Pandemic Insights (II): IN THE EYE OF THE NOISETORM - by Sicopol

 

    What the world has been experiencing for the past year is what some call a "total social event", in the sense that it is shaking up all social relations and actors, institutions and values. Right now, the pandemic has taken us into a profound state of psychological and social entropy. And when the world around us changes and becomes uncertain, we have two paths: to sink into entropy or to emerge with a new equilibrium. A moment like this can be a turning point, an inaugural experience for humanity. My work in the humanitarian world has led me on several occasions to experience what a major natural disaster means, and the world it leaves in its wake. In those moments, during and also after, there is a lot of confusion. The most basic structures of society and community are shaken. We lose our reference points, we feel out of place, we face a new reality to adapt to. Dynamics and behaviors that we took for granted no longer apply, we do not know how to interpret information, or the one we had is no longer relevant. In short, the world as we knew it has collapsed and life will no longer be the same. That's why so much work is done on resilience and response systems. And yet, it is still a traumatic event for many. For this total social event, for which we have not been prepared, no one has answers. Like the famous example of chaos as part of evolutionary dynamics, about the flutter of a butterfly triggering a hurricane on the other side of the world, in this case it is a virus effect that has triggered a pandemic hurricane. And, in one of the ways in which this crisis resembles a major natural disaster, is that brings about more than change. It causes disruption, many unprecedented situations where previous experience does not apply. Faced with this situation, we have turned our eyes to science. But what happens when scientists do not have the answers, nor the power to control the danger and alleviate our uncertainty? A philosopher recently said that if they are consulted on a serious matter, it is a sign that all competent people have failed. Just as in the old days religion was used. And the fact is that, when faced with fundamental questions, we are only relieved by answers freed from specific contexts and times. Just as with the environmental crisis, in which we are beginning to realize that the solution is not so much in having control through science and technology of the modern world, but precisely in releasing it, recovering the connection and communication with the earth and its beings. However, unlike what may happen with the environmental crisis, this pandemic crisis will not be the end of the world. Although it is the end of a world of certainties in which we felt independent, self-sufficient and invulnerable, as a society and, some times, even as individuals.

Noisetorm

    When a hurricane is approaching, the advice is usually to get to safety and not to leave until it passes. And, when it passes, we must remain calm, not make hasty decisions, observe and understand that, in this new unstructured reality we find ourselves in, it is necessary to observe and assess the risks. That is why, in the humanitarian response, the first emergency aid is as important as the early assessment of non-immediate needs. Understand how reality has changed to know where to focus our energies. No one would think of going out in the middle of a hurricane, to assess damage or help, because you put yourself at risk and waste energy that will be very valuable later on. Actually, with all this metaphor I am not referring to the virus itself, but to the hurricane of noise it is dragging along with it. Suddenly, it is as if everyone is oblivious to the fact that an exceptional event is occurring, so serious, that instead of going out, you have to be on a tangent, or following that eye of the hurricane away from the whirlpool, and observing what is happening. Feeling what is happening in order to act in the best way when the storm passes. Well, no, we do not accept it and we rush to feed the hurricane with opinions, theories, information, data that, of course, turn into discussions, conflicts, judgments and, what is worse, more noise. Without realizing that, not only are we beating around the bush without knowing the real consequences, but that we may be causing more damage in the long run than the pandemic hurricane itself. And the latest mental health data are clearly showing this.

Dualistic patterns

    We live in a world of symbols. Symbols that simplify, for better and for worse, the mental constructs with which we identify ourselves. And in confusing times we look for recognizable and indisputable symbols more than ever. The problem is to forget that symbols get their power in the agreements and perceptions, and to think that they are symbols of truth, which, at the social level, we also construct through agreements, through relativistic approaches to truth - those that regard truth as "what is accepted; or what is put forward by society". Related to this search for symbols, in this era without certainties, the assumption of the extremes in which we perceive good and evil is reinforced. In this linear and dualistic perception of reality, the paradoxical thing is that the poles follow the same patterns, so that in reality they end up meeting. Let me explain: during all this stage since the pandemic began, I have seen people I have always admired, beings of light, being carried away by fear and the vacuum of scientific and moral authority, the vacuum of existing certainties, to influence with their own narrative and, in addition, with a really worrying paradox: maintaining discourses that resembled in essence the same ideologies that they pretend to confront. Using the same patterns of the system they pretend to change. In an era of noise, confusion and falsehoods that are more real than reality, we tend to identify more than ever with what reaffirms us and what alleviates our uncertainty. Our mind tends to set in motion compensatory mechanisms to avoid total entropy and maintain a certain stability that preserves our "I". This leads to misinformation, information that is not created with the intention to harm, but is false. And, when there are no agreed certainties, everything is potentially valid and possible. But when anything goes, almost everything is just noise. We live in a society where the most important thing is to know which side someone is on. And that becomes us-versus-them war mentality. I feel that what we need is to break that vicious circle and turn it into a spiral of collective growth. And a total social event like this can be that tipping point, that breaking point of this spiral of erosion.

