Berlin, Monday, June 15, 2020
Exactly three months ago it happened. In fact, it happened on the very same day of the week. It was then that I wrote the first chapter in the Israel Hayom Coronavirus Diaries. I have just reread it and despite what I expected, it did not appear that embarrassing to the point that I want to bury my head with shame.
To the contrary: It clearly foresaw what was to unfold. It was balanced, reflective, and intelligent. Those words should not be read as me tooting my own horn.
Usually, I think of my work as total crap. I am just so happy that I didn't get my assumptions and conclusions wrong, or my observations. And that for the past 40 years I have developed clear inner strength, which is the mental ability to withstand difficult situations in life without having to suffer continued damage.
I did not stockpile on toilet paper, flour or noodles. In short: I did not go mad in light of the potential threat of death. I did not publish sensational texts that included the words mass death, piles of bodies or the corona catastrophe to describe the current situation; I did not publish ridiculous texts in which I declared the crisis as the coming of the messiah who will now turn the world into a better place. I treated the crisis exactly the way one should treat a full dishwasher that needs to be emptied. In any event, to all those who had given up in the face of several dishes and prefer to ride the wave of fear of Armageddon, I advise that they find a new hobby that would give them satisfaction once and for all.
Because fear is still the best tool with which to reach the masses. This is what we learned. And that people can't handle contradictions, they can believe anything so long as it is served in small portions that meet their palate's preferences and that they cannot stop themselves from dividing the world into black and white. No, the coronavirus times will not solve climate change or turn us into new people. This virus did not bring us to the end of our evolution, we are still evolving.
I started my Master's in philosophy in the autumn and in this term I decided to take, via Zoom, a class called the "Philosophy of History." In other words, the science of human evolution.
Quite a few philosophers have grappled with the question of how humans develop; how society develops. Almost all of them were convinced that there is something that can be considered an endpoint. A moment in which we stop evolving. The smart and wry philosophers fell for this mistake, including Kant and Hegel. Everyone, without exception, was convinced that you could see the end in sight in the corner of your eye. Just one more thing had to happen, and then we will be finally at our ideal world.
Well, that's just BS. This is not an ideal world. There is no end in sight, not in the corner of the eyes or anywhere else. This idea, this vision, that we could somehow experience the great tipping point, that we would be there and that everything will sort itself out through providence, is nothing more than this great fear we all have over being a small flickering light in this massive horizon in our universe. Anyone who thinks we can live in this great final countdown should deal with their own death for once. Just like that, with a cup of tea next to them. They have to learn to let go.
Because we all have to, each one for himself and herself, to understand and acknowledge that billions upon billions of people will inherit us and that they will have wiser thoughts and develop greater things and make the world into a different place, perhaps even better in some respects. We are not going to be around, but our children's children will.
What? That's not enough?
