Intellectual Challenge from COVID-19

Keigo Nishio

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided me with an unexpected opportunity for reflection and self-reflection. The problem brought by the virus is not only the physical-biological one. The virus poses to the human species political, social, and philosophical challenges as to whether we can survive as social species. In other words, it is at least a task, if not the task, for us to be watchful about whether the virus will not be a social illness, which would bring to death the social values that we have embraced and taken for granted just until recently, thereby pushing us towards totalitarianism.

Before getting to the main point, I would like to make it clear that I do not want my argument to be a harmful slur against those who have been dedicated to the “war on the virus.” Nor do I mean to criticise those who urged people to be attentive, considerate, and self-restraining, thereby encouraging people to pursue self-interest in an irresponsible and harmful way. That being said, I would like to point out couple of issues that I don’t think are being discussed sufficiently right now.

• Dangerous language and criticism

These days my Facebook timeline is full of posts that criticise people’s irresponsible acts of going outside, failing to comply with the authorities’ (the national, municipal, and prefectural governments) request (de facto, but misfier, order) to stay inside and refrain from large social gatherings. Indeed, I cannot find any good reason to defend those going out “just for fun” or with no urgent causes (like seeing cherry blossoms, going to karaoke, etc). I can, at least, understand the argument that the authorities’ de facto order makes sense from the public health perspective (of course, I’m not a public health expert, so let me refrain from making judgement about this argument itself). Rather, I would like to focus on the problem of whether this criticism is related to and/or based on the criticism about disobedience to the government. As I see not a few Facebook posts criticising people for going outside despite the request, I believe that it is not completely groundless to suspect that this sort of criticism involves or is deeply connected to disobedience critique.

First, let us think about how unusual it is for the authorities to issue such a de facto order. Freedom of mobility is one of the human rights promised by Article XXII of the Constitutional Law (of course, I’m well-aware that it is not an unconditional clause as the right is limited by “public welfare.” I will get back to this point soon.), and individual agency is one of the fundamental concepts of liberal democracy. In short, all of us can and should decide what action we take based on one’s own reasoning, and prohibition of going outside does not automatically follow from the pandemic. Prohibition of going outside means compromising the fundamental rights promised in liberal democracy and requires extremely solid grounding, which is to be gained through a profound political, social, and philosophical discussion in the public (not just in the “sealed room” of the government, consisting of politicians, bureaucrats, and experts, who may not necessarily know the reality of ordinary people’s life issues.). I am not sure if the government’s decision to limit human rights is the outcome of a sufficient public discussion.

However, the “public welfare” principle appears to allow the authorities to circumvent this requirement: the virus may require it the authorities make such prompt decisions and it may be the case that they cannot afford to spare any time for discussion. But take note that public welfare is not only about health: liberal democracy, whose benefit we have taken for granted until very recently, is also part of public welfare, something we have good reason to be as eager to protect (let’s say, metaphorically, that liberal democracy is a condition for the health of our society) as we are to protect our own (bodily) health. Then, things get complicated; for, the public welfare principle alone may not allow us to judge which should be prioritised over which.

I do not mean to say that people’s lives should be sacrificed for the maintenance of liberal democracy. However, it seems, at least to me, essential to think about the dangerous implications of unquestioningly accepting the authorities’ de facto order; for who can tell whether the COVID-19 case is the last sacrifice of our liberal democratic principles or in fact just the beginning of a totalitarian project? I believe history has proved how hard it should be to regain liberal democracy once we give it up. If we allow the government to realise how easy it is to force its people to give up liberal democracy, a threatening future should await us. We cannot be cautious enough about this danger, and we cannot afford to be deluded by a seemingly self-evident argument that “health is the most important.”

Just reflecting upon how language has been totalitarianised these days will make us aware of the reality of this danger. As I mentioned above, the language on SNS is getting homogenised. If you take train, even it is a private railway service, the conductor is likely to say, “This is the announcement from the government. In order to prevent the COVID-19 infection, please wash your hands well, switching your work online, etc.” Schools, including private ones, were shut down just because of a single remark of Prime Minister. You cannot but to realise how deeply today’s biopolitics penetrates our lives: it is like “capillary blood vessels” but bear in mind that blood vessels can be a carrier of pathogens. If we allow ourselves to get habituated to the restriction of human rights (for instance, think of the danger of the case in which the authorities’ de facto order constitutes part of our habitus, to the extent that we are no longer able to question the unusualness of the intervention by the governmental authority), that means our society is infected by a horrible illness.

