WHAT IS THE REMNANT OF THE PLAGUE?

Now that the tide has receded, waiting for the next one to rise sooner or later, it is time to consider what remains of the epidemic that has ravaged us for almost three years. I do not want to talk about the controversies that the "widows" of COVID, on one side or the other, are trying to keep alive in order to save some of the warmth that still warms their hearts and lights up their faces. I am talking about what really remains, every day, in your life and mine.

The first thing that remains, the most important because it has given rise to the others, was the impulse to digitize all human activities, especially those related to work, teaching, medicine and health, and the economy. These are processes that were already under way, but which have experienced an impressive acceleration as a result of the epidemic. Social distancing, the need to combine and coordinate information on a global scale, the dematerialization of all kinds of relationships, including monetary and banking transactions, and e-commerce have changed the face of the world we live in in just a few years, with snowballing effects: from the near disappearance of low-cost airlines, to a deepening crisis in proximity commerce, to the crisis in the office rental market in major urban centers.

The second thing that remains comes directly from the first. It is a less obvious phenomenon, but one with even greater implications. The epidemic has "empowered" governments and intergovernmental and supranational bodies to do what was not only forbidden but described as an "Orwellian" nightmare until a few years ago: merge disparate databases. For years, much of the information about citizens has been collected and stored digitally by public and private entities. Until the onset of the epidemic, these vast amounts of information were rigidly compartmentalized: for example, the information generated by our credit card was not shared with the health care system, and vice versa, and the same was true for all - or almost all - databases. The epidemic has broken this rigid segregation, and with increasing frequency, different databases are accessing the most disparate information and "fusing" it, that is, matching it with each other to build behavioral and risk profiles and thus predictive policies. This is a process that is still in its infancy, and there are still many regulatory hurdles to overcome, but what really matters, and what I want to focus on, is that the first and most important hurdle has been overcome: interoperability. Until a few years ago, the various databases were designed to be non-interoperable, that is, the data were organized in such a way that even if you wanted to merge them, it would often be impossible. The epidemic has created a drive in the opposite direction: today, databases are almost all designed to be interoperable. History teaches us that whenever a human society has developed a certain technological capability, sooner or later that capability will be used, perhaps for trivial things (do not always think of science fiction dystopias), but with the potential to change your life, such as the granting of a bank loan, the amount of an insurance premium, your position on a health care waiting list.

The third thing that remains is perhaps the least noticed, but what worries me most as a citizen: the epidemic has accelerated the already ongoing process of creating a "global plebs". By "global plebs" I mean the total mass of people who make up today's Internet people: that universe of people who - regardless of where they live, the culture they come from, the education they received, their social and economic status, their poverty or wealth, their age and profession, their religious, political, philosophical beliefs - construct their worldview and their reference values almost exclusively through the World Wide Web. 

Julia Kristeva wrote in 1988: "A paradoxical community is emerging, made up of strangers who accept themselves to the extent that they recognize themselves as strangers to themselves. The multinational society will thus be the result of an extreme individualism, but one that is aware of its own weaknesses and limitations, one that knows only those who are irreducibly willing to help in their weakness, a weakness whose other name is radical strangeness" (Etrangers à nous-mêmes, Gallimard, Paris, p. 290, my translation). Kristeva was right as well as wrong. On the one hand, it is true that a paradoxical community of strangers to themselves has emerged. On the other hand, the French psychoanalyst was deceiving herself when she thought of a society of individuals who recognize in their weakness and uprootedness what unites them. On the contrary, the multinational society has sought and found its roots in Google, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and what will replace them tomorrow (Chatbotgpt, Tome AI and their future siblings).

The creation of a "public intimacy" displayed on the global stage through the Web has been the primary driver of this process. What is extraordinary is that there has been no use of coercion in this process, but simply the exploitation of people's exhibitionism and emotional aridity. In fact, it is only by watching themselves act out that many people are able to trick themselves into feeling emotions. Thus, what should be most hidden and tenderly protected in the human soul-the grief over a death, the happiness over a love, the nostalgia for a memory-is instead grotesquely displayed online alongside the most disgusting trivialities, winking bodies, obscene giggles, repulsive insults. In this way, a mass has been created that is abject and homogenized by its own behavior, a plebs made up of kakoi kai aischroi, ugly and evil. In this crowd, you can even split into pro-vaccine and anti-vaxxers, into those who support gender theory or those who defend the traditional family, into those who want to give weapons to Ukraine or those who do not, into those who are for or against a multi-ethnic society: what really matters is not what you support, but the decision to support it online. Never more than in this case, the medium conveys the real message.

Was it the epidemic that created this formless mass of people? No, as I said, the epidemic merely accelerated a process that was already underway. But by encouraging hypocrisy and conformity, insensitivity masquerading as compassion, false heroism and real cowardice, deceit masquerading as solidarity, the epidemic has broken the remaining bonds of community, eradicated what little beauty survived technology, and made us all worse and uglier. The terrible thing is that no one has escaped this fate. The global plebs are no longer opposed, as they once were, by an elite of higher values, tastes, and culture. The ruling classes today are no different from the masses: they have the same tastes, the same ambitions, they share the same ugliness and vulgarity, they are just infinitely richer.

It is not easy to find a way out of this intrigue that the epidemic has left us. As a psychoanalyst and ethicist, it seems to me that the best way is to first try to "heal" ourselves and those closest to us.  There are three recommendations in particular that I would like to make.

First, it seems to me that one should distance oneself a bit more from the online world, without resorting to too drastic choices that one would not be able to stick to for a long time. It would be enough to refrain from digital communication in your professional and private life whenever possible. If you are a teacher, try to minimize all forms of distance learning; if you are a doctor or psychologist, refuse to offer consultations (or worse, treatment) online; to wish your mother a happy birthday, write a card and avoid Zoom, Skype, and so on.

Second, we should avoid two equally pathological reactions to the increasing digital control of our lives. The first is the obsession with being spied on, which is often an expression of its opposite, the desire to be spied on. Humanity is becoming more and more an anonymous and indistinct mass. But everyone hopes (has illusions) to be a unicum This search for lost individuality is often expressed in very different fashions (tattoos, sexual fluidity, food intolerances, etc.). Thus, the idea of being spied on by the Power can be fascinating, because it makes us feel somehow unique. The trivial reality, however, is that we are of no interest as individuals, only as members of given categories. At the other end of the paranoid attitude is that of the shrewd servant, that is, the one who makes the morality of Harlequin and Leporello his own. He pretends to be obedient to his master, but as soon as he is sure he can get away with it, he robs and deceives him. But in doing so, he admits that he is and becomes a servant forever. 

Finally, there is the third recommendation: to avoid at all costs making one's intimacy public, and to participate in the intimacy of others when they do. A love, a grief, a nostalgia are precious objects that do not tolerate overexposure, just like certain beautiful paintings that early archaeologists found in Etruscan tombs. When they were exposed to the sunlight after thousands of years of obscurity, they faded almost completely in a few hours, leaving only a pale memory of their original beauty.

Are my recommendations still little? Sure, but let's get started.