Life and history teach us that whenever humanity encounters great crisis, new forces are forthcoming. I’ve used the word “forthcoming” because the inner power of both the human race and individuals is not revealed during a time of hedonism. For the most part it stems from a wound, from pain.
Once, many years ago, when I was grieving the death of my first partner, a friend, the writer, Edna Shabtai, said to me, “Ilan, do you remember how a pearl forms? When some foreign element penetrates and damages the shell, it exudes a protective substance that crystallizes into a pearl. Always remember, pain gives birth to beauty.”
This knowledge, whereby the great powers of Man and the human race are born out of duress and a state of extreme adversity, constitutes cultural heritage. It could become a self-fulfilling prophecy when cultures, nations or individuals take it upon themselves in their lifetimes to fulfill, consciously or unconsciously, a fixed exchange pattern between what exists and what is lacking, between wellbeing and hardship, and between redemption and destruction. Thus, when a nation or individual doesn’t know how to recharge except through hardship, they unconsciously bring destruction upon themselves.
However, in times of adversity, like the one in which mankind currently finds itself, whether by human or divine hand, this knowledge whereby expansion is intrinsic to contraction and inherent in pain is a grain of beauty, there is a degree of comfort. This does not imply embracing illness, pain and loss. But it is a comfort to us in a time of drawn out uncertainty as we face an invisible foe, a hidden virus. Humanity has known greater horror and survived most of it.
It is situations of horror that have birthed mankind’s finest religious, spiritual and cultural art. From the dawn of existence, mankind has invented language to name uncertainty, using the many languages created since then to define the unknown, thereby distancing the horror. This is the basis of all religions and spiritual concepts in the world as well as all kinds of art. This is also the reason that periods of crisis, like the current one, considerably increase the birthrate – and cultural creativity.
“When cultures sense a threat,” writes theorist and researcher of Judaism, Prof. Rachel Elior, in her book about the Ba’al Shem Tov and the people of his generation: “they begin to tell themselves stories.” The stories we tell ourselves are our attempt to make meaning out of the disease, the virus, and loss. This is already apparent in popular stories on social networks. Some groups believe in conspiracies, according to which China created the virus in order to take over the world; others believe that the Corona virus is merely a convenient cover for the world ruling class to dominate civilization through antennas and inject human beings with chips, thus achieving complete control over them; some believe that G-d has sent this plague to people because of their evil ways; and others stare at the wall not knowing the meaning of this epidemic because they live in a world without religion.
The power of story also lies in how the health system deals with the epidemic. Before our very eyes a struggle is taking place between contradictory stories. One maintains that widespread testing and separating the healthy from the ill is what will heal the epidemic; another believes only in testing people with symptoms or those who have been exposed to someone who is ill. Shortly thereafter, someone who doesn’t advocate testing except for those with symptoms warns that children who have no symptoms are carriers of the illness, while refusing family testing in order to allow a return to routine.
One expert publicly slanders another so that his story will take preference over another, as if to secure a victory over the epidemic. And the loyal reading public wavers, anxiously torn between one story and another, not knowing who to believe or how to behave, when all they want is the ongoing beauty of life.
This virus will go just as it came. Mankind will find drugs and vaccines to overcome it just as they overcame all deadly epidemics in which people died, from the Black Plague, to Smallpox and the Spanish Flu. Nations and individuals will lose those they love and grieve for them; lose their livelihoods and take to the streets. Monetary systems will crash; businesses will close down and be replaced by others; new teaching and communication systems will take the place of methods that couldn’t withstand the shutdown, the curfew and the struggle against the epidemic. Nonetheless, out of the social distancing, fear of the future, the pain of personal loss and breakdown of our usual life routine – human culture will recharge and renew itself. Myth will struggle against history once again; the story will conquer reality; the wheel of history will complete another massive cycle; and humanity will take one more step upwards.
