By Ornella Sukkar (Lebanese journalist and political analyst)
The Corona catastrophe has come as a shock to the world. Really don’t be pessimistic.The world will not be the same as before. It is facing profound and many transformations at all levels, especially cultural and social, and it has put mankind before a new challenge, where does science lead us?
I am realistic, I do not believe in the theory that science is responsible in its work for development and that there is no need for a person to religion because he is no longer fit for mankind due to the massacres and wars committed in his name such as brutality, fanaticism, hatred, intolerance, violence and terrorism.
In addition, there is a belief among some that, science has not provide answers to human questions, but it is limited to presenting the assets without researching the chapters that have not received a human dimension as much as the technology revolution, the digital revolution, and the lights revolution. Hence, it was necessary to ask this question, which urgently came back with the phenomenon of Corona to provide a support for humanity, due to the human being’s selfishness, greed, exaltation, bankruptcy, moral, and cruelty. What is the fate of man after corona?
If we look at the Sunnah and the law of nature, we find that science has not invented progress and development because it is known from the beginning of human history and formation. The idea is not a question of evolution as much as it is a question of interacting with phenomena and refuting their effects and repercussions on mankind, societies and the human position on them.
The truth of history and its progress is related mainly to the human sociology which is the construction of the world and what is exposed to the nature of that urbanization, such as savagery, humanization and human fluctuations on one another because of the human nature of mercy and aggressive aggression and injustice, starting from this, the hostile and interrupting position of religion comes as a reaction and not Act on this reality.
So how then, on the one hand, do you explain the estrangement with religion and on the other hand, the return to it with strictness and fundamentalism, such as the events that we witnessed in Europe, with the return of secular fundamentalism and Christian fundamentalism, and against the background of terrorism and Islamophobia. As for the issue of the Corona virus, it is, in my view, a wisdom through which it is intended to send a message to the world that progress is not a result of modernity, even if its features were evident during the period of modernity, but rather that progress is a deep extension in history, and this is due to the Jewish-Christian heritage of the world that depicts it.
To despise the world. This contempt is the motive for the search for a better world that will come later, and this world is what modernity has come to formulate its features, lay its foundations and try to build.
Where Michel Mavizole, a French sociologist, says in his book “The Time of Tribes”, that social phenomena cannot be explained from the outside by considering them as things as Emile Durkheim went to, but rather by understanding these phenomena from the inside by giving importance to the senses that show that it cannot be excluded from the work of the sociologist. What Mavizole called B (sociology of the senses), and confirms that when the human mind exceeds a certain ceiling it becomes a controversial mind, and this does not mean underestimating the value of the mind, but, this transgression led to social manifestations that must be stopped. Which is the weakness of human ties and the decline of forms.
Old solidarity led to the emergence of negative phenomena, such as the phenomenon of indifference, which is not an individual phenomenon but a collective phenomenon, as it is not related to (the ego) but rather to the (we), which came as a reaction to the violence of this world that resulted from globalization and wild capitalism, which has been characterized by inhumane conditions and policy With ineffective programs, lying and hypocrisy prevail.
This literature was found in the novels of Albert Camus and sociologist George Zimmel, in which they expressed the bankruptcy of rationality and reason that was no longer able to lead and dominate people’s lives and direct their behavior, for example, the negatives of the virtual world and the abundance of the contemporary world witness to this.
Hence, the book “The Time of Tribes” comes to say that post-modern individuality has been sufficiently consumed and instead a mass self emerged that has become an enemy that gradually affects all areas of social life. This means that the tribes, in their new form, recapitulated briefly and move from self-centered to community-centered, such as happiness and common sense, such as quarantine, for example (not limited to) where Michel Sir says that man has inflicted heavy losses on the world equal to the losses that can be caused by a global war such as the Corona virus It calls for a person to “control control”, and that means controlling our desire to control nature by creating a wise relationship with the environment through environmental philosophy or (ecological sensitivity).
Mavizole goes on to say that the postmodern traits of man present life on the basis of the theory of the “eternal moment”, that is, the present instant moment that is without purpose. This present is based on the enjoyment of it as far as possible until the ugly is embellished, so the style of each era becomes its outcome characterized by the following: The era of the mediator was his theological style, while the era of modernity corrupted an economic era, while in the era of modernity or bio-technology, his style becomes aesthetic where searches for beauty, art, creativity and everything related to the organs of the senses, where postmodern people accept life as it is.
Take, for example, the environmental catastrophes that occurred in Lebanon and Australia that are associated with economic and living crises that were removed from the scene by virtue of the tragic reality of the Corona virus, which has been overshadowed by its shadow. On the The pain united mankind about a common existential threat, which is infection with this epidemic, which imposed itself as an integral part of the system of the universe, and that postmodern man accepts his destiny in whatever way that the tragic sense of life makes us accept the evil in all its manifestations, most notably death, so we find joy in life .
The inability of a person to adapt to what science and rationality impose imposes feelings of cohesion that bind individuals together from moments of collective coexistence, which leads to a collective role in which we find the person who loves the other, who represents the legitimate son of postmodernity, i.e. love for himself, others and nature, and in one word he Universe lover, do not be surprised if you hear later calls to protect the environment.
This idea of sympathy will lead us to the idea of sharing through openness to the other and interacting with him, setting ourselves up in a place and thinking from his perspective of things and trying to feel what he feels, and that this civilization will become a “civilization of sympathy”.
Yes, as you heard a civilization of empathy for the other through pictures. Because the postmodern human world is a world of images where a person lives in image and in an image that not only embodies reality, but also creates reality as well. This era, that is, the era of the image, contributes to the emergence of a new social value represented in the advertisement of the private that has become consumed over the year according to a public imagination where everything turns into images.
If ancient societies consume ideologies, contemporary societies consume images. This has had positive results in freer, less fanatical, but more false and less authentic societies. The thing that produced in the end, one world that does not prevail in differences or distinctions after the image in the Western and Arab tradition was frightening because it is sedition, hatred and intolerance, and given the transformations that society values have known, this negative perception of the image has changed, which has become a link to the world that connects the world with others who Including the tendency to wandering through the desire of man not to remain closed to himself and his love to open up to new worlds and experience the experiences of others.
This orientation of the person towards adventure and travel, that is, travel, imposes the return of religion as a strong return and a contemporary copy of what he possesses tools that enable him to influence the spiritual and magic that imposes a totem and contemporary rituals in which the totem of this time embodies a romantic tendency by building a new perception of the world of what is stored in it from memory collectively linked to the return of the repressed, according to the definition of Sigmod Freud, which revolves around the body, nature, and entertainment in the sense of erotica, that is, the realization of instantism – selfish through glorification of desire, pleasure, and body.
This return to religion does not mean a return to a specific religion, but rather a return to forms of pagan religiosity represented by the massive explosion of the image in which the return to a spiritual life of a collective sensual meaning makes sense by distinguishing between what is and what should be.
(The views expressed in this article belong only to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights).
Image Credit: CNS photo/Kham, Reuters