Do we want a dead life to keep death at bay?
By Wilfried Nelles
Does coronavirus bring death? Yes, it brings death – into our consciousness. The shock of being so drastically confronted with our own mortality has led to a virtual paralysis of life in order to avoid dying. In this way, the almost global lockdown inadvertently highlights something very fundamental: those who cannot or will not die cannot live! The price of the unconditional avoidance of death is the loss of life, of vitality. Corona shows us this. Can we see it?
Does Corona bring death? Yes, it brings death to us – into our consciousness. In the past it was among us and the dead rested in the cemetery (what a beautiful word!) in the middle of the village. Today it has been driven out. Corona is making it visible again, like so many other things that have been suppressed. Did you know – before Corona brought us the daily COVID-19 death toll – that over 50 million people die every year worldwide? Or 2,500 every day in Germany? You may have read the latter figure by now. But these are just numbers, abstract, they don’t touch us emotionally. With coronaviruses, they are illustrated, made visible, given names and faces, and described in highly emotional terms – “It’s like slowly suffocating. That’s scary. Who wants to suffocate slowly? And it’s happening in Milan, Madrid, Strasbourg and London. It’s different from the daily starvation in Africa, which is far away and we don’t have to be afraid of it. In Europe, and especially in America, we are dying less from malnutrition and more from the opposite: obesity. Is the coronavirus making something else visible? That we are all too fat?
Coronavirus as a mirror
There is no doubt that coronavirus is holding up a mirror to us. The whole earth has long been groaning under the burden of people and their excrement (plastic waste, nuclear waste and all the rest are nothing but the digestive products – in other words, the shit – of the modern world). The fact that it is the fat people who are dying first can certainly be taken as a symbol – it is too much for the earth. As I said, as a symbol; I do not believe in a deliberately acting agent called Earth or Nature. But it is a mirror. Corona comes from nature, viruses are the oldest inhabitants of the earth, our ancestors so to speak. The ‘shit virus’, as a friend of my wife called it, is pure nature.
This nature shows us that we are still nature. If we had already been removed from nature, as is the secret dream of modernity, a virus could not harm us. That is what it all boils down to, that is the essence of modernity: to be completely ’emancipated’ from nature. This is what it means to be an ‘autonomous individual’. This is the modern dream of freedom. But if we had completely mastered nature, both external and internal, our animal nature, or if we had completely emancipated ourselves from it, we would no longer be alive. We would be machines, our own creations, ruling over ourselves. Slaves of slaves, the undead dead from Dracula’s world of horror. This is modern freedom, conceived as autonomy.
How to lie with real numbers
This brings me back to death, and I’ll add a few more numbers. Every year, more than 800,000 people commit suicide in the world. That’s about 2,200 a day, 15,400 a week and about 65,000 a month. 600,000 die from drugs, 9.5 million from cancer. Corona is nowhere near that, especially if you count as COVID-19 deaths only those who actually died from the infection (e.g. from pneumonia, as is common with respiratory infections) and not from another serious illness made worse by a corona infection. Very few of those who commit suicide, or die of drugs or cancer, are likely to be over eighty, and for many of them the dying is no less difficult and ugly than for those whose dying and death is now served up to us daily and in great detail in the news.
There is nothing better for lying or misleading people than numbers and statistics. The simplest lie is to present statistics without the context in which they make sense. In 2018, a total of just under a million people died in Germany, or about 2,700 per day. The coronavirus has been with us since at least mid-February, i.e. 12 weeks = 84 days; assuming the same mortality rate for 2020 as for 2018, that makes a total of around 230,000 deaths. As more people die in winter than in summer, the number is likely to be at least 250,000. On 4 May, 6,861 of them had COVID-19 in addition to other serious illnesses.
Hamburg pathologist Klaus Püschel, who performs autopsies on all the people who die in the Hanseatic city (and has ignored a recommendation by the Robert Koch Institute not to do so, because he could become infected and it would be pointless anyway), says that all of them were already so ill before the infection that not a single one would have survived the year. Even if, as Püschel himself points out, this only applies to Hamburg and is not representative, it can still be concluded that those who died directly from the infection represent a very small proportion of these 6,861. But even if coronavirus had been the cause of 5,000 deaths, that would be just two (2) per cent of all deaths since mid-February. This means that the other 245,000 deaths are being ignored. One must ask oneself (or, if one is responsible, allow oneself to be asked) why almost the entire economic and social life is being shut down for this two per cent.
