The attitude of people towards nature is different in the occident and the orient. Particularly oriental thought could propose the idea of coexistence with nature. Human beings rules the nature, especially European countries pioneerly developed their civilizations progressing together with natural science[1]. Following the similar paths, oriental countries developed themselves.
Prior to diving into the deeper parts, we need to think about what the nature is. It could be the whole system of the earth (or could be extended to outer space) in which human beings is included. The nature cannot be controlled, even it could be thought that human beings is part of nature as well as virus is. The nature signifies the system in which everything is connected and self-adapts.
Regarding pandemic and the confusion caused by it, virus is not what we can eliminate from our society even after the vaccine is invented. Vaccine isn’t a perfect product to fight against virus, just because we took vaccines doesn’t mean that we will not be infected 100%, and the virus mutates as well. Though, I admit, it has the benefit of having people less harmed. Eventually herd immunity would be necesarry to go through pandemic, helped by the product called as vaccine.
Coexistence with virus is the essential way of life in original state, not to mention. It is uncontrable, not contrable, regarding pandemic in the first place. If human beings controls the pandemic, the thought and the realization of ruling the nature is more embodied. Since Decartes, the of human-central ideology have been influencing the world immensely[2].
Before Plate and Socrates, Ionian philosophy was focusing on nature[3]. For example, forest had been in the state of being natural before Socrates and Plate, but then it was deforested once which was one of the reasons that Greek civilization collapsed, it was recreated artificially later by human hands[4]. Especially, Decartes, Bacon, and Spinoza are those who strengthened the notion of controlling nature[5]. Contrarily, human’s rule on nature has been criticized since 18th century that involves, to some extent, the current environmentalism[6].
In terms of dominance over nature, nuclear issues including nuclear power plant fall into this topic. For instance, nuclear power plant has a thought of controlling nature and the realization of the thought should be in dispute whether we should move in that direction or not. There would be an opinion that human-central ideology is arrogant given the wide range of creatures living on the earth.
Take a look at the actual incidents happened, nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl and Fukushima need enormous time to be recovered. Often said that the half-life of plutonium 239 which is more than 20,000 years[7], it is difficult for human race to recover the environment affected by nuclear disaster. Implementing nuclear power plant for generation of electricity in policy of a country has the thought of governing the nature since they need to consider the case of dealing with the catastrophy. Its nuclear powering model looks controlling the nature. In the perspective of avoiding any accident, the system has to be controllable by human beings, in nuclear power generation human beings is required to comprehend how things work that is to say, trying to have the structure of nature in our hands. The ideology of ruling the nature is human’s trying to getting the perspective outside the whole and grasping the mechanism.
Science is based on human’s arbitrariness in a sense that human beings has been building our world on what we can see. Even we say the word scientific, it doesn’t connotate the complete ojbectiveness and should be taken into account that it has human bias and thought. Science is founded on top of them.
People cannot live in the world only based on scientific reasonableness. Scientifically or medically it would be correct to minimize the meetings of people in pandemic so as not to spread the virus, but even if it is correct, such scientific correctness cannot be implemented in society in a complete sense. Such discipline should not eliminate all other social values but persist in the preventing since we cannot live only based on scientific reasonability. The lifestyle of each person living in a nation is too different to put them into certain categories.
We cannot always prioritize the preventiveness of spreading disease in every dimension of our life. Even this pandemic isn’t the worst case in history. Every time when pandemic happens we cannot put our societies in hold which tricle down the downsides of lockdown. What we should do is to lessen the social negatives as much as possible caring the high risk people.
Putting lockdown or state of emergeny in place when the number of infecton surges, and when getting calmed lifting it up take place. Restrictions are in place depending on the statistics of each moment. Coexistence with nature isn’t to put distinction between nature and human beings. It is adjusting the balance between them considering the capacity of a society.
Social distance would be slightly integrated into our society as custom. Tiredness of staying at home in private and business life led to the situation that people gradually started to go out. Citizen’s reaction toward the number of people contract COVID-19 on weekly or monthly basis is different from the beginning of pandemic. They are more accustomed to the numbers which surprised them at first. Think of the beginning of this pandemic when coronavirus hit over not just Asia but a while later western countries, people were getting tense to stay home, take social distancing, to be in lockdown. But now, people’s attitude to the virus seems loosened. It is partly because we cannot constantly put lockdown in place to minimize the number of the infected. Drastic change on lifestyle of people impacts on businesses, especially not being adaptable to working at home. It puts people’s life at risk. Even if it is correct for infectious disease, it doen’t necessarily mean that it is correct for society, let alone in the perspective of social justice.
Of at maximum we should take preventive measures like wearing mask or care those who are vulnerable to this virus. However we cannot prioritize always preventing the spread of this virus by constantly locking down with strictest condtions. Even temporary lockdown we put, burdens are accumulated to society, or certain vulnerable group of people. People of color tends to be front-line workers[8]. The infection rate has to do with the life conditions of community. It turned out that workers packed in insuffient-hygiene accommodations were vulnerable[9].
Something we can rely on may help. It could be sort of principles that people believe in, or I can say that it could be a wisdom that comes from our ancestors. In some cases, people might as well compromise in certain degrees.
[1] Influenced by Takeshi Umehara. For a philosophy of mankind. ISBN978-4-7571-4282-4. p.7.
[2] Influenced by Takeshi Umehara. For a philosophy of mankind. ISBN978-4-7571-4282-4. p.11-12.
[3] Takeshi Umehara. For a philosophy of mankind. ISBN978-4-7571-4282-4. p.18.
[4] Takeshi Umehara. For a philosophy of mankind. ISBN978-4-7571-4282-4. p.20.
[5] Francis Fukuyama. The end of history and the last man. ISBN 978-0-7432-8455-4. p.72.
[6] Francis Fukuyama. The end of history and the last man. ISBN 978-0-7432-8455-4. p.83-84.
[7] Hiroki Azuma. On the Foolishness of Evil, or the Problem of Nuclear Accident and its Mediopassive Memory. Genron 11. ISBN978-4-907188-38-2. p.19.
[8] BBC. Why did the first wave of COVID 19 disproportionately affect people of colour? – BBC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2iB6UXFDlk Accessed 29 April 2021.
[9] Maybe Racism Caused the Covid-19 Crisis. Cathy O’Neil. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ATFPV0aLyJM/catherine-h-oneil Accessed 1 May 2021.
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