Post-truth

    I have the intuition that this crisis does not come at this time by chance, or not only by chance, but is somehow related to what has been called the era of post-truth and fake news. Because let us remember that what is really dangerous about post-truth is its intention, fed by the rational, individualistic, materialistic monopoly of the last decades or even centuries. Post-truth is, by definition, the deliberate distortion of reality (whether it is a construct or not) to manipulate beliefs and emotions in order to influence public opinion and social attitudes. Even worse, this change in attitudes and perceptions has plunged us into a dangerous process of permanent fiction, where the tide of misinformation, along with the devastating reality of the epidemic, has shaped a complex scenario of confusion and uncertainty. But what happens when we enter a society with the capacity to influence constructs, and to impose and change symbols? This world of the decline of ideologies and religions, longed by many, together with the availability of information and virtually infinite realities, has left a vacuum in which the technocratic game runs wild with no ethical limits. And it takes advantage of what has been called reality apathy: "It's too much effort to figure out what's real and what's not, so you're more willing to just go with whatever your previous affiliations are, applying more than ever the confirmation bias. Take the example of deepfakes. Deepfake technology enables anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to create realistic-looking videos of people saying and doing things that they did not actually say or do, accelerating this trajectory towards post-truth. This makes me wonder: when the fake seems more real than the real, what do we rely on to find certainty, or even truth, in reality? Are reason and the senses really reliable? Experts predict that deepfakes will be indistinguishable from real images before long. Can you imagine the power of this widely destructive political and social force? Perhaps the term virtual reality will eventually move from being an apparent antithesis to being a repetition. Gnostics believed that an evil demiurge created the material world out of a preexisting divine essence. Creating the world in the image of his own distortion, he imagines himself to be its true god and ruler. Perhaps this is the goal of the collective unconscious, of the system, represented by the technocratic machines of perception management, leading us to a hypernormalization in which you can control the perceived reality and, somehow, play at creating the truth.

    This perfect storm is completed with the loss of confidence of citizens in institutional structures. Their loss of trust is a clear symptom of a loss of trustworthiness. The loss of trust in science, journalism, and politics demonstrates the shocking extent of public alienation from institutions of authority, that is opaque to the ordinary citizen to the point that has normalized perception and narrative management, and information warfare.

Conspirancy myth

    And, to put the icing on the cake, this mix of misinformation, post-truth, untrustworthy is breeding ground also to conspiracy theories. Particularly interesting is Charles Eisenstein's perspective that conspiracy theories are myths. But, what he refers with a myth? Let me read some text extracts from him: “A myth is not the same thing as a fantasy or a delusion. Myths are vehicles of truth, and that truth need not be literal. A myth is something that explains the world; it is, mysteriously, bigger than itself. And conspiracy theories emanate from the same mythic pattern as the social ills they protest. Both belong to the world of the story of separation, and one of its chief motifs is the war against the Other, as we saw before. In this way, myths bring light to the shadows and reveal what has been repressed. They take a truth about the psyche or society and form it into a story. The truth of a myth does not depend on whether it is objectively verifiable. That is one reason why the purpose is neither to advocate nor to debunk the conspiracy narrative, but rather to look at what it illuminates. We do not create our myths; they create us”. Our reality is based on myths, because they are also symbols in arquetypical form. “In the conspiracy theories therein lies a certain psychological comfort, because now there is someone to blame. But we could locate the “inhuman power” in systems or ideologies, not a group of conspirators. That is less psychologically rewarding, because we can no longer easily identify as good fighting evil; after all, we ourselves participate in these systems, which pervade our entire society. Systems like the debt-based money system, patriarchy, white supremacy, or capitalism cannot be removed by fighting their administrators. If the perpetrator is indeed a cultural mythology and system, then conspiracy theories offer us a false target, a distraction. The remedy cannot be to expose and take down those who have foisted these trends upon us.The basic intuition of conspiracy theories then is true: that those we think hold power are but puppets of the real power in the world. Events are indeed orchestrated in the direction of more and more control, only the orchestrating power is itself a zeitgeist, an ideology… a myth. Is an unconscious coordination of action that can look very much like a conspiracy, and the boundary between the two is blurry”. And our aim must be simply to make conscious this collective unconscious that clinged to the system.

