The Pandemic Within: An Existentialist Point-of-View

Even before the pandemic hit, many bemoaned the increasing amount of time the world spends glued to screens. Then the year of Zoom, FaceTime, Teams and Meet hit us. Our work and social life moved to the screen, and human interactions became largely restricted to the disembodied exchange of words emanating from little boxes on screens. I write about this in the past sense as many of my blog readers, fortified by vaccines, have begun to step out and interact. However, the experience is still relevant. Findings are that the Delta-fueled resurgence of infections over the past few months is not just a pandemic of the unvaccinated but also of breakthrough infections and of the vaccinated being potentially potent carriers of the virus. The result is that many of us are scurrying back to those little boxes on our screens.

Do most social interactions conducted through disembodied a disembodies exchange of words, ideas, and thoughts affect an individual’s psyche? Pop psychology stresses the lack of body language, leaching some meaning out of such interactions. But is there a more profound hurt?

In his article titled “We’re All Existentialists Now” in the August/ September 2021 issue of Philosophy Now, Greg Artus delves deeper.

Classical Western Philosophy, culminating in Descartes’ “Cogito Ergo Sum.”, would have us believe that our bodies play no essential part in exchanging ideas and feelings. And therefore, if communication is limited to disembodied words, it should, in essence, have no significant impact on our psyches.

However, mounting evidence from across the world tells us that this assertion is not valid. Instead, the pandemic has brought on an epidemic of mental disease and unease. Part of it is, of course, due to financial stress and the everyday fear that essential workers face. However, even with many of us whose circumstances preclude financial problems and allow for safe isolation at well-stocked, hi-speed Internet, gadget-strewn, OTT-powered homes, there is evidence of a Pandemic Within.

What gives?

Existentialism seems to answer why a lack of real-life social interactions can cause deep psychic hurt.

The German philosopher, Martin Heidegger in his 1917 book “Being and Time”, stated that the fundamental existential condition of an individual is “Mittsein”, which roughly translates as “Being-with-Others”. His view was Others — other people — are present in or a given in every experience an individual has. As a result, for the individual, Others imbue the meaning in everything. Others, thus, constitute the very Being of the individual.

In his 1943 book “Being and Nothingness”, Jean-Paul Sartre went beyond Heidegger’s assertion that Others are essential parts of an individual’s existence. Instead, Sarte posited that an individual needed validation of his existence, moment to moment, through encounters with particular, concrete, embodied Others. Sartre’s term for such encounters is, roughly translated from the French, “Look of the Other”.

Sartre, in his telling, makes this “Look of the Other” judgemental evoking feeling of shame, guilt, pride and conflict. In essence, Sartre’s view of existence is narrow — to exist is to exist in shame.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a French philosopher and contemporary of Sartre, widens the existentialist’s view of existence. Merleau-Ponty, in his 1945 book “The Phenomenology of Perception”, moves closer to Heidegger’s notion of Mitsein than to Sartre’s judgemental “Look of the Other”. Merleau-Ponty rejects Sartre’s notion of our perception arising singly from each physical encounter. Instead, an individual’s perception assembles events in a shifting mosaic of foreground and background to form a view of the world that is complex, meaningful and transcendent. The meaning and the transcendence arises from the fact that when an individual encounters Others, they are not merely being observed or observing but engaging and pushing back on each other to shape each other’s worlds and, in some moments, create a commonly perceived project. When two people dance well together, they create a third transcendent entity called “the dance” — this transcendence is true of rock bands, sports teams and even the thousands of fans cheering for their team.

The probability of such transcendence happening is severely limited in lives lived through screens.

We have words and a view of facial expressions in a Zoom call, but we miss many other subtle cues integral to an embodied meeting. The hesitant pause, the thoughtful, contemplative look into the distance, the slumped shoulder, the synchrony of postures, the silent nod, the glare, the quiet aside- these missed cues prevent the on-screen meeting from becoming a transcendent entity of its own. As a result, the on-screen meeting does not develop a style, a rhythm or an atmosphere. And it ends up like so many Zoom meetings — a lifeless, unproductive, sometimes chaotic exchange of monologues.

The world of social media interactions is arider than online meetings. For example, WhatsApp exchanges usually amount to statement-judgement-statement, with most participants generally talking past each other.

The world of social media commentary is even more toxic. It is a bleaker realization of Sartre’s already bleak view — instead of encounters that subject an individual to the judgemental “Look of the Other”, it is now a trolling amorphous army of Others that drive, not infrequently, individuals into depression and even suicide.

In conclusion, the lack of transcendence from physical interaction with work and social groups contributes to mental illness and distress. That is why the months of work-from-home and social distancing has produced an epidemic of despair even among those protected from financial woes or the exposure risks of essential work.

It is evident in a rush to group events at the slightest lull in the pandemic — rave parties, overflowing restaurants, roaring crowds at sports events and concerts. India did so in the first quarter of 2021. The US and UK are experiencing this phenomenon in the second quarter. Never mind the risk; we all seem to agree. After months of aridity, we need our fix of transcendence that only intense, embodied human social interactions can bring. So the Pandemic Within can get its jab of transcendence. So that the next wave of the pandemic will at least not put us in the IPU — the Intensive Psychiatric Unit.