Human 2020
by Piyush Mathur
Editorial note: In this acerbic piece of speculative writing, Dr. Piyush Mathur surmises that the SARS-CoV-2-induced global crisis (COVID-19) has forced people all over the world into a unified whole of humanity: a sort of a trope that he calls Human 2020. Exploring the generality of underlying factors that may have led up to this situation—and describing what it is—he contemptuously throws light on it, and wonders about what we may choose to learn from it.
Although the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) erupted (in 2003) well after the global popularization of the Internet, COVID-19 is the first real worldwide pandemic of the Information Age (specifically within its sub-era of the Age of the Internet). Not only is it the case that the SARS’ spread was limited to only 27 nation-states, but also that the Internet subscription rates at the time were nowhere near where they are now. In March 2003, only 9.7% of humans had access to the Internet (and by the December of that year, that percentage would rise to 11.1); in January 2020, more than half (58.7%) of the world’s population was estimated to have Internet access (and 3.5 billion people—or 45.12% of the world’s population—are estimated to be smartphone users this year).
Meanwhile, the world has seen Ebola, avian flu, swine flu—with all their dominant and not-so-dominant strains: but see (or read/hear about) is what the most of the world had to do, even as quite a number of people actually suffered those diseases. In response to COVID-19, however, all of humanity stands literally inconvenienced already, to say the least—even as there is a real fear that between 50-70% of us would ultimately get infected. While the unemployed poor, 70+, those with prior medical challenges, and others precariously positioned within their own local contexts would suffer the worst of COVID-19—reflecting an understated range of diversity among us in response to it—a new planet-wide anthro-entity has nevertheless been forced to take shape because of it.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen! Right on the cusp of our post-Brexit-Trumpist—anti-globalization, politically isolationist—era, what we have on hand is a new version of ourselves: Human 2020! In a surreal coincidence, this panhuman chimera has emerged within 6 months of the Oxford University graduate Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson’s ascent to the United Kingdom’s premiership: which was supposed to be the last statement (for our beleaguered times anyway) on why humans must retreat into their own nation-states, if only under the false covers of their own fabricated group identities. And who could have missed the astronomical ambitions of the same humans?
From SpaceX to Blue Origin to Virgin Galactic to the United States Space Force (USSF), there had seemed little to discourage the re-nationalized, re-ethnicized, re-parochialized human from exploring the physical universe—and to market it stupendously not only to the investors, but also to the masses (as only our “scientists” can do best). And nor was there any holding back for the US President Donald Trump—the liberals’ faux poster-boy for all that is uncritically phrased as anti-science in our post-1800s world. For aside from articulating the USSF in December 2019, didn’t Trump request (in February 2020) a 12% increase in the 2021 budget for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)?
Enter COVID-19, and you, humans, have a new mirror to look at yourself—in which you find yourself directionless, disheveled, half-catered to, glued to at least one virtual screen, and in command of your immaculate hands! But above all, you are a little something else, something less, still: You are Human 2020.
I could create a virtual logo for you—or maybe a badge?—and you could proudly wear it. Except that you won’t be able to go to town to show it; but Instagram, TikTok, Pintrest, Facebook, Twitter, Diaspora would come in handy for you. You would have to show it off virtually. This has worked out for me so far; it should work out for you, too. We are in it together—and truncated. But are we—now? Short of a YouTube presentation on it yet, let me console myself with this written characterization:
Human 2020 is a scared animal—condemned to remain caged inside his own wired residence; and to look at and hear other animals as they chatter, flutter, screech, and frolic about in the free winds, vegetations, waters, and soils of the outside. Of course, there are plenty of creatures that continue to languish by the millions and more in our worldwide torture chambers: the abattoirs; the plastic-infested oceans; the poached, trophy-hunted, and even literally burning jungles; the polluted winds; the melting ice-sheets; the puppy mills; the abusive homes and streets; and the laboratories. All that having been said, Human 2020 is ultimately somebody in receipt of the Fear Memo from Mother Nature—of which he is but a recalcitrant, arrogant, destructive child.
