Bird Droppings from Estonia
What it is to be human: a polemic for the pandemic
By HILARY BIRD
Tartu, Estonia
Plague! Before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis in March 2020, I thought that plague was something that happened long ago or in books – think Black Death, Spanish Flu, Defoe, Poe, Camus, Mάrquez. Surely modern sanitation, knowledge of hygiene, public health laws and medicine had rendered plague obsolete in Europe? The shock that I felt is still reverberating and sure as eggs are eggs, I am not the only one. We don’t know much about Covid-19 but some things are clear – it’s infectious, there is no known cure and it can kill. Plague, now known as ‘pandemic,’ is back.

Infectious disease has afflicted Europeans since their arrival from Africa two million years ago but early sparse populations prevented extensive plague. Lethal epidemic diseases, says the University of California, emerged 11,000 years ago, after the introduction of agriculture and subsequent development of permanent settlements in Mesopotamia and other hubs. Enter malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, influenza, smallpox. The growth of our proximity to one another and subsequent liability to infection further accelerated after the Sumerians laid the first brick in the city of Eridu (modern Iraq) around 5400 BC. Now, in 2018, according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 55% of the world lives in urban areas - North America (82%), Latin and Central America (81%), Europe (74%) and Oceania (68%). This figure is expected to increase to 68% by 2050.

The earliest recorded pandemic, possibly typhoid, passed through Libya, Ethiopia and Egypt to Athens, Greece, in 430 B.C and killed two-thirds of the city. There have been many since. The Bubonic plague (known as ‘The Black Death’) moved west from Asia along the Silk Road and reached the Crimea in 1347 AD from whence it spread throughout Europe on ships. There have been seven pandemics during the last century killing around 150 million people globally. Its pointless to try to pin down a blame for plague, it has no respect for maps. Neither is relief in the form of a return to scattered rural communities likely. Urbanization has been on the increase for over 7,000 years and shows no sign of stopping. So, what is to be done?

Simon Marr, Ecological Economics researcher at the University of Surrey, UK, points out that a pandemic, like climate change, is only superficially a “natural” issue. Human behaviour is the major problem. People mix and spread infections in the home, the workplace and on transport. The imposition of quarantine, first used during the Black Death, is still the most effective action we have against the plague. But quarantine, now called ‘lock down,’ is placing pressure on a world economy defined by global supply chains, wages and productivity. Business needs supplies, services and customers. Business needs to make a profit to survive. But, if business can’t sell it makes no profit, which means no money for wages. Jobs are lost, customers buy less and the economy spirals into depression. Recession looms and there are calls for a return to status quo conditions (the ones that helped the illness spread) to prevent economic collapse.

So, what can be done to keep business afloat while protecting populations? Marr suggests three options to prevent market collapse. ‘State capitalism’ where government subsidizes business until the pandemic is over, an option based on the assumption that a pandemic is a short-term phenomenon. A system of ‘mutual aid’ based on self-support grass roots micro economic units organized by small groups. Finally, ‘state socialism’ where government pays workers direct with wages unrelated to any exchange value. State socialism would mean that the state would take over industries essential to life - the production of food, energy and shelter - and decide what consumer products should be available over and above the essentials. This third option is probably the only viable option for the prevention of economic collapse if business cannot be rescued by a combination of radical change in working practices (working at home, virtual business meetings, etc) and the kind of Keynesian fiscal policies being implemented now in Europe - making loans easier, printing money, etc.

The political ramifications of Marr’s models are complex. Any reception and implementation by European nations would certainly differ if the pandemic cannot be contained and ‘state capitalism’ cannot restore the status quo of pre-pandemic Europe. I live in Eastern Europe where the memory of authoritarian abuse committed in the name of socialism is still fresh - it’s difficult to envisage that state socialism would be welcome here, although elements of a socialist system – free education and affordable health care - are still in place. Further west, however, people like myself who grew up in a post WWII UK, remember a kinder version of socialism. We had free education and health care and, unlike Eastern Europe, we lived in a democracy. There are certainly elements of western society (and even some in the east) that may or would welcome the security that comes with state socialism rather than the chaotic and often socially inequitable machinations of the free market.

Marr suggests, and I agree, that the central political task anywhere in this time of crisis, irrespective of party affinities, is organizing around an ethic that values care and quality of life. Marr advocates that the form of governance best suited to the management of the pandemic (and society as a whole) is a blend of state socialism and mutual aid. A transparent and free democratic state controlled by elected representatives and a vigilant civil society could offset the perils of authoritarianism, manage a universal health system, protect the vulnerable from the whims of the market and support citizens to form and sustain mutual aid groups at grass roots level.

The road to hell, however, is paved with good intentions. The human race is wayward and we live in an age when wishful thinking and a desire for simplistic solutions based on prejudice rather than rationality seems to abound. But, when Pandora opened her box and let out all the evils of the world, one small, fragile creature remained inside – hope. And here I return to science. Biology shows us that unconditional altruism - a selfless concern for the welfare of other – exists in nature. The female Pacific salmon, for example, dies after spawning to provide food for her offspring. In 1972 the biological mathematician George R Price devised an equation (WΔZ = Cov(wi , zi ) which explains how acts of altruistic kindness as well as acts of selfishness are driven by ‘selfish genes’ pursuing their own interest in a quest for evolutionary survival.

Human altruism is an issue that has long puzzled scientists. In every society, humans make personal sacrifices for others with no expectation that this will be reciprocated. We donate to charity, for example, or care for sick, elderly and disabled people. Research shows, says James Elder‐Woodward in ‘Disability and Society’ (2009), that we have an in-built capacity in our DNA to help others, especially those close to us, for the benefit and future survival of our community. It was evolutionary biologist Samuel Bowles, of the Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico, USA, who coined the term “survival of the nicest” in 2004.

Human altruism, therefore, is a factor of no small importance in human development. Discussing Price’s equation, Andrew Marr (in the 2009 BBC TV series “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea”) concludes that: “It is not just science. What it drills down to is why we do what we do, and, therefore, who we are. You can even say; the meaning of what it is to be human.”

I leave you with a poem by the Estonian poet, Doris Kareva. Kareva emphasizes our fragility, our creativity, our capacity for kindness. And, at the end of the day aren’t all caring, sentient people – poets, scientists, administrators, politicians, artists, shopkeepers, miners, doctors, teachers, merchants, road sweepers, builders, black, white, yellow, young, old - seeking the answer to the same elusive conundrum, one amplified in times such as now when issues of who lives and who dies are paramount - “the meaning of what it is to be human”

Who are we?
An angel’s shadow?

A yearning, soul-searching cry to be one?

Each of us is a reed

full of marvelous melody played by the breath of God:

Be kind.

And the world will be kind to you.

HILARY BIRD
Tartu, Estonia






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