What I am afraid of is that people can be turned into a “docile mass,” which just promptly obeys the authority. Victor Klemperer points to the homogeneity of language and routinisation of total compliance as the key features of totalitarianism in Language of the Third Reich (Lingua Tertii Imperii). Hannah Arendt, in her Origins of Totalitarianism, analyses how totalitarianism creates an unthinking “mass” (thanks to her insightful distinction between mass and mob), pointing to the alienation from social activities and loss of social identity or class consciousness as the background causes for the creation of a docile mass. Although I cannot analogise the condition of today’s Japanese society to that of the Nazi Germany, I can say that we are extremely susceptible to the creation of a totalitarian “mass” right now, when people are socially isolated while the “war on the virus” narrative is suspected to be intensifying a totalitarian imagination of the nation. If you think about the totalitarian tendency of today’s national government (for instance, see how it tries to evoke a sense of “national emergency”), whose member even praised the Nazi rule in the past, you will realise the risk we are confronting today.

People do not move towards totalitarianism for its own sake. Rather, they are more likely to justify their dehumanising practices by the notion of public welfare (for instance, genocidal acts are justified as purification of the nation, right? And think about how the narrative of illness and cure is employed in the justification of genocide.). If we don’t want our liberal democracy to be killed by the virus, we have to recognise the difficulty of discerning what public welfare exactly is and the danger of too easily turn on to the “public welfare” narrative.

• Awareness and self-awareness of privileges

Another reason that makes me sceptical about the “public welfare” narrative is the government’s unawareness that it is a privilege for a limited number of people to be able to stay at home just because the government tells them to. So many people are working under conditions that do not allow them to shift their jobs online. It’s only the wealthy population who can give up their work due to the concern for the virus. Some industries are so damaged by the pandemic, and precarious labourers are losing their jobs. Such people may die from poverty before getting infected by the virus, and it is such a silly misrecognition of the reality if the government thinks that people can stay inside once it tells them to. The authorities (especially the national government) do not seem to consider the situation of such people, and this makes me wonder whether public welfare is the real motive of the de facto order. Or, rather, we may have to suspect that such precarious populations are not included in the government’s public welfare consideration.

Indeed, we should take note that the national government does not actually say “order” or “command” but use an expression such as “request of self-restraint (自粛要請).” Its use of this expression implies the government’s illicit intention to attribute the choice to individual decision-making, thereby evading its own responsibility. Accordingly, any consequence from compliance with the government’s de facto order, such as a sudden loss of income, unemployment, or business bankruptcy, will be regarded by the irresponsible government as a matter of individual self-responsibility. Unfortunately, this point was further verified by the national government’s announcement on April 3rd that it is providing subvention on the self-declaration basis. This decision only alienates the most needy population, who may not have enough resources, time, or social connection to go through the troublesome bureaucratic process at this moment. Think about the alienation, irresponsibility, and stigmatisation that already haunt the public welfare programme (e.g., discouraging applicants, stigmatising them as lazy, and the list goes on), and it is so easy to imagine how the “self-declaration” basis appears alienating and discouraging to the vulnerable population, who have already suffered from grave structural injustices. In any way, the government will evade its own responsibility, by accusing such people of failing to go through the process, without any consideration on how it structurally excludes the vulnerable population. Today, it is so obvious that the government is never thinking about public welfare; it is only a totalitarian manslaughter, which simply lets the vulnerable suffer and die, whether from the virus or from poverty.

If people reproduce the national government and other authorities’ narrative, thereby stigmatising those who fail to comply, their speech act contributes to the further marginalisation of precarious people and, what is worse, the maintenance of the pseudo-government. Indeed, it is reasonable to criticise those who are going out just for fun, we should be more cautious about the fact that our act of criticism may have unintended effects, particularly given the ambiguity of the border between urgent necessity and unsupportable reasons for going out. We should also realise that being able to criticise those going outside is already the outcome of privileges, created by the unjust social structure.

The human species is now tested whether we can become aware of our own privileges and considerate towards those underprivileged. As a student studying in the US, I would like to briefly talk about the controversy around the universal pass (UP) policy in the hope of showing how people can lose sight of the privileges that they have.

UP is a policy of giving grades to every student on the pass/fail basis. In other words, it is a “no-letter-grade-for-this-semester” policy. Now that universities kicked their students out of campus and students are forced to take online classes despite multiple sorts of difficulties (need to look after family members, support their family to recover from the sudden economic damage, deal with the time difference, and the list goes on), it is simply too unjust that people have to be compared by letter grades, which never take into consideration different situations of the students. Again, it is such a huge privilege to be able to take online classes and perform well (just as before the campus shutdown) at this moment. One has to have sufficient technology, live in relatively safe conditions, have somebody around you who can take care of you, etc. Giving classes online excludes a certain part of the students, which forces schools to introduce new policies that are totally different from what we have in usual conditions.