Paradoxical certainties

    Conspiracy theories are often characterized by the constant (often unconscious) use of fallacies, precisely derived from an intensification of confirmation bias in combination with what it is called the scandal of reason" - the idea that "our mind is not capable of certain and verifiable knowledge regarding matters and questions that we nevertheless cannot help thinking about". But let's focus on the basic fallacy, which is to interpret meaning on the model of truth. Those models are nothing but a combination of maps of our beliefs (how we think things are) versus maps of the way we think they should be (or would like them to be). Forgetting along the way that the map is not the territory. In times like this one, in the mental map we had formed of the world, our cognitive patterns are not enough to predict what will happen. Our matrix dissolves before our eyes, and we have nowhere to hold on to. And for the establishment, for the zeigeist, it is easier to manipulate a public that would rather know than think. Acting and advocating for what you believe, putting your energy into your certainties, does not have to be the same as not being aware that they may be false, or that others may be just as true, only from another perception of reality. In this world there is no truth, in my opinion, only partial and ephemeral manifestations of the Truth of the ultimate reality beyond. And the certainties we see are only such, they only vibrate with Truth, if they unite, not if they separate. Paradoxically, is wiser who assumes that he/she is not in possession of the truth, and that certainties can be diverse, and even paradoxical. If we accept diversity, we accept different ways of perceiving reality. We can question assumptions any side take for granted, and ask questions neither side is asking, and gather knowledge from all sides.
And in this fog of disinformations, misinformations and malinformations that are mistaken for certainties and, what is worse, for truths, someone could argue the maxim that science is beginning to demonstrate that in a certain way we construct our own reality. For me this is valid as a metaphysical statement, but again, not anything goes if we understand the world as an interrelated and interdependent whole. Without necessarily anchoring to one pole, but keeping polarization as a driving force, this statement is invalid from an understanding of love because it comes from fear, separation, exclusion, disintegration. Something that does not unite is not Truth. What good it does to create a perception of reality that separates us? We shall create our own reality with humility towards union and the feeling of peace.

Awareness

    We are living in what the poet Wystang Hugh Auden called the "age of anxiety," in this case literally, due to the explosion of the attention-grabbing industry. This anxiety turns into impatience. And impatience asks for the impossible, wants to reach the goal without the means of getting there. It implies fear. And in this fear there is a lack of time to think and tranquility in thinking, so divergent positions are avoided. Love begins to be forgotten. Thought no longer dictates time, but time dictates thought. Byung Chul-Han says that the noise of communication has suffocated silence. A noise that confronts and distances us. We need closeness to ourselves and to others, through authentic and loving communication. We need more silence and contemplation in order to have enough resilience in the face of this hurricane, to evaluate it from the calm, and to be able to visualize the breaking point towards an spiral of transcendence. The metaphor used by Buddhism for more than two thousand years is that of an object reflected in water. When the water is agitated by the wind or polluted by mud, it is not possible to see clearly what is reflected on its surface and thus to determine its nature. If the object of attention is moving and changing rapidly, the image in consciousness cannot be made clear. In other words, only a focused and clear mind can appreciate reality as it is, without the distortions of emotional agitation or conceptual elaboration. The slow cure. In an overly confusing time, being reactive is like going out in the middle of a hurricane to fix things. We need contemplation and intuition, because through reason and in the midst of the noise, truth cannot be experienced (see where we are nowadays), and certainties cannot be grasped enough for self-questioning, because we will always find a counter-certainty that reaffirms us. Certainties question themselves. Not against others, but in dialogue and contrast to find another more far-reaching one. And for that it is necessary to know how to manage fear and uncertainty. And in times of crisis, this dialogue can give us the opportunity to make a leap of evolutionary consciousness, a paradigm shift. In terms of the evolution of human consciousness, we are in what Gebser calls the ultimate phase of mental structure, resonating very much with what Heidegger called "the night of the world," a period in which the spirit has withdrawn from our conscious awareness. It is a somewhat decadent period, a period of absence of essence and intuition, but which is transcending into the next integral structure of consciousness, an awakening into the world of the unconscious.

        Human sanity

    But to be willing to accept this uncertainty this society needs to be humble. Let actions grow in reason, but be born from the purposes and intentions of the heart. Let us go hand in hand with whoever is willing to offer it. Accept that certainties are certainties, not skipping the holy ground of uncertainty, of not knowing, of humility, into which new information can come. Because, who is trustworthy? In the end, it is the person with the humility to recognize when he or she has been or could be wrong. Humility leads us to understand the fundamental concept of deep ecology and spreading seeds for a future characterized by human sanity and ecological balance. If we do not see humanity as a community with a shared destiny, we cannot make a change at any fundamental level we need.