before. Only
others die. Every time we go to the doctor, he has less and less
good news for us. At a certain point the doctor will no longer
tell us, “This is the situation and this is what needs to be
done,” but “I’m so sorry.” We always perceive that as news
intended for someone else. As narcissists, we’re tempted into
believing that all will be well. But that is simply not true.
We believe in continuity. In stability. We perceive reality as
being based on those principles. Tomorrow will look like today.
That’s why it is so difficult for us to understand that it’s not
so. I think what we need to do is shift to dualistic thinking.
On the one hand, we will continue to believe that we are
immortal, wandering about in the world, engaging in our affairs:
It’s very important that we get the contract we want, that we
have pasta for supper today, that we buy a new pair of pants –
everything is very meaningful.
But at the same time, we need to cling to another side as well:
a side that is responsible for preparing us when the diagnosis
arrives. A side that has read Buddhist writings and Stoic
philosophy and has listened to Bach and gazed at the stars and
knows what awaits us. And when it is required – and only when it
is required – of us, we will be able to make the transition
between the two types of thought and shift to tragic thinking.
A type of thinking whose center of gravity is acceptance?
Absolutely. Consider that we live in a house and spend most of
our time in pleasant, illuminated, heated rooms. But there is
another room in the house. We do not want to enter it, because
it contains grim things. But why should we not spend an hour
there? We’ll just turn on the light and see what there is. It’s
not a nice room. It’s cold. It has a strange odor. But we know
it’s there, and it’s worthwhile getting acquainted with it,
before the time comes.
I think it genuinely helps to know that other people have taken
that route. That knowledge can help when you get your diagnosis
and you look out the window and see children playing soccer
outside and the skyscraper going up across the way, and there’s
a big party tomorrow night – but that’s precisely the point. The
time comes when you need to leave the party. When it’s not your
turn anymore. We don’t need to see that as a punishment. It is
not a punishment.
Our fear of death has occupied many philosophers.
Spinoza, who liked the Stoics very much, said that we have the
ability to examine the world from a different perspective. An
eternal one. He called it, in Latin, “Sub specie aeternitatis”
[roughly, something in its essential or universal form or
nature.]
Philosophy can help us look at the world from that perspective.
To abandon the egoistic, limited perspective through the prism
of which our death is a tragedy, and to think in terms of
thousands of years. The earth is billions of years old.
Ninety-nine percent of the species that ever existed have long
since become extinct. We are living on a far vaster canvas than
we are capable of grasping or imagining. It’s hard for us to
understand how small and temporary we are – but our brain is
capable of grasping abstract things.
We are the only species that’s capable of understanding the
universe, even if in a limited way, and I think we would do well
to adhere to that perspective. To understand that this
character, who is called me, who is so important in our eyes, is
merely an accumulation of molecules. That on a cosmic scale, the
importance of each of us, no matter what we have done in our
lives, is negligible. What we have succeeded in achieving, what
we failed to achieve – this has no meaning. If we can free
ourselves from our ego, we will be able to adopt that point of
view.
Matisse’s example
We can’t part without a little hope.
When I think of hope I think of Matisse. His life was one of
protracted suffering, but his art is filled with hope. His
paintings are so happy, the sun is shining, trees are
blossoming, people are smiling, dancing. His are not sentimental
works. Sentimental artists think life is beautiful. But
realistic, hope-filled artists, like Matisse, know that life is
suffering, filled with pain, and that is the reason that hope is
so important. That is the reason that a painting of a lemon, or
of a palm tree, is so important. It is important because the
backdrop is darkness. That is the type of hope we need at this
time. Not hollow hope, that rests on nothing, not people who
will tell us not to worry, because everything is good and
everything will be all right.
Like gallows humor, we need gallows hope. We are all going to
the gallows, but along the way there are wonderful fruits and
there is a cute child of 3 who’s made a painting of a duck. The
child is so happy and the painting is marvelous. Maybe we’ll eat
a pomegranate. Maybe we’ll look up at the sky. All those things
are still possible. Beautiful things, filled with hope. We must
treasure them more than ever, because more than ever, they are
what make our lives worth living. Pomegranate seeds. The smile
of a 3-year-old child. The seashore. Those are the things that
are worth clinging to in these times.
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