The answer will probably be ‘so that the two per cent do not become twenty, or 250,000 do not become 500,000’. The figures in Sweden do not support such a prognosis, but I do not want to get into a debate about how many victims can actually be attributed to the virus, nor do I want to relativise anything. Nor am I interested in whether the comparatively low number of deaths in Germany is the result of political measures or simply luck combined with a comparatively good health system by international standards. I just want to make it clear that something is coming to light here (in the case of coronavirus deaths, it is being brought into the spotlight and glaringly illuminated by the media) that is an everyday part of human life: dying and death. It happens everywhere, all the time. The coronavirus just makes it visible, and that shocks people because they have banished death from their everyday lives as far as possible. For modern people, it is something that should no longer happen.
Death is a scandal
Last autumn one of my aunts died at the age of 87. She had spent her last years in bed, ill. At the cemetery, I said to someone who was also in her eighties and had been very close to her: ‘Looking back, life passes in a flash. On the other hand, she had a really long life, so death is not a bad thing. I should have said, ‘Death was a relief and the best thing that could have happened to her’, but I didn’t want to shock him. What I said was already too much for a woman standing next to me. She looked at me in astonishment and said, ‘With today’s medicine, you’d think she could have lived a few more years. What she meant was that she should have lived longer. Just like the headline on the front page of the Bild newspaper that day: ‘Death is a scandal’. That sums it up very well; that is our attitude to death: it should no longer happen. That is why Google and others in Silicon Valley are investing billions in research to overcome death.
The shock of being so drastically confronted with our own mortality means that our entire lives are paralysed in order not to die. The almost global lockdown or shutdown – what does it mean? Shops closing? Standstill or ‘shutdown’? – unintentionally highlights something very fundamental: if you cannot or will not die, you cannot live! Social life has come to a virtual standstill because people want to avoid death at all costs. Death doesn’t care, the Grim Reaper just carries on and nobody writes about it because it’s not a coronavirus. But we pay a high price, the highest price: the price of the unconditional avoidance of death is the loss of life, of vitality. The coronavirus shows us this. Can we see it?
A dead life is better than dying alive?
I don’t want to argue against politics. In the end, governments can only do what the consciousness of the population allows them to do. They can manipulate that consciousness a little and for a short time in this or that direction, and they try very hard to do so, but in the end they only reflect it – even in the various forms of left-right or liberal-authoritarian politics. This is especially true of democracies, but even a country like China cannot be governed in the long term against the consciousness of its people (and in fact it is not, as I can say from my own experience after 15 years of psychological work in China and close encounters with several thousand people there). Even in a halfway functioning democracy, there is always a viable resonance between the actions of the government and the consciousness of the majority of the population. In the case of the coronavirus, this resonance is overwhelming. This is not the result of political manipulation – although the way the media report on coronavirus, which ‘experts’ are given a voice and which are not, or are even denigrated, may be highly manipulative – but a reflection of what people want. They would rather live a dead life than die alive.
Is that really what we want? The coronavirus gives us the opportunity to ask ourselves this question. I don’t mean a life without holidays, without big events, without big gatherings, without parties and celebrating until we drop – we can certainly do without that, or at least reduce it considerably. Then we would get more out of it, and it would bring us more joy. Just as we used to look forward to and enjoy the first strawberries or cherries of the season, because they weren’t available all year round. Or what a magical adventure it was when, at the age of 30, I flew to Thailand for the first time with my wife! After two more long-haul trips over the next two years, however, I realised that this could become a habit and become boring, so we made a conscious decision to embark on something else: a child.
So: I don’t mean all the modern pleasures, although I have never shunned pleasure in my life. I mean a life without closeness, without hugs, a life where you see the other person as a potential virus carrier rather than a human being. That’s what’s required at the moment, and it could be for a long time. I wonder what it does to a child to be taught that other people are dangerous and that you have to keep your distance from them; how much of that will be internalised by today’s children and tomorrow’s adults. Will they ever be able to