Global Impacts
Introduction
During the speaker session on Nov. 8, Global Impacts, Prof. Davila from Illinois Global Institute and Prof. Liao from the sociology department introduced the factors (institutional, political, social, or cultural) that can shape the different levels of intensity of infection or death from Covid. It is first clarified that the virus is the same among different regions, but the responses and effects are different. So the two professors sought to examine the different combinations of factors in places with highest proportions and places where it is controlled. The most severely influenced countries are the US, India, and Brazil, and together they contribute to half of the cases worldwide. There are four primary compounding points that ban be found in these countries. 1) High level of social inequality. It is basically the gap between the wealthier and poorer populations, or a division between protected and unprotected populations. This point would lead to social-economic & regional disparities in accessing healthcare. And it is also further exaggerated by the accumulated pre-existing health risks among poorer and marginalized populations. 2) Large parts of the workforce in informal and service activities, which is an indication that these people would have minimal capacity for working in socially-isolated ways. 3) High population densities in poorer areas. 4) Uneven access to sanitation, safe water, and food security (or prevention measures in general). These four points, then, are further joined by three further compounding factors. i) Inconsistent public health and epidemic mitigation efforts; ii) Limited testing and tracing (which reduces the ability to mitigate and control local outbreaks); and iii) Inconsistent or contradictory information from public figures. Several examples of techniques that had proven to be successful in controlling the virus are also discussed, namely accompanying public health measures with local efforts, controlling early on but resurgences of cases, and raising public awareness.
Interestingly enough, building from these discussions of compounding factors (which mainly centered around social inequality), the two professors concluded their lecture with a discussion of “wearing masks as a political thing”. First, it is pointed out that there are strong impacts of political factors. Statistics had shown that there is a positive relationship between confirmed covid cases and deaths with the traces of supporting of the Republican party (both Republic governors and voting result from the citizens). Historical lessons also show that people have resisted public health measures. Part of the reason resides in the increasing tendency among the politicians to present themselves as populists. Under this scheme, their political strategy would, as Prof. Davila puts it, “represent themselves personally as the embodiment of a set of solutions to the national problems.” Issues will arise whenever their persona is incompatible with mask-wearing.
Reflection
While the two professors have jumped a little bit in their discussions, here I will try to fill in some of the gaps in how people can start from social inequalities and end up with the ideology of not wearing masks. I came across a reading in my Antisemitism class recently, Education After Auschwitz, by Theodor Adorno (see attachment, p. 191-204). In this article Adorno examined ideologies of Nazi Germany, and used it as an example to promote a reformed education in preventing prosecutions of another weak group, or to prevent “another Auschwitz”. I think some interesting parallels can be drawn from our current situation.
The starting point is a “densely weaved” mechanism, or “a powerful societal tendency” that detach people from the society and make feel a sense of “coldness”. In the Nazi’s case, it can be the process of fast industrialization and post WWI reflection (humiliation). People may think of themselves as the nails of a factory (as opposed to actual human beings), and they are basically detached from their personal selves. In our case, it is more likely to be social inequalities. Prof. Mendenhall (from my last op-ed) and Prof. Davila had provided a perfect summary of the factors that will contribute to the disparity, with one focusing on health care in specific and the other focusing on society in general. This mechanism would lead to a sense of lack of belongingness (the Germans feel that they didn't belong to the factories, and the marginalized groups think that they don’t belong to the society). And they would recognize the current mechanism as cold. This coldness and lack of belongingness, then, would incentivize the desire to escape from the existing mechanism, and to get themselves shaped into something more powerful. Given their lack of powers in the real world, however, they would need a fatherly figure to lead them out (can also be a feminine figure, but masculine in most cases). There is the intention to regain what remained missing for them, or to recover what has been castrated from them. So they become the voluntary followers of the fatherly figure, who provides them with belongingness. At the same time, as a result, they start to participate in the newly-established machinery that can bring orders to themselves. So it all boils down to the irony that people----those who started off with their resentment of “mechanisms” and those who had once been victimized by “mechanisms”----eventually turned themselves into the most zealous members of a more powerful mechanism (and perhaps a more destructive one). The transition from social inequalities to “not wearing masks” is rather an internally-developed psychology, and not an externally promoted ideology (although external factors are necessary for the psychological chain to complete). The motivation comes from the inside, not the outside.
