There has been plenty of time for philosophical brooding on the unfolding catastrophe that goes under the name of COVID-19. We have experienced heroism and kindness in some quarters, altruism and vulnerability in some other places, and likewise patient and attentive care in other locales. However, the coronavirus pandemic has also cast light on something that ought to catch our attention. That is, the pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing flaws in our communo-centric nature as human beings and i…
Read moreThere has been plenty of time for philosophical brooding on the unfolding catastrophe that goes under the name of COVID-19. We have experienced heroism and kindness in some quarters, altruism and vulnerability in some other places, and likewise patient and attentive care in other locales. However, the coronavirus pandemic has also cast light on something that ought to catch our attention. That is, the pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing flaws in our communo-centric nature as human beings and its contrasting fortunes in our social arrangement. That is why so many lives have been lost despite our understanding of how coronavirus kills. This should jolt us to ask what is complicit in our human conditioning that allowed coronavirus to ravage our world and what kind of social order should be on the ground to help overcome future pandemic like coronavirus. This paper reflects on Albert Camus’ thoughts in his novel - The Plague. He (Albert Camus) cautions that in the time of the plague, the quintessence of the absurdity of existence is that ‘individuals die when the collective fails to recognize or respond adequately to foreseeable threats.’ Through a reflexive analysis of some of the characters, I invite citizens of the world to glean from Camus’ expose of the liquidating human condition that allowed them take upon de-communal lifestyles thereby widening the margin of communal dislocation in our world. The paper in the end concludes that if we, as citizens of an interconnected world, want a post-pandemic world that is better than the world that Covid-19 has ambushed, we cannot continue to live unaware of our human nature as intrinsically desirous of communal relationship characterized by solidarity, care and empathy which can only thrive in the presence of what I call ‘communo-virus.’ This is the virus that we must strive to live with, and if our world is infested with such a virus, it will be easier for citizens of the world to respond to future pandemics without a catastrophic loss as it has been experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
