“Having a good philosophy of life is a must.”

COVID-19 turns two this year, would you even believe that? It’s been just 24 months since the pandemic entered our lives with a thwack. I still remember those long walks through desolated suburbs, back in March 2020 during the first lockdown. Spring that was late to come, vile wind was blowing, the trees still had no leaves. Unbelievable it’s been two years already!

I’ve been frequently asked what lessons these two years brought. And indeed, there are a number of Stoic points to elaborate on.

A good philosophy is a must

First of all, COVID-19 reminded us that having a good philosophy of life is a must. Reformed Stoicism is certainly the best choice in the time of a pandemic... and in every other time too. The steady drumbeat of bad and unpredictable news – lockdowns, waves of the virus, surging deaths – took a hard toll on our collective mind. The pandemic quickly turned out to be a major crisis in mental health. The prevalence of depression and suicide rates spiked sadly. Tough facts but there is a silver lining in all this.

The pandemic will have a lasting impact

The pandemic will have a lasting impact in how we think about mental health and psychological well-being. Even if we get “back to normal” (whatever that “normal” might look like) there will be no going back to dismissing these issues. The paradigm has changed already and the we will never “unsee” what we learned about mental health during the pandemic. Once the awareness is raised, it can’t be lowered back again.

The political jolt

The pandemic jolt was not only psychological though, but political too. Politically speaking, the coronavirus was one big demonstration of how the seemingly impossible became reality in weeks. Businesses and borders closed, social activities banned, work shifted hugely towards home office. All that. My favourite example is that before spring 2020 the very idea of limiting air travel (e.g., for the sake of curbing emissions and climate change) was rather unfathomable.

Practical impracticality and political impossibility. And yet it became reality almost overnight. The landscape of political imagination has changed much easier than we were taught to believe was possible. And this too won’t be forgotten any time soon.

The world turned out more malleable than we thought it to be but also more “old-fashioned.” The reports of the ends of history were greatly exaggerated. Disease, uncertainty, inflation, and also political turmoil (e.g., between Russia and Ukraine) which might have seemed a part of a bygone era, all were seen in broad daylight of the 2020s. The socio-economic system we live in was proved much more fragile than what we used to believe. We saw how delicate the economy was and that it takes a mere virus to send a series of shockwaves through it. We learned that the healthcare system can be overflowed and choked in a heartbeat. And we saw that the political coherence of our society can be easily torn apart through misinformation.

The rationality of things

The final lesson COVID-19 gave us is on the subtle issue of the rationality of things (and, one may add, the universe as such). Even people who had no flair for philosophy at all, even those of us who are most down-to-earth and matter-of-fact, even they were prompted to ask these questions. The coronavirus turned everything upside down – not only the practical stuff, but the way we think about the world too. What is rational and what is not? Is rationality an objective and universal quality, or is it arbitrary and locally constructed? We may admit it or not, we may describe it this way or another, but we were all confronted with these questions.

The example I really love is about our hygienic standards. How often – before the pandemic – had you been disinfecting door knobs in your house? Had you ever cleaned them at all? I surely hadn’t! It hadn’t been “normal” before COVID-19, you might have been laughed at if you had done so. In 2019 it was totally “irrational,” it was a sign of OCD if not worse. And then the pandemic came and everything flipped. Not only our ideas about travelling, work, and hygiene were overhauled by also our understanding of what is “rational” and how solid the very concept of rationality is. We’ve learned that it’s not solid at all. We’ve been shown that what we used to think of as “common sense” or “normal,” were, in fact, arbitrary conventions. This lesson too will remain with us for good.

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Dr. Piotr Stankiewicz, Ph.D., is a writer and philosopher, promoter of reformed Stoicism. He authored Manual of Reformed Stoicism, and Does Happiness Write Blank Pages?

 

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