Before I move on, I also want to clarify that I have no intention to call those who reject masks “Nazis”. Although we may observe similar patterns between the two groups, I think the anti-mask people are going nowhere close to the extreme that the Nazis once went to. I don’t want to place any judgement toward these people. I also don’t want to go political in my discussion by any means, and I also recognize that such ideologies are not solely reserved for any specific groups. My main point in comparing the two groups is to raise the alarm that some of the external features have already taken place (social inequalities, fatherly figure, etc.), and the psychological movements have already been developed and put into function. As a response, before further destruction takes place, we should seek preventions.
Given that the ideology is internally developed, in trying to find a potential solution, then, the emphasis should be placed on how to eradicate the underlying psychology. It may appear as less important on what information they have gotten, or how to prove false of their ideologies. Accordingly, it is essential to note that while the development is natural, there are three fundamental flaws. First, the reason for their “escape” is not properly justified. When people reject wearing masks because it is their freedom, they are in fact showing the limitation in their definition of freedom. By defining masks as freedom, they are effectively rejecting the broader definition of liberty. Second, they identify with the wrong cause. While the sense of detachment is more likely to be a consequence of the market inequality where no single entity has control over, they blame specific groups (like liberals and rich people). Third, they took the wrong target. While the anger is directed toward the government and rich people, those who suffered from their anger are the neighbors and friends who have close interactions with these people.
Building from here, Adorno proposed that to prevent future prosecution from one group to another, we should focus more on the skills. The most important part is to teach people to engage in self-reflection and to be able to interpret the received messages. So contradicting to what I proposed in my previous op-eds on how to communicate information and how to make the messages convincing, the focus is switched to teaching people how to be critical (especially on their own prejudices) and how to how to give and feel love. One specific sentence I want to highlight from Adorno’s paper: “To do this education must transform itself into sociology, that is, it must teach about the societal play of forces that operates beneath the surface of political forms. One must submit to critical treatment—to provide just one model—such a respectable concept as that of ‘reason of state’; in placing the right of the state over that of its members, the horror is potentially already posited.”
Additionally, one other thing that I want to point out is that awareness had already been raised for our “coldness”. In my previous responses to other people, I expressed my belief on the idea that the flip side of the devastating results we observe today is the increasing awareness of the existing problems (as exaggerated by the pandemic). Remember that the lack of belongingness and the sense of “coldness” both reside in the first stage of people’s psychology. So the reduction of the “coldness” can also be a resolution for us, and I do think it will be a viable solution.
Comments & Responses
Comment #1
By Roman Friedman
Hi Doris,
First of all, I'm glad that you're introducing Adorno here. I work with Adorno myself and this essay in particular in my dissertation (although in a bit of a different context that is not as relevant here). Second, I think it's interesting that you're using Adorno, since I believe somewhere in this essay he says that it is foolish to appeal to "eternal values" for solutions. In previous posts you have spoken frequently of the value of "truth," and this strikes me as something that Adorno would consider as one such misguided eternal value. But that isn't what you're talking about in this particular post, so I will move on.
I think you do a good job summarizing the irony of Adorno's views here, his relationship to Marxism, fascism, and psychoanalytic theory. And as you write above, Adorno describes modern man as alienated from his society, from his work, and even from himself. In his alienation, in this "coldness" of modernity, he winds up ironically becoming a mechanistic pawn in a populist or fascist regime. But this seems to raise a problem, and one that is perhaps relevant to your post and to this moment in time. It's dangerous to live in coldness, but "social bonds" are also dangerous because they lead to fascism (not Adorno's words, but they lead to in-groups and out-groups, and hence to Auschwitz). How is it possible then to fix the coldness but to do so without creating dangerous social bonds? This seems relevant today, given our intense polarization. Adorno's somewhat vague answer is "love." But what exactly is this "love"? He spends a good deal of time saying what it is not, but is much more vague on what it is? Even worse, given this is an essay on education, he states that love cannot be taught, preached, or even mediated in a student-teacher relationship because then it would be a command and hence wouldn't be love, it would just be more fascism. So what are we to do? What exactly is the purpose of education in the present? I can imagine that if Adorno came back and witnessed what was happening politically today he would say that this "premier demand upon all education" has not only not been achieved but is headed in the wrong direction. What do you think? And how should we educate citizens? This question is related to a later point below.
