(cross-post from The Lifeboat News where I’ve been putting most of my political commentary lately)
It’s revealing how quickly and automatically leaders and some people who should know better have been talking about the response to Covid-19 in terms of warfare. ‘Fight’ the virus, ‘win the war’, health workers ‘on the front line’, global ‘struggle’ not seen since WW2 etc etc. Even the focus on how health services are lacking in equipment in some ways mirrors the outrage over under-equipped militaries fighting foreign wars: no questioning of the root causes of why the ‘battle’ is necessary in the first place, or whether a military response is preferable or even effective in the long term. Symptoms are furiously addressed; underlying factors driving the emergence of those symptoms are ignored, so the next time round they get worse. And worse. And worse.
For anyone who has read their Quinn it’s clear that this war footing is a default of the dominant culture. Being based on the domestication of a few key plant and animal species for 10-12,000 years has set us up to react aggressively to the point of total ecocide against any creature, ‘weed’, ‘pest’ or pathogen that shows itself to undermine or get in the way of the supremacy and expansion of the human & domesticate populations. This is a violation of what Quinn described as the ‘law of limited competition’:
You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war.
[…]
“Funny. . . . This is considered almost holy work by farmers and ranchers. Kill off everything you can’t eat. Kill off anything that eats what you eat. Kill off anything that doesn’t feed what you eat.”
“It is holy work, in Taker culture. The more competitors you destroy, the more humans you can bring into the world, and that makes it just about the holiest work there is. Once you exempt yourself from the law of limited competition, everything in the world except your food and the food of your food becomes an enemy to be exterminated.”
[…]
You end up with a community in which diversity is progressively destroyed in order to support the expansion of a single species.” – http://www.geocities.ws/friendofishmael/ishmael/eight.html
I think the history of medical responses to disease, especially in the case of pandemics but also in the case of other more chronic ‘diseases of civilisation‘, has been a case of wanting to have your cake and eat it. All the factors laying the ground for fast spreading, high lethality pathogens – proximity to livestock, high density populations, globalised trade networks, destruction of ecosystems etc. – remain unaddressed (because ‘the economy, stupid’) and well-meaning researchers put themselves to work to try & deal with the inevitable consequences of the civilised way of life. Of course this then drops the mortality rate and paves the way for yet more population growth, intensity of agriculture & increased capacity for economic growth, and the next generation of researchers are left to fight increasingly potent responses for ever diminishing returns until what they’re doing no longer has a measurable effect (eg: bacterial resistance to antibiotics). It’s all part of the 10,000 year War Effort, but it’s a war we’re guaranteed to lose because we’re really fighting the blowback from our own activities. As Quinn puts it:
If [the Takers] refuse to live under the law, then they simply won’t live. You might say that this is one of the law’s basic operations: Those who threaten the stability of the community by defying the law automatically eliminate themselves.”
“The Takers will never accept that.”
“Acceptance has nothing to do with it. You may as well talk about a man stepping off the edge of a cliff not accepting the effects of gravity. The Takers are in the process of eliminating themselves, and when they’ve done so, the stability of the community will be restored and the damage you’ve done can begin to be repaired.” (ibid.)
It should be clear that we need to end this war, on all levels across the culture, or failing that help to bring about such a total defeat that it becomes impossible for the civilised to pick up their weapons afterwards. Covid-19 has given us a taste of what that might look like.
Related articles:
Covid-19: The Pathologies of Civilization
The Case Against Waging ‘War’ on the Coronavirus
Destruction of habitat and loss of biodiversity are creating the perfect conditions for diseases like Covid-19 to emerge
Footage (if you can bear to watch it) of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and even sober medical officials talking explicitly in warfare terminology, passed on faithfully by the mass media as always.
Frequently Found Growing On Disturbed Ground 
April 21, 2020 at 12:00 am |
Another Dan Quinn passage I could have quoted which addresses pathogens specifically, in terms of the inter-species war that civilisation has been fighting all this time:
‘This brings me to the other kind of species we’re are war with–the small, rapidly-breeding species. Species of this type become our enemies for one of three reasons: they invade our fields and eat our food, they invade our houses and make us nervous, or they invade our bodies and make us ill. These are all pretty obvious. The first type are all the various insects and funguses that feed on our crops. The second type are creatures like cockroaches, fleas, and termites. The third type are bacteria and viruses.
The technological strategy we’ve pursued in our dealings with these small, fast-breeding creatures has been remarkably obtuse. Very simply, all too often we’ve acted as though we could make these creatures extinct down to the very last member, the way we might do with elephants or pandas. All too often we’ve acted as though the more we killed, the closer we came to making them extinct. But of course this constitutes a fundamental misunderstanding of biological realities.
What we’ve done in actual fact is make ourselves the chief agent of natural selection in these enemy species. Our insecticide hasn’t killed off every last member of the targeted species in a given field. It’s killed off the 80% that are most susceptible to the deadly effect of the insecticide, leaving alive as breeding stock for the next generation the 20% that was less susceptible. Generation after generation, we are in effect PRODUCING a population of insects more and more resistant to our insecticides. If we WANTED to produce such insects, this would be exactly the way to go about it!
In the same way, I’m afraid, we’re systematically developing household pests that are more and more resistant to the insecticides we use against them.
The misguidedness of our technological strategy toward the small and fast-breeding is even more evident–and more disturbing!–when it comes to human disease organisms. In areas of the world where antibiotics are used more freely and are often available without prescription, resistant “super-bugs” are turning up with alarming frequency. Bacteria resistant to penicillin have emerged in Africa. In France and Britain, Enterococcus, a bacterium that causes blood infections, became resistant to vancomycin in the late 1980s. Atlanta hospitals recently came across a deadly staph germ that is only one step away from becoming completely immune to what is now the last-resort antibiotic against it. A strain of plague has appeared in Madagascar that is immune to standard antibiotics.
It must be kept in mind that this is nothing remotely like “nature fighting back.” This is merely nature operating exactly the way we know it operates, the way it has been operating here for some three and a half billion years. As I say, if we WANTED to produce a bacterium resistant to an antibiotic, this is exactly how we would proceed. We would kill off as many as we could from a population of bacteria and let the survivors produce a next generation. Then we’d kill off as many of that generation as we could and then let the survivors produce a next generation. And so on. Eventually, sure enough, we would produce a generation that was totally impervious to our antibiotic–and that’s what we’re doing globally.’
From the 1997 speech, ‘Technology and the other war’ – https://www.ishmael.org/daniel-quinn/essays/technology-the-other-war/
I
April 21, 2020 at 9:21 am |
For the record, and in case people don’t want the trauma of watching video of our Glorious Leaders here are the basics of what they said:
*****
https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/trump-declares-himself-a-wartime-president-and-predicts-total-victory-in-defeating-invisible-enemy/
‘In a lengthy Wednesday press conference on the coronavirus President Donald Trump said he considers himself a “wartime president” and predicted America will have “total victory” in defeating the “invisible enemy,” which is the virus.
“I look at it – I view it as, a, in a sense as a wartime president,” said Trump, huddled closely with his Vice President and various members of his Coronavirus Task Force. “It’s a very tough situation, you have to do things, you have to close parts of an economy that six weeks ago were the best they’ve ever been. We had the best economy we’ve ever had,” Trump added, falsely.
“Then one day you have to close it down in order to defeat this enemy. But we’re doing it and we’re doing it well,” he said, in a series of remarks that were often focused on praising himself while ignoring the human loss of health and life.
“The American people have been incredible, for the most part they’ve been really incredible.”
Trump started his remarks by saying, “I would like to begin by announcing some important developments in our war against the Chinese virus,” which caused outrage among many on social media for its racism.
Minutes later, Trump launched into an address that sounded as if it were plucked from World War II.
“Now it’s our time. We must sacrifice together because we are all in this together, and we will come through together. It’s the invisible enemy. That’s always the toughest enemy, the invisible enemy,” Trump told reporters.
“But we are going to defeat the invisible enemy. I think we are going to do it even faster than we thought, and it’ll be a complete victory. It’ll be a total victory,” he promised, again ignoring the human cost of health and lives.
*****
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/17/enemy-deadly-boris-johnson-invokes-wartime-language-coronavirus
‘This enemy can be deadly’: Boris Johnson invokes wartime language
PM vows to ‘win the fight’ and ‘beat the enemy’ as coronavirus crisis in UK shifts up a gear
The second daily coronavirus press conference was, Boris Johnson said, primarily focused on the government’s plans to protect the economy against the expected hit. But, woven throughout his and the chancellor’s address, was language designed to prepare the country for the prospect that the fight against the coronavirus would require putting the country a wartime footing.
The prime minister said:
This is a disease that is so dangerous and so infectious that without drastic measures to check its progress it would overwhelm any health system in the world. I have used the Italian health system, it is excellent, and the problem is not the health system, it’s the numbers of sufferance.
That is why we announced the steps yesterday that we did – advising against all unnecessary contact – steps that are unprecedented since world war two.
We must act like any wartime government and do whatever it takes to support our economy. That’s the main purpose of this press conference this afternoon.
Yes this enemy can be deadly, but it is also beatable – and we know how to beat it and we know that if as a country we follow the scientific advice that is now being given we know that we will beat it.
And however tough the months ahead we have the resolve and the resources to win the fight.
His tone was echoed by the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, who said:
The coronavirus pandemic is a public health emergency but it is also an economic emergency. We have never in peacetime faced an economic fight like this one.
*****
and Dr Richard Hatchett, CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations interviewed by Cathy Newman on C4 news:
(from around 10:55)
RH: I don’t think it’s a crazy analogy to compare this to world war two. The British people have faced much greater threats, and they have come together as a people against much greater threats. I think the British people, if they came to understand that this is something where responsibility sits with everyone, I think the British people could accomplish what Singapore and Hong Kong have accomplished.
CN: Blitz spirit?
RH: Blitz spirit, absolutely […] WHO is using those kinds of terms and talking about what is required to mobilise people. They’re using metaphors that are derived from war, and it’s because they have seen what this virus is capable of doing […] I don’t think comparing this to a war, or even to the blitz spirit, I think that’s an appropriate analogy, I think that’s the mindset that people need to get into.
*****
Like it says in Ishmael, once you’ve had your eyes opened to this stuff you start to notice it everywhere and are astonished that other people fail to see through it immediately.
I
May 8, 2020 at 8:59 pm |
Right on cue a whole panorama documentary from the BBC talking about the government’s ‘failure to protect the NHS’* particularly focusing on the lack of PPE provision:
The key quote supplied by one of the nurses, following through on the govt’s analogy:
‘We’ve been put on the “front line”, to use government terminology, but without frontline protection. That we’ve been kindof sent to battle without any of the resources we need to fight it.’ (used in the opening segment and in full around 7.55)
(It’s a surprisingly good piece of journalism otherwise.)
Compare to this tragicomic article from 2014: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25803487
‘UK troops leave Afghan mission with better equipment
British troops will end their combat mission in Afghanistan this year.
All UK combat operations are due to finish by the end of 2014, with responsibility transferred to Afghan forces.
It’s still unclear as to what they’ll have achieved, but one thing is certain – they leave much better equipped than when they first arrived. …’
I remember the lack of proper equipment for the armed forces was ten times the scandal, at least in the press, than the decision to send those forces out in the first place. Never mind that said equipment would be used to subjugate and kill people resisting the foreign invasion & occupation of their country which should never have happened in the first place…
I
* – something always smells funny when the word ‘failure’ gets thrown about – more often than not the real goal was something entirely different which was actually quite successful, eg: the ‘failure’ to spread peace & democracy in Iraq which successfully gained control of the country’s oil wealth. In this case funding cuts to the NHS, outsourcing contracts to private companies (aka privatisation), insertion of the profit motive and corporate-style management provided a cash cow for thousands of vulture capitalists. They were entirely successful in their goals. Preparation for a future pandemic or stockpiling necessary equipment wasn’t part of that so it can’t be called a ‘failure’. In order to fail at something you have to be trying to accomplish it in the first place!