Some of my friends are sceptic about the policy. They are afraid that their efforts (to make their GPA fancy! I really want to challenge the general narrative of studying for the sake of GPA, but I don’t get into this point for the interest of space) in the first half of the semester. They are so scared about seeing destroyed their plans of boosting their GPA for the sake of job hunting or application for graduate schools. They are opposed to universally imposing the pass/fail grading and argue that it should be optional.

However, I would argue that being able to oppose the UP policy is another sort of representation of privileges. Let me be clear about why the pass/fail option should be universally imposed. Suppose it is optional. There are, at least, two contrasting sorts of students: (1) those who have to choose the pass/fail option because of structural obstacles and (2) those who have the privileges (things I mentioned above) to stick to the letter grade. Then, the latter category of students can reserve the possibility to say, “I got A’s despite the virus,” which only intensifies their already privileged status. In front of such students, the former category of students may only appear weak, disadvantaged, powerless (and even worse: lazy and inferior!). In other words, the pass/fail option, unless universally imposed, only functions to reinforce the already existing power asymmetry. I believe academics should be an equalising force, which allows everyone to transcend any sort of power asymmetry and structural obstacles. Academics is not for competition, let alone for intensification of the already serious inequality rampant in society. Failure to be self-aware and self-critical of one’s own privileges threatens to result in another social injustice and academic insincerity, which, I think, is as scary as the virus.

• Listening, reflection, and self-reflection

The two sections may look totally different or unrelated to the readers; however, I believe that they are actually deeply connected. What I have tried to argue so far is that we have to listen to others and reflect upon what we ourselves are saying and doing, before criticising and stigmatising others. In short, the virus poses us an intellectual challenge, namely, whether we can retain empathy and imaginations vis-à-vis those who are living under different conditions, suffering from different problems.

As for the issue of complying with the authorities’ de facto order, the real concern is whether we can understand why people have to disobey the request, for there may be some structural reasons that force them to go outside despite their health concerns. Even if people may go outside with no good reasons, it will be more productive and truly conducive to public welfare to listen to how these people justify their going out right now, instead of simply criticising them. People, as well as the authorities, should think why the authorities’ de facto order is not binding enough, with a particular attention to whether there is any structural reason behind people’s disobedience. I believe that sincere listening followed by public discussion is a better cure to the social issues brought by the virus.

As for the issue of self-awareness of privileges, empathy and imagination are obviously the most straightforward solutions. If there is a limitation of empathy and imagination, due to one’s embeddedness to their own social conditions, we just have to listen to what the underprivileged have to say. I think everyone, indeed including myself, should take a moment think about their own privilege before emitting a voice, which is too often too loud, powerful, and harmful. Think about what those currently voiceless have to say, and if you still have something you have to tell, then that should have the real social value.

It is such an irony that SNS works to further marginalise the voices of the underprivileged population. For, writing posts online is already a huge privilege. Although we need to listen to the voices of those who cannot even use SNS right now, the opposite is going on. The voice of the privileged overwhelms the voiceless, marginalising and even stigmatising the latter. For instance, those who are most needy of UP may not be able to get a chance to argue against anti-UP mongers. To sum up, this is an epistemic challenge about whether we can avoid totalitarian self-deception due to the homogeneity of language.

• Last remarks: self-reflection after writing

I am afraid that some (or all?) of my arguments might be perceived as awkward or unfitting in today’s social situation. However, I still hope that I can contribute to the diversification of language, in order to make sure that we are not entrapped by totalitarianism. I may have a J.S. Mill-like optimism that the sheer diversity of opinions would contribute to the maintenance of liberal democracy, particularly at the moment of linguistic homogeneity like today. J.S. Mill argues in the second chapter of On Liberty, entitled “Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion,” that even allowing possibly false or problematic opinions is beneficial to those whose opinion is actually true, since the need to confront challenges and counterarguments will enhance the vividness of the truth, saving us from the risk of rendering our true belief a groundless superstition. And I hope my argument will contribute to achieving collective intellectual immunity to totalitarian tendencies.

Although my article is excessively critical of the “self-restraint” narrative, I am definitely in favour of urging people to refrain from going out for unnecessary reasons and criticising unnecessarily disobedient people for exposing others to unnecessary harm. What I wanted to do is only to make sure that such a narrative does not work in a problematic way, namely, by creating a totalitarian monotony of language. I never expect my argument to be embraced; rather, I want it to provoke criticism, so that the virus will never deprive us of our intellectual ability to consider and compare a diverse range of possible arguments.

The real enemy we are facing today is not only the virus per se but also the lack of tolerance and empathy, which might be much more serious in the sense that it will never get cured even if effective medicines and/or vaccines are developed in the future. Let us use the pandemic as time for self-reflection; otherwise, we would end up losing the whole humanity.