Having long lost all general respect for Mother Nature, this unbecoming offspring is now being re-routed to it by the language that he apparently best understands—inasmuch as he uses it all around himself the most to have his way: fear. On one level, Human 2020 reflects the fear of COVID-2019; on another level, he reflects the fear of the government agencies enforcing the quarantines, lockouts, curfews, and related restrictions. At the same time, it is also fear that underlies his criticism directed at China and some other countries as well as communities for eating “wild” life—even though there is nothing to suggest that these types of outbreaks are necessarily restricted to consuming whatever it is that is considered wild (and by whom, where and precisely why—in what context of that terminological usage). In point of fact, two different strains of avian flu hit very close to Hubei—the epicentre of the Coronavirus—in January and February 2020; and both avian flu and swine flu are currently visiting India’s state of Bihar. Moreover, infections could spread out of vegetables, too (and they have in the past)—and narrowly rationalistic researchers would surely stress that point endlessly.
However, Human 2020 is poised to be routed to his own safety less by the finely calibrated heaps of data and a never-ending array of managerial protocols whose sum-total, incidentally, happens to be yet more destruction of nature over the course of the centuries (and unfolding)—and more by a generalized, associative, and non-linear fear (and its derivatives) of that which includes the invisible virus as much as the unmistakable skunk or the elephant as well as the state machinery mobilized to enforce the restrictions! So, in the wake of the Coronavirus, even as China banned trade in “wildlife” as food (though not yet for medicinal purposes), India saw a sharp fall in the sale of poultry products.
Nobody, however, could tell how long this fear would last—and what shape it would take in the future. Human addictions, however despicable or violent, die hard—and a newly fashioned data-driven intelligentsia is itself not only value-shy but also shy of those that hope to be value-driven (whereby tending to reaffirm all sorts of human consumption habits with little regard for an ethic of care and nonviolence). But as it stands, Human 2020 is condemned to fear not only the animals that he has been used to devouring recklessly, but also every other member of his own species (and not just the police in the streets). Gun sales surged in the United States just as the news about the Coronavirus was creeping up on people there—and very likely these new buyers were not planning to use their panic-stricken acquisitions against neighbourhood cats or birds (leave aside the police personnel or the military, though who could predict?).
But the apprehensions are not just about externally palpable bouts of physical violence or governmental coercion from fellow humans. Indeed, unless already securely coupled, Human 2020 can’t even hope to access a sexual partner without fearing that person as a prospective infector: of not only sexually transmitted diseases. For even before he could feel his potential partner’s scent (which, of course, we generally do only when it is either a stench or artificial), Human 2020 might be kissed by the Coronavirus: which can travel through the air up to around 15 feet! It is thus not surprising that he (and I don’t mean the Coronavirus, of course) must be advised “phone sex” as the safest; be offered free pornography as a survivalist’s delicacy; and be urged to avoid kissing as much as anal—just in case he gets lucky finding a partner at all.
And it won’t console Human 2020 to be reminded that he was just about getting ready to fly off farther afield and live there: Mars, for a start. Alas, he can’t even step out for coffee, for the moment anyway. He is secretly doubling down on some humans’ long-standing hopes from robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and other virtually controlled mechanisms. He feels that these contraptions would rescue him from future epidemics and pandemics—which he suspects would only increase in frequency.
Robots, Human 2020 surmises, won’t catch them pesky colds, or flues, or stomach aches; and AI can be articulated infinitely sitting at home anyway: after all, all we need to know is how to code (and coding is what we all need to know, too). Drones are already being used—even in an idol-worshipping India—to herd disobedient humans indoors. And that is being done there even as the poorest Indians venture to cover the distance between far-off towns literally on foot just to be with their families: as a way through the pandemic-induced unemployment that has been thrust upon them inside the context of a growing economic inequality.
Would Human 2020’s fear of the Coronavirus join hands with prior, lingering fears concerning Global Warming, Biodiversity Loss, and Pollution (to name just a few)—leading him to articulate a more meaningful, nurturing relationship with the outer world? Or would it distract him from them even as he digs deeper and deeper into his own little shell—fearing the foreigner, throwing vacant glances at the wild outside—learning and writing code, manipulating Big Data, polishing the AI, and sending out virtually controlled contraptions into the outside mainly to shape it more and more to expand and serve his own greed?
Would Human 2020 blindly continue to worship non-existent entities online while having been forced out—for the fear of the virus—of erstwhile dedicated physical spaces for the same: those temples, churches, mosques, and synagogues, for example? And would he crawl right back into those same physical spaces once this crisis is over? Or would he come to see this whole enterprise of divinity as a fraudulent one—justly bankrupted, for the moment, by something invisible to the naked eye, but in fact entirely real (unlike what he has been worshipping): something that has verily birthed him qua Human 2020?
