By Deepa Majumdar
Is the Covid-19 pandemic a punishment from Nature? Although not directly caused by Nature, is this pandemic an indictment from the world of animals and from Nature? Is it the collective curse of animals upon humanity – a long overdue unintentional, and unconscious indictment of animals we have tormented – by hunting for sports, viewing voyeuristically through zoos and circuses, eating meat and fish, experimenting upon in scientific laboratories, sacrificing in religious rituals, and brutalizing through factory farming? Is Covid-19 Nature’s long overdue rebuke to man, for his environmental iniquities and cruelty to pain-sensitive sentient beings – like birds, fish, and animals?
Covid-19 therefore raises profound questions about the hidden nature of Nature. What is Nature? Is it merely what the natural sciences envision – a flow of blind atoms colliding with one another in accordance with equally blind non-moral laws? Or, is Nature a hierarchy of sentience that signifies a hierarchy of degrees of consciousness? Does Nature express in natural terms the Great Chain of Being? On the one hand, Nature is the universe itself, bound by three metaphysical sentinels – Time-Space-Causation. On the other hand, Nature herself belongs to the larger domain of divine Immanence, also bound by the same three spectral sentinels. The purpose of Nature therefore is to host the visible portions of the Great Chain of Being – with the invisible portions lodged in subtler realms that transcend space – but not time or causation. Together, the two realms (visible and invisible) host a temporized gradient of sentience – with man occupying the summit in the visible world.
Yet, man cannot be the highest being in the entirety of this metaphysical ladder. For, as Plotinus states, man is a middle creature, lodged in between gods and beasts, without combining the two in himself (Ennead III.2(47).8). If man occupies this middle position, then a plethora of gods, demigods, and spirits (supra-human beings) must occupy the upper echelons above man, with sentient and insentient beings from the rest of Nature occupying levels below man.
From this portrait of the Great Chain of Being, we may surmise that compared to man, Nature has lower degrees of sentience and higher levels of materiality. But this does not denigrate external Nature to the level of blind matter. Nor does this justify modern man’s propensity to reify Nature to resources to be plundered. Law-bound, vibrant with life, and hosting the universe, Nature is that 2 of 3 glowing portion of Immanence, we call home. Alive and ensouled, Nature too is a middle creature – lodged between God and man – serving as a conduit of God, but also as an echo-chamber of human thoughts that spur the laws that govern Nature, to create natural phenomena.
Coordinating these myriad aspects, we may conclude that Nature has three tiers – the sublime, where it is a conduit of God, the slaughter-bench, where, in its pure utilitarianism, it is akin to the slaughter-bench of History, and the middle layer, where it is an echo chamber of human thoughts and deeds. In its sublime aspect, Nature provides the corporeal instances that instantiate Plato’s eternal and ideal Form, Beauty-in-itself. Whereas, Vivekananda’s point – that “the whole process of evolution is the soul’s struggle to manifest itself. It is a constant struggle against nature … and not conformity to nature” (“Nature and Man,” in Complete Works, vol. VI ) – applies especially to the lowest tier, which is a slaughter-bench where we possess direct control of Nature – but also to physical Nature as a whole. For the soul wages war against the necessity bestowed by TimeSpace-Causation upon Nature.
If natural calamities belong to the middle tier, where Nature is an echo-chamber of human thoughts and deeds, this means they are not, from the standpoint of man’s free-will, fortuitous events forecasted by science, and governed and decreed by the laws of Nature – but phenomena over which we possess indirect control. By controlling and sublimating our violent propensities – expressed through restless thoughts, churning with desires and passions – we should be able to control natural calamities that constitute violence in Nature. If Nature simply echoes human thoughts, then by controlling our thoughts we should have some indirect control over the natural calamities that reverberate our thoughts.
What does this brief portrait of Nature imply about Covid-19 and human agency? Inasmuch as this pandemic was caused by a virus – not a natural calamity – it cannot be an echo of human thought. We did not possess indirect control over the origin of this virus, for it was never an echo of human thoughts. To control it by controlling our thoughts, therefore, makes no sense. Instead, it was direct (unintentional) human agency that caused this virus to originate – through the human practices that prevailed in Wuhan’s live animal market. Moreover, it was direct human agency (whether intentional or not) – that caused its transmission. To this extent we are the causative authors of Covid-19 transmissions – not Nature alone. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, we transmit this virus, which spreads in accordance with Nature’s laws. Thus man and Nature together are responsible for the origin and transmission of this virus. But, Nature alone is responsible for 3 of 3 its mutations, which follow Nature’s laws. The solution to this pandemic therefore lies not only in harnessing Nature to test for this virus and to create vaccines to protect us, but also in using our conscious moral agency to prevent its transmission.
What does all this imply about the nature of God? Inasmuch as this pandemic transpired within human history, which expresses the conjoined will of God and man, this pandemic had to have been permitted by God – thus proving that God cannot be merely Plato’s Good, or Augustine’s Trinity, which he defines as “supremely and equally and unchangeably good” (The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love, Chapter X) – but a trans-moral entity beyond good and evil. Almost the only way to reconcile divine will with a calamity as dreadful as this pandemic, is to acknowledge a terrible (not evil) dimension to divinity – hoisting God to a supra-moral stance, wherefrom the divine essence uses good and evil as mere instruments, to dispense divine justice and fulfill all requirements of truthfulness, ensuring that Truth always triumphs.
We may conclude therefore that although Covid-19 is not an echo of human iniquities, it is perhaps a long overdue response from Nature to decades of human abuse. The deracinating passions inherent in advanced capitalism, have led to a stark othering of Nature by man, with human greed desiccating the natural world. Through this pandemic, Nature is now rebalancing herself, in accordance with her own laws. Hence, this pandemic is perhaps more Nature’s silent rebuke to man, for his environmental iniquities, than an echo of the collective human consciousness, or a punishment from God. It is perhaps Nature’s response to our egregious environmental iniquities that have ravaged Earth – a humble planet that is our only home in the universe. It is perhaps Nature’s way of rebalancing herself. (Concluded)