Moving on, you write: "Given that the ideology is internally developed, in trying to find a potential solution, then, the emphasis should be placed on how to eradicate the underlying psychology." I think there is a more relevant article from Adorno on this topic, The Meaning of Working Through the Past. It is also on anti-semitism (though it was written a bit earlier than his education essay), and also a (relatively) simple short read (for Adorno at least). I have attached it here. As you have already alluded to, Adorno is a fan of Freud. One of the things he seems to suggest in this essay is that curing people of their denial and repression is quite a difficult if not an impossible task. Education and schooling will only reach and influence the sort of people who are already inclined to listen to the sort of message you want to provide. (This relates to our ongoing public health messaging discussion). Of course, that doesn't mean Adorno is correct (and I think he is often full of contradictions, as above), but it is an interesting essay to read if you have time one day.
Finally, I want to highlight this: "Building from here, Adorno proposed that to prevent future prosecution from one group to another, we should focus more on the skills. The most important part is to teach people to engage in self-reflection and to be able to interpret the received messages." What does it mean to be self-reflective? What are these critical thinking skills? After all, this implies that the Nazis weren't self-reflective. This makes me think of Hannah Arendt, who took a very different interpretation of the Holocaust than Adorno. In case you have not heard of her, she was a philosopher who went to Israel to witness the trial of Eichmann, wrote about it for the New Yorker (eventually published into a book), where she famously coined the term "the banality of evil." At one point she describes that the Nazi party actually did not want murderers or sadists in the concentration camps, they took great effort to make sure regular people were running them. So the question was, how does one get those people to kill. She writes that the solution "was very simple and probably very effective; it consisted in turning these instincts around, as it were, in directing them toward the self. So that instead of saying: What horrible things I did to people!, the murderers would be able to say: What horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulder." The point is that for Arendt (and for Adorno too in various parts of his work) the ideal of self-reflection can be manipulated by ideology as well. Indeed, the Nazis were quite self-reflective, just not in the way we want. Self-reflection is no cure if in your self-reflection you think you are doing something for a good cause (e.g. the killing of others is for the sake of preordained historical progress). This is why for even Adorno self-reflection is not enough, and he alludes at one point to the bigger problem: a lack of historical consciousness and a blindness to one's own conditionedness (ironically I think a term most frequently associated with the philosopher Heidegger, who was a Nazi sympathizer). Put another way, one's ideology and beliefs precede self-reflection, and they precede arguments about mask-wearing and freedom. If that is true, is it ever possible to reach someone through education? Through argument? (The second essay I attached adds another question: if you can change someone's opinion but to do so you have to use the tools of fascism that you're fighting against, should you?)
-Roman
Response #1
Hi Roman! Thank you for pointing out these questions to me!
I agree with you that Adorno is being a little vague in the point that “love” is the solution. If I were to characterize my understanding of his point, I would use the word “respect” or “understanding”. I think by “love” Adorno means a general and non-discriminative compassion of others, and it is not reserved exclusively for the in-group members. The very subject of love should be the out-group members (the definition of in-group members entails that they are loved by each other). It is more of creating a social bond with the out-group members through love. I don’t think Adorno’s concept of “love” will be the same love we have for family members or friends (as it would require a much more intimate relationship), but it would certainly include the ability to feel others. I also agree with Adorno that love cannot be taught since it is a rather vague concept. I would say that it is to be felt. The purpose of education should be to raise the awareness of people’s “coldness” and inability to love. Further steps can be taken once people are conscious of their “coldness”. I can give you a personal example here.