Underneath the fears, this Human 2020 hopes for some sanity—and actual (not divine) enlightenment.
References & background material:
Alcorn, Chauncey (March 19, 2020) “Gun sales surge as coronavirus pandemic spreads” CNN (Downloaded on March 26, 2020 from the following URL: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/19/business/coronavirus-gun-sales/index.html )
Awasthi, Prashasti (March 12, 2020) “Coronavirus scare: Maharashtra farmer dumps ₹5.8-crore worth poultry products after drop in sales” The Hindu (Downloaded on March 26, 2020 from the following URL: https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/economy/agri-business/coronavirus-scare-maharashtra-farmer-dumps-58-crore-worth-poultry-products-after-the-drop-in-sales/article31040548.ece)
Frishberg, Hannah & Heather Hauswirth (March 25, 2020) “The do’s and don’ts of having sex during the coronavirus crisis” (Downloaded on March 26, 2020 from the following URL: https://nypost.com/2020/03/25/the-dos-and-donts-of-having-sex-during-the-coronavirus-crisis/ )
Gorman, James (February 27, 2020) “China’s Ban on Wildlife Trade a Big Step, but Has Loopholes, Conservationists Say” ((Downloaded on March 26, 2020 from the following URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/science/coronavirus-pangolin-wildlife-ban-china.html )
Grush, Loren (February 10, 2020) “The Trump administration calls for big budget increases for NASA to fund Moon-to-Mars program” The Verge (Downloaded on March 26, 2020 from the following URL: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/10/21131361/nasa-administration-president-trump-budget-request-25-billion-moon-artemis )
History (2020) (Downloaded on March 26, 2020 from the following URL: https://www.history.com/topics/middle-ages/pandemics-timeline )
Internet World Stats (Downloaded on March 26, 2020 from the following URL: https://www.internetworldstats.com/emarketing.htm )
Joshi, Mallica (March 27, 2020) “From Delhi, exodus on foot continues: ‘All okay if I make it home’” Indian Express (Downloaded on March 27, 2020 from the following URL: https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/delhi-exodus-on-foot-coronavirus-lockdown-6333513/ )
Lapin, Tamar (March 9, 2020) “Coronavirus can travel much farther than previously thought, study finds” New York Post ((Downloaded on March 26, 2020 from the following URL: https://nypost.com/2020/03/09/coronavirus-can-travel-much-farther-than-previously-thought-study-finds/?fbclid=IwAR0zRRZ0k4d60f-dwloOoXoDQeXl1OqCNb7JDTIHGeXDu5h5ljqzGZhS3l4)
Srivastava, Amitabh (March 24, 2020) “Bihar’s double whammy: Bird flu comes knocking in times of coronavirus” India Today (Downloaded on March 26, 2020 from the following URL: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/bihar-s-double-whammy-bird-flu-comes-knocking-in-times-of-coronavirus-1659255-2020-03-24 )
statista (September 2019) “Number of smartphone users worldwide from 2016 to 2021” (Downloaded on March 26, 2020 from the following URL: https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartphone-users-worldwide/ )
Press Trust of India (Mar 26, 2020) “Covid-19: Drones used to enforce lockdown, more booked for violating prohibitory orders” The Economic Times (Downloaded on March 26, 2020 from the following URL: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/covid-19-drones-used-to-enforce-lockdown-more-booked-for-violating-prohibitory-orders/articleshow/74831906.cms )
Week (March 25, 2020) “Pornhub made Premium content free worldwide, wants you to stay indoors” (Downloaded on March 26, 2020 from the following URL: https://www.theweek.in/news/world/2020/03/25/pornhub-made-premium-content-free-worldwide-wants-you-to-stay-indoors.html)
White House (Downloaded on March 26, 2020 from the following URL: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/budget_fy21.pdf )
You, Tracy (February 10, 2020) “China now has to fight coronavirus AND bird flu: 'Highly pathogenic' avian influenza hits two Chinese provinces near Hubei” ((Downloaded on March 26, 2020 from the following URL: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7987009/Bird-flu-breaks-two-Chinese-provinces-near-coronaviruss-epicentre.html )
Dr. Piyush Mathur has theorized “an ethic of biospheric objectivity” in his book Technological Forms and Ecological Communication: A Theoretical Heuristic (Lexington Books, 2017). He has prior experiences in interdisciplinary teaching and/or research in US, Nigeria, India, UK, and Vietnam. His shorter publications could be accessed here. You may contact him by clicking on his name above.