Scenes of lines for toilet paper at grocery stores across the United States were never familiar until recently, after coronavirus-induced panic-buying set in. The fights in grocery stores that were shared on social media were reminiscent of the movie "Batman: The Dark Knight," in which the Joker argues that many people would be cruel if they were forced onto a path similar to his. He convinces many when he says: “They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down ... these civilized people, they'll eat each other.” We do not know yet if this statement from a fictional character in a dark world will prove to be true, but we have unfortunate clues about possible, similar results. Every long-lasting power cut and oil shortage has quickly led to selfishness, which then can easily turn to violence. This is the world we live in.
We are living in strange times in which selfishness, otherisation and blind individualism make our lives harder than ever. COVID-19 is now a pandemic and it continues to affect almost every country, threatening our daily lives as well as our political and economic systems. There is one more thing, however, that threatens our lives and is every bit as dangerous as this novel virus, and that is the blind and ignorant selfishness of the modern individual. Emile Durkheim referred to his time as the age of individualism and, in a liberal understanding, that was thought to be a good thing. From an existential point of view, the dissolution of the traditional ties of family and individuals gaining more power against the society and the state were also good.
Asking for more freedom of space and dignity from the state and more from society to realize the self in order to create the physical and cultural conditions to establish liberal economies was the core of the creation of this individual following World War II. This path was taken in the West and helplessly followed by the rest in the name of building the individual. It seems today, however, that it created a monster of irrationality rather than an individual to work for the ultimate good. One of these individuals is the privileged, white, first-world male who is not disabled, ill or elderly, as the system is designed for him. This system also delineates accepted standards of beauty, body norms and definitions of happiness for all of its individual members, setting them on a pedestal. These are the greatest achievements for many individuals today, and also what all other individuals struggle for. Despite these imposed standards of happiness, fitness and beauty, COVID-19 has shown everyone that our world has other discrepancies that we can no longer hide from. We shut down our lovely world, first gradually and then suddenly, and we proved to ourselves that for the sake of our survival, we would sacrifice education, entertainment, jobs, economies, factories, houses of worship and pilgrimages since human life holds importance over everything else and survival is the most sacred thing we respect and struggle for. But which human life?
While human life is worth more than anything, we humans still fail in our selfishness, our love of entertainment, and irrational and irresponsible behaviors at the expense of others’ lives.
The only thing authorities asked of people was to stay at home, yet we still see millions of people in every country violating this basic practice simply because they got bored at home. Motivated by the feeling that the aim of life is entertainment, millions failed to heed medical experts about the risks of how a surge in infections could collapse the entire health system. A pregnant British woman hospitalized with COVID-19 urged people to stay home in a viral video on social media last week. In her heartbreaking video, she says: “If you are going to meet your friends for a stupid beer on the sea walk because the weather’s nice, you’re going to take this home and you’re going to kill someone. Just don’t go out, it’s not worth it.”
This example is telling of the selfishness, irresponsibility and stupidity in the world and what is left of individualism. We pretended over the past decade that we were building an individual as the most generous, a protector of the disadvantaged, a voice of diversity and a defender of the other. We were not. We were just defending the defended and protecting the protected. An individual who is sharing, caring and generous was no more than a fairytale. To tell the truth, for years and years we fed the monster of individualism with irrational and selfish desires and trained and equipped it with the harshest of capitalist means and values. This is what the world, especially the West, is paying for now with the lives of people who simply could not stay home because nobody could tell them what they should do. What COVID-19 reminds us of in the case of the individual is only one chapter of volumes of books. We have many issues to contemplate, reinterpret and evaluate in the coming months and years after this pandemic subsides.
