To lament about the ravage of humanity by the Covid-19 sees only one side of the pandemic. Between the pages of stories of human tragedies, images of the healing of Nature leap out.
Early reports showed us the disappearance of pollution over the epicentre of the outbreak in Wuhan, China, where humanity witnessed the first lockdown following the outbreak of the coronavirus. Then video clips of dolphins swimming in the canals of Venice were beamed around the world on the handheld screens of our smart phones and tablets. The Italian lockdown refocused our attention to another aspect of the Covid-19 epidemic. Soon, social media brought us footage of the wildlife “taking over” our streets and making themselves welcome in our gardens, in our streets in some of the most populated metropolitan cities around the globe. Even the mountain goats of Great Orme near the Welsh seaside resort Llandudno – favoured by holiday makers since the Victorian time – went rogue and went viral. The horned miscreants became the protagonists of an unfolding drama of audacious escape where the human actors are conspicuous in their absence.
Perhaps in a way, the story of the metamorphosis of Gregor Samsa is meant to invite us to examine human greed and cruelty. Gregor’s transformation magnifies the vulnerability of the creatures that we have deemed small and insignificant. The unstoppable molecular replication of the coronavirus and the devastation it unleashes now forces humans to recognise their own vulnerability.
Perhaps our worst crime is our human-centric attitudes towards the natural world in our unabated replication of relentless pursuit for economic prosperity through the exploitation of our natural resources and habitat. Our sustained alienation of the natural world has made as intolerant for our animal cohabitants and the abuser of the planet. The abuse Gregor suffers from his three parasitic lodgers and the injury he sustains from the apple lodged in his back after being attacked by his own father are now our own predicament.
Perhaps, the full horror of Gregor Samsa’s monstrous transformation is not so much his grotesque zoomorphism, rather it is the anthropomorphism of the coronavirus that has reduced humanity to a defenceless organism that now is forced to retreat back into its cocoon, just like Gregor being beaten back to his squalor that is his bedroom.
The question remains ultimately ours. Will humans have the humility to acknowledge that the pandemic is the error of our own making? Apart from the cost of human lives, it also unveils our vanity and narcissism? Do we then even reflect on our relationship with this planet? We, humans, are actually the monstrous vermin of the natural world, like the parasitic lodgers who shamelessly exploit their host’s vulnerability?
Can humanity learn? Will humanity learn?
EduFlections 