And then came the virus (1/3): The Nematode Awakens
In a Moscow lab in 2017, three years before the outbreak of COVID-19, a nematode worm emerged from a deep sleep into a world much changed — but then a lot can happen in 42,000 years.¹
The Upper Palaeolithic was just getting going when the worm bedded down into a cosy ice sheet. The love affair between Homo sapiens and the Neanderthals was coming to an end with the complete annihilation of the latter, leaving just a few strands of DNA intermingled with our own. The world was changing, with the earliest known examples of figurative cave art being produced (earlier cave art features geometric shapes and hand stencils rather than figures). Around this time someone cut a fine figure of a woman into the earliest example of a figurative statue, the Venus of Hohle Fels.²
At the same time, hominids were also beginning to express themselves in words as well as objects, as this is the period in which complex language is thought to have developed. The implication is that we were becoming self-aware in a completely novel way, beginning a long and fraught journey into symbolic abstraction. Languages began to diverge, with different words and signs signifying different complexes of meaning. Different groups colonised different zones of this new layer of reality, allowing for the concepts of cultural division and ethnicity to filter into reality. Perhaps the ‘us and them’ mentality was the final flower in the Neanderthal burial rite.
Often we only notice trees when we crash into them while staring at signs and symbols through our screens.
Self-awareness had progressed to full-on self-absorption by the time the nematode awoke, and our awareness of the concrete realities of the world was in severe decline. Most 21st century 3–5 year-olds recognise at least five brand logos from McDonald’s to Toyota, but 90% of English 18–24-year-olds are unable to identify an ash leaf.³ ⁴ Often we only notice trees when we crash into them while staring at signs and symbols through our screens. The release of Pokémon Go preceded a spike in people driving into trees (and other troublesome concretia) around Pokéstops, accounting for 46% of crashes and at least two fatalities over the following five months in Tippecanoe County, Indiana.⁵
Meanwhile, the wild places continue to lose ground to strip mines, housing projects, cattle ranches and other monocultural or acultural landscapes created by and for humans. This is, to my mind, one aspect of an unfolding tragedy that breaks my heart whenever my 2-year old learns a word like “giraffe” or “koala” signifying something real heading for extinction by the time he reaches maturity (whereas people perishing pursuing pixilated Pokémons is merely an opportunity for mirth and alliteration).
The brightest flower in the plastic bouquet of abstraction today is identity politics
Such pro-nature and anti-human sentiments leave me open to the charge of eco-fascism, invariably by people who think that nature really should be a socialist, because the brightest flower in the plastic bouquet of abstraction today is identity politics. As reality melts the ice caps and scorches forests, a lively debate continues about which toilets and pronouns we should be using. When the nematode awoke, many of the largest symbols printed on newspapers a few thousand miles towards the sunset concerned the fact that an abstract entity called “Britain” had decided to leave an abstract entity called “the European Union”, and this remained the case pretty much every day for the first two years of its animated life.
And then came the virus.
Galloping across the globe like a horseman of the Apocalypse, flanked by locust plagues in Africa and rumours of Armageddon, the virus forced us from our workplaces and shopping malls into our homes. Factories closed down almost overnight. Flights were grounded. City streets are almost deserted. School is cancelled, along with exams. As a psychedelic rabbi put it, referring to the 24-hour Sabbath prohibition on travelling, operating switches or carrying objects — “The whole world is finally getting Shabbos”.
COVID-19 kills with pneumonia, clogging up the lungs of mostly elderly and infirm victims, which is an awful way to go — but our lungs have been troubling us for a while.⁶ Ten thousand anti-pollution protesters took to the streets of Wuhan last July chanting “give us back the green mountains and clear waters”, and when their city reported the first cases of what developed into a pandemic, it seems they got their wish.⁷
Emissions have plummeted by 10% since Chinese industry went on hold.⁸ Despite crematoriums burning 24–7, the famously filthy Wuhan skyline has cleared and birds have returned to nest for the spring.⁹ As the corridors of Italian hospitals fill with patients, fish and crabs can be seen through clear waters of Venetian canals, and Krakow residents can finally see the mountains surrounding their city now the smog has cleared.¹⁰ ¹¹ ¹² Both China and Vietnam have temporarily banned wildlife markets, since that bat-shit, pangolin-shit crazy cuisine is thought to be the source of this and several other pandemics. It’s a wonderful world in 2020 from any perspective other than human, and so far even the humans are in credit; according to an expert at Stanford, the reduction in pollution “likely has saved the lives of 4,000 kids under 5 and 73,000 adults over 70 in China.”¹³ The global death toll from air pollution is estimated at between 7 and 9 million every year, and nine out of ten people around the world breathe polluted air.¹⁴ ¹⁵
Sadly there will be a lot of grieving for elderly parents, but for most people under 70 the main trials they will personally have to cope with are economic, as they were before the pandemic. With stocks plummeting in step with pollution, businesspeople are revealing themselves for better and for worse. Some are taking an economic hit to deliver half-price meals to hospital staff or giving them free beds in their hotels; billionaire “philanthropist” Richard Branson, who has sued the NHS in the past, chose to put his staff on unpaid leave while calling for bailouts of the airlines.¹⁶ ¹⁷ ¹⁸ Bloomberg is another philanthropist and the ninth richest man in the world; he plans to donate 6% of the money he blew on failing to become Democratic presidential candidate.¹⁹ ²⁰
The presidents of the US and Brazil have both urged businesses to keep going, showing an extraordinary lack of compassion and even the basic maths of exponential growth. Hospitals are already running out of ventilators in both countries with the crisis far from peaking. Meanwhile, the UK declined to take part in a Europe-wide effort to build ventilators because “we are no longer members of the EU”.²¹ The US injected $700 billion into the economy rather than distributing it as food or healthcare, displaying a fundamentalist theology which addresses problems by placating the market as if it was some ravenous spirit from Adam Smith’s Necronomicon. The market continued slipping, faster than in 1929, and then a week later the Dow Jones had its best day since 1931, allowing the fiscal priesthood to announce that the sacrifice was accepted.²² ²³
Perhaps, but then maybe the demon has slipped its chains completely and its hunger is unleashed. 3.3 million Americans have already lost their jobs, while the number of cases in the US has eclipsed China’s.²⁴ Due to the almost unique character of American healthcare, testing and treating a single patient is estimated at nearly $10,000, which doubles with medical complications.²⁵ Even those with the luxury of health insurance may be charged $1,300, and around a third of households have less than this in their savings.²⁶
As the mask of the beast slips and the sulfurous smoke of our globalized economy clears, the humanity of humans is shining through — as it always does in a crisis. Maybe this time we will remember what we saw through the clear air of our global Sabbath. Italians are serenading each other from their balconies (including with Slayer riffs) and hundreds of community groups are popping up in the UK to support their neighbours.²⁷ Parents are homeschooling and families are choosing what they want to focus on. This is the return of the real, and we are forced to sit with ourselves, working out what to do with ourselves — an apocalyptic moment as the veil (kalyptein) falls away (apo-).
Personally, I panic-bought seeds to sow immunity boosters and lung tonics in the garden and pollinators along the roads of the neighbourhood. Deeper still I feel a familiar stirring, something wriggling back to life. Having published one apocalyptic book on dis-coveries in science and another on the neurobiology of revelation, I hung up my reverend’s robes to found a reforestation organization and spent the best part of two years developing networks to help re-wild parts of Brazil facing desertification. This is what people in psychiatry call “a delusion of grandeur”, but in the midst of a collective and co-dependent delusion spanning the globe it was the only rational choice for me.
All the while, my Nemutode has been sleeping. Perhaps it is wishful thinking to hope that COVID-19 will cause the kind of crisis that will shake humanity out of its slumber, but it has certainly warmed my ice-cold heart. As spring dawns on the third decade of the 21st century, the Reverend Nemu is breaking out of his hibernation and back into the third person to write out some wrongs before COVID-20 or whatever explosion of novelty comes along next.
