Thinking beyond the pandemic

The health crisis humanity is currently going through must not prevent us from thinking about how we are going and how we want to get out of it. Undoubtedly, despite the very serious costs that the pandemic will demand of all of us, humanity will survive. But how? What are we ready to pay and sacrifice to get out of it? And equally important, how to react to the environmental crisis that brings even more serious challenges for the survival of humanity?

Before the outbreak of the current pandemic, two contrasting models were being presented to global society. On the one hand, the authoritarian, exemplified by China (although not only for it), which was rapidly developing its economy, lifting 600 million of its inhabitants from poverty, dramatically expanding its infrastructure and making the new middle class emerging had access to the comforts of the developed world. All this in just 30 years. It was even seen that, faced with the pollution generated by growth, the Government was heading towards the ecological transition faster than the rest of the world, as witnessed by the fact that this country has become the world producer of solar panels. The leaders of this model allege that democracy and individual liberties would jeopardize the state's ability to continue this impressive process. And the majority of the population accepts this premise: democracy and individual liberties can wait, the most important thing was that a country that, until recently was poor, was getting rich at surprising speed. The values ​​at the base of democratic societies could be delayed in exchange for economic development. Those who disagreed were the youth from Tiananmen in the 1980s, and those from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region today. The latter, seeing how the liberties that they enjoyed while they were an English colony and that still have the “one country, two systems” model while it is in force, are gradually being eroded by the central communist government.

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Faced with this model, democratic countries, especially Europe, where an open and plural political system, an extensive welfare state and broad individual liberties coincide, were contrasted. In these countries, political time seems to be too slow, to the degree of lagging behind imperative needs: their ability to react to economic crises and social demands, as well as the challenges of the ecological emergency, are late. Even the very democracy that characterizes them seems to be in crisis with the rise of right-wing populisms. It must be remembered that slowness is inherent to democracy, a regime based on dialogue, debate, and agreements. On the other hand, in democratic countries, the population values ​​their individual freedom and, therefore, is very jealous of preserving their ability to criticize before any state order.

Well, the current health crisis is giving arguments to those who defend the primacy of the first model - as in the article by Byung-Chul Han published a few days ago in EL PAÍS - while the democratic model implements restrictions that would have been unimaginable previously. . In short, Han argues that what democratic countries and their populations regard as an intrusion on their privacy is what has enabled Asian countries to emerge from the health crisis with less human, social and economic costs. Countries such as China have achieved this with population control mechanisms such as the state's ability to pressure individuals, facial recognition, access to cell phones and other private media, which have been so criticized by defenders. of democracy. This has made it possible to test millions of people, measure the temperature of individuals, and force them to isolate themselves if they have symptoms, monitoring their slightest displacement and that of their families. In sum, authoritarian control mechanisms over the population have been extremely effective at this time of crisis to stop the spread of the virus. Although we must remember something that the promoters of this model do not say: that this same regime hid for more than a month the existence of this new disease.

On balance, according to the same article, democratic systems are less effective and, therefore, are destined to go down in history against systems that not only exercise authoritarian control over politics, but over the population itself, over each of its citizens. In fact, democratic countries are implementing measures that a few months ago were unthinkable. Decrees that do not go through the congress and that force citizens to stay at home, which require a safe-conduct to go to the pharmacy, to the corner store, to go out to exercise, or if more than 100 go away meters from your place of residence. And not only that. In some cases, the police - or even the Army - may consider being on the street unjustifiable and impose fines or, even in some countries, prison terms.

Although it is true that, at this moment, it seems that the situation forces us to accept these measures and consider that authoritarian countries are better equipped to fight the pandemic, it is important to look further. Authoritarian countries will easily use these imposed mechanisms in a time of crisis to strengthen and perpetuate their control; But what happened to the boom in demonstrations that we had seen at the end of last year around the world, including that of Hong Kong youth? For their part, democratic countries may not disarm all authoritarian mechanisms that are implemented temporarily with the excuse that they serve for any other crisis, as in fact was done against the fight with terrorism.

Here, the writings of Michel Foucault, as well as those of Giorgio Agamben, who have drawn attention to the tendency of contemporary States to administer the population, are relevant. Foucault analyzed how modern forms of control are no longer exercised by a centralized command (by a king or the state itself, as Machiavelli thought), but power has been blurred. Starting with the invention of the police, the capitalist economy, the state administration and statistics, the population is administered by mechanisms directed at each one of us, defining what is normal and abnormal, regulating what is allowed to be done and what are our obligations. Modern states have increasingly sophisticated mechanisms to achieve this. Agamben, for his part, believes that fear has become another way of controlling the population, which was strengthened by the war against terrorism and which threatens to come out reinforced by the war against the pandemic (s) ( s).

On the other hand, this author has drawn attention to the fact that our existence cannot be summed up as "naked life", as this calls for survival. That the life of human beings, unlike what the viruses that colonize our cells do, is not simply to survive, but to live with a goal that each individual defines, that our lives cannot be summed up to survive the present, but to project ourselves into the future, through our aspirations, desires, and dreams. To emerge triumphant from the current war for survival, abandoning everything to the power of the State, would not only be a defeat for democracy, freedom and the essence of life itself. It would also put us at a serious disadvantage in the face of the coming fight, the true threat to humanity as a whole: the ecological crisis.

Ilán Bizberg is a researcher at the Center for International Studies of the Colegio de México.

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