I entered college in August of 2017, and, if you recall the news back then, that’s a couple of months after the death of Yingying Zhang. Over the summer our university hosted a couple of overseas orientation sessions in the major cities for incoming freshmen, which in part functioned as a virtue school tour for those who can’t physically visit the campus (teaching things like I-L-L and like green street has food). But in light of the tragedy, a large chunk of the session is also devoted to safety. Just to mention several points I remember: I was taught things like that I should avoid traveling alone in certain neighborhoods, that certain features of an individual can mark their danger, and that I need to know how do differentiate between a genuine and a fake help (as Christensen supposedly coped himself as a police officer). A friend of mine (a sophomore at that time) and my uncle in California also lectured me on very similar points. I appreciate this, and I think these points indeed have helped me to avoid some unnecessary troubles in my first year here. If you were to consider the safety education from another perspective, however, you may also say that I’ve put myself in the position of unconscious bias against some people (that some neighborhoods are bound to be dangerous, that people with this and that features are bound to be criminals, etc.). And I entered into such a mindset before I was in the US, before I actually meet any of them.
Now, since I don’t have a second home in the US, I’ve spent my college years on campus, with my in-group members (college students and other talented people). I’ve done several community services in these years, but with these experiences I really just vaguely got the idea that there are “problems”, without understanding what exactly the problem is. Again and again and again, I’ve been hitting on the point that one positive thing about the pandemic is that it opens up the chance for us to face the existing issues. To be honest, this point is derived from my personal reflection. The pandemic provided me with the opportunity which led, or even pushed, me to face directly the out-group member’s struggles. Prior to this March I cannot believe that some people have no access to devices to support their online learnings. This pandemic certainly changed me in a quite radical way. I’ve started to increase my awareness of the issues presented in society, and I’ve started to pay attention to the underlying meanings of the issues. I admit that there are more works to be done for me to truly “love” my out-group members, but I think at this point I can say that I will respect their situation, that at least I can refrain from my “coldness” toward their struggles.
Move on to your second question. I am no expert on Adorno as you do, but with the way I understand it, Adorno’s “self-reflection” is directed specifically toward his notion of “love”——both in the sense that “I can love others” and that “I can be loved by others.” So for the example you presented, if the Nazis don’t say “what horrible thing I did,” whatever reflections they have to justify their actions are not “self-reflections”. And again, I think this self-reflection can be achieved through raising awareness through education. In my example, my educator is the pandemic, which promoted me to change my coldness.
Further, I agree with you that one’s ideologies can distort such an awareness. But I still think that it is possible to reach people through education. You asked if we can reach people through arguments in education, and I’m not sure on this point. Despite his vagueness in several topics, Adorno clearly objected the idea of promoting collective thinking through education. Using arguments in education can just be another effort to enter people into another collection, or even fascism. However, I think we can reach people through appellation in education. Despite their approaches, some of the QAnon believers kidnapped their kids to protect the younger generation, the anti-mask people stood up to protect the freedom of communication, and the Nazis, as you mentioned, did not want murderers in the concentration camps. I think what went wrong here is their approach, less so is their humanity in its entirety. The fundamental principle of their operation does not exclude love completely, and they are not necessarily selfish (they have a cause, but take a wrong approach). As influenced by their approach, their love is very limited (reserved only to their in-group members), but it exists. On the other hand, the flip side of this limited love is their limitation of feeling “loved” (I summarized this point in my op-ed). Adorno also mentioned that “The inability to identify with others [i.e. the coldness from others] was unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred in the midst of more or less civilized and innocent people.” I think everyone has the ability to love others and the desire to be loved by others (i.e. we are all capable of being self-reflective). Our awareness can be influenced by our approach and distorted by “a lack of historical consciousness and a blindness to one's own conditionedness” as you mentioned——but approaches, conditions, and one’s ideologies can change. What won't change is people’s internal capability and desire of love should be a perfect starting point for us. The appellations to these capabilities and desires should open up the possibility to reach people through education. I admit that it will be hard, but I don’t think it is altogether impossible :)
Doris