Coronavirus
How the language of human warfare masks the true nature of the present crisis.A leading article in ‘The Times’ of 13th April 2020 states, “Not for nothing has military language been applied to “front-line” workers in the past few weeks. They are saving their country and endangering their lives.” Indeed, much of the coverage of the coronavirus crisis uses military language. In his speech recorded after being discharged from hospital, the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, said that we are, “making progress in this incredible national battle against coronavirus. A fight we never picked against an enemy we still don’t entirely understand.”
It clearly makes sense to use such language. The situation around the world has much in common with times of war: the number of deaths; brave men and women, particularly in NHS and social care, putting their own lives at risk to save others; massive disruption to the lives of the civilian population; a state of emergency; deployment of armed services. Just like in times of war, alongside the heart-breaking stories of families losing loved ones without the usual comfort of final goodbyes, there is also much talk about ‘community spirit’. Television and social media are full of creative ideas of how people can help themselves and each other to cope with the disruption to their everyday lives.
The trouble is that however appropriate such language may be, it masks an important aspect of the crisis that needs more attention than it is getting. Particularly for the long term. A clue to this was provided in another article in the same edition of ‘The Times’ – this one about ending the lockdown in UK. Google and Apple have announced co-operation “at breakneck speed” to develop an app that will work on smart phones to allow contact tracing, Their representatives are quoted as saying, “There has never been a more important moment to work together to solve one of the world’s most pressing problems.”
Except that it isn’t “the world’s” problem – it is humanity’s. We are so used to equating ‘the world’ with ‘humanity’ that we don’t even notice the difference. But in terms of our military metaphors, it matters a great deal. Unlike all wars reflected in the language that is all around us today, this isn’t a battle for supremacy between nations of humans or the values that they stand for, this is a struggle for survival between two different species: homo sapiens and Covid-19.
Each is struggling for its niche in the ecology of life on earth.
The language of war isn’t totally inappropriate, of course. Like human warfare, struggles between species produce winners and losers – survival for the successful and extinction for those less robust. But as we have watched the daily evolution of the struggle in terms of the timelines of the numbers of tests, new cases, and deaths per day, each of the two protagonists – homo sapiens and Covid-19 – is calling on evolutionary resources that operate on a completely different timescale: different from the daily graphs, and different for each of the two of them.
Covid-19 suddenly appeared in humans in December 2019, the latest mutation of a coronavirus. It evolved in the way that biologists have understood increasingly well since Darwin first drew attention to it – natural selection by means of biological evolution. And viruses have been around for some 1.5 billion years. They are small, relatively simple organisms, and with a lifecycle measured in days, they evolve rapidly
Homo sapiens, on the other hand, has been around for only a few hundred thousand years, and being a large complex mammal with a life expectancy of 70 or 80 years, we evolve biologically very slowly. On the other hand, as evolutionary scientists such as David Sloan Wilson of Yale University and Kevin Laland of St Andrews have pointed out in recent best-selling books[i], humanity is evolving socially and culturally very rapidly indeed.
So, the two species involved in the present struggle, extremely different in terms of size and length of life, are also calling on different evolutionary resources: biological evolution versus cultural evolution. And that is the point that is being masked by the language we are using. It is hiding both an opportunity and a threat.
Our cultural evolution revolves around our adaptability and our inherent ability to learn. This is a characteristic that has been central to our species’ evolutionary success. We have developed resources such as language, written and visual media, the process of science and global communications each of which has supercharged the ability to learn that lies at the heart of what it means to be human. And there are many signs that the global scientific community is indeed working together to maximise our learning during the present crisis. That is the opportunity.
But in addition to exploiting this opportunity, we should beware of inadvertently succumbing to the threat. The threat that our military language reconnects us strongly with a more troublesome evolutionary characteristic that we have inherited – tribalism or “us versus them”.
Wouldn’t it be great if, using the ‘energy of crisis’ that is being inspired by both our present words and our actions for the common good, we could learn not only how to win the struggle against Covid-19, but how to prevent our own shadow side from holding us back?
Terry Cooke-Davies
13th April 2020
[i] This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution by David Sloan Wilson and
Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony: How Culture Made the Human Mind by Kevin N. Laland
Terry, while your heart is undoubtedly in the right place, your assertion that humans are engaged in a “struggle for survival” with SARS-CoV-2 (the actual name of the virus that causes COVID-19, according to the World Health Organization ) is not defensible. It is true that people suffering with acute cases of COVID-19 are in serious danger, however the overall risk to the population is so far about the same as every other flu pandemic in the last 20 years. No SARS strain to date poses any existential risk to humanity, and it is unlikely that any SARS virus ever will.
Another assertion I find unsustainable is that humanity is “evolving” socially and culturally. In what way? Rather we seem to be regressing to cultural mores that existed among the Philistines, Romans, and other pagan civilizations throughout recorded history (see Sallust, Kings/Chronicles, etc.).
Lastly, you claim, without supporting argument, that “…language, written and visual media, the process of science and global communications … has supercharged the ability to learn that lies at the heart of what it means to be human.” How so? And what, if that is the case, does it mean to be human according to you?
After reading this, my question to you is: What has this article got to do with thinking about faith?
Good points Eric. To take them in the order you make them: Firstly, I agree with you that the survival of homo sapiens is not in doubt, and that an accommodation between both the virus and our own species will in time be established. I stand corrected on the correct name of SARS-CoV-2. The point I am making is that it is a very different kind of struggle than the human warfare referred to metaphorically in the language being used.
Secondly, I agree that cultural evolution is a controversial point, but that is why I quoted the two monographs by David Sloan Wilson and Kevin Laland as examples of substantial scientific research that provides supporting evidence for my assertion. There are many others I could have cited such as E.O.Wilson’s “The Social Conquest of Earth”. This general field of research also supports the role of language and other cultural artefacts in the social and cultural development of humanity. A good reference would be “Natural Born Learners” by Alex Beard. I appreciate that the crude domination systems of popularising politicians hark back to the crude language of early empires, but that is precisely what I am disturbed by.
Which brings me to your third point. Elsewhere on this web site, I summarise the case for seeing Jesus’ mission as being predominately to rescue humanity from its headlong rush towards disaster implicit in the political structures and domination systems of ’empire’ in its manifold forms. (See http://www.thinkingaboutfaith.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Study-6-The-Context-of-Empire.pdf). Last April I walked the last 170 miles of the Camino of Santiago, as a result of which, I came to see that one core component of the thinking that sustains ’empire’ in the modern world, is an unthinking ‘anthropocentrism’, seeing humanity as central, and the remainder of the earth’s resources, both living and inanimate, as ‘resources’ to be used for our own purposes. How I came to that view, greatly inspired by the work of Thomas Berry, is described in other posts in my blog. For me, therefore, any discussion that draws attention to humanity’s position as a participant in the earth’s ecology, which itself is a part of the created universe, has a bearing on faith.