Covid-19: Shared Meaning and Future

Abstract:

This creative writing uses Covid-19 to present two principal characteristics of symbolic interactionism. The first feature is SI’s assumption of human empathy. That is, people have the ability to understand other’s stand point. The second is the capacity of SI to link the macro and micro social phenomena.

          At around 9am on the last day of March 2020, I looked out of my window, a thick layer of frost had collected on my car. “The nature is indeed revengeful,” I sighed. The unseasonal snow and frost in the past couple of weeks in Central Washington did not help a bit with the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet, I could not help hoping and believing: the nature would eventually understand our pain when we retreated into our homes. Our withdraw from the invasion of the nature was a friendly gesture to it: we were one and we understood your suffering.

          In the midst of this first global public health event, I am as optimistic as everyone in the field of symbolic interactionism (SI) with regard to the human ability to empathize. I am probably a little more adventurous than many others to entertain the idea a shared meaning of life can be reached between human being and the nature. But of course, sociology, as a discipline, has always included the nature in our standpoint of collectivity. And I firmly believe SI does include such a conversation as we humans are embedded in the nature, which provides everything material and spiritual we need in life. What is more important than that?

          Just one month ahead of other countries, China was there in the dialogue with the worst of the nature in the form of the novel coronavirus. With that encounter came a changed way of life that impacted 1.5 billion people. It was a forced talk, but a talk that was necessary for the life as we knew it to continue. In pictures taken from the space, the rest of the world saw the end result of that conversation: a larger breathing room for the nature free from human activity. Now the rest of the world is forced to give the nature that space. As bizarre as it may sound, the pause in human industrial activity strikes a mutual understanding between humans and the nature. In a sense, it is a victory for both.

          If a sociological lens gives me the language to extend SI’s approach to shared meaning, SI does sociology a favor by linking individuals with the society. As sociologists, we often talk at extremely abstract levels such as race, gender, and class. Yet, social reality in our personal space never ceases to amaze us with human kindness as well as misbehavior. SI stitches together everyday life and abstracts. Interestingly, the most SI oriented remarks are from a friend who probably is not a trained scholar in the field. She said, “your family, your community, your country are the same people.” Artificially separating the macro from the micro can only produce misunderstanding of the real world we live in.

          The connection between the personal and collective is the reality we live in during this pandemic attack. The short time period since December 2019 witnesses individuals around the world act on their own and/or organized initiatives to help alleviate the damage, done by the pandemic to so many important aspects of our society: human life and mental health, economy, security, culture, education, and global cooperation. The list goes on. People living in epicenters of the pandemic volunteer at the expense of their own lives and resources for their families, communities, and countries. These are people from all most often used sociological categories such as race, gender, class, nationality, educational level, and so on. These people occupy all possible combinations of the above attributes. This small time span also shows how each person’s behavior is amplified in the spread of the virus from individuals to families, communities, countries, and now the planet, as 90% of the countries and regions in the world are living in the shadow of the disease. Some people add to the damage brought by the pandemic to profit themselves without discrimination. Not surprisingly, these individuals also share the same classifications and combinations of these characteristics. Indeed, individual and society depend on each other.

          At this point, we still do not know the outcome of the pandemic globally. However, some countries such as China, Japan, and South Korea seem to have successfully contained the virus. The joint effort of people in those countries and the world has yielded the first light of hope. Or rather, humanity has managed to survive.           

          I can hear the cynics: This pandemic is socially constructed by the overreaction of societies. I do not know how many lost lives can lend legitimacy to global coordination to end this tragedy. One? Ten? One hundred? Ten thousand? One hundred thousand? One million? Or more? I do know no one wants to be the human sacrifice behind that number. I also know at the current scale of damage the pandemic is causing the world, only concerted effort from all can stop its momentum as soon as we can.

          As it stands, this piece is hardly a personal account or an empirical paper. Rather, it is a summary and expansion of the principles of SI thanks to the unique challenges posed by the pandemic.    

          Let’s go back to the image of the space. It looks so inviting, so conquerable. But what is also possible is that we humans are crushed before take-off. This micro-organism we read in news every day shows that we are not yet allowed to be free from vulnerability. A universe we are dependent on can hardly tolerate an alien force we have learned to become to destroy it.

          Another space-related image comes to my mind as I am exhausting what I would like to say: a spaceship, ready to be ejected. This is from a television program I watched more than two decades ago. The message echoed by the anchor was: this spaceship is amazing, but it is just the tip of an ice burg of human capability. That ice burg itself was never able to emerge on the surface of the sea because of human internal conflicts. 

          To conclude, we need the optimism in human empathy symbolic interactionism so profusely provides. The capacity to bridge the micro and macro SI possesses is also keenly needed.

          Woops, I should not have written this piece. Covid-19 never happened. Sorry, it is a different day now. Happy April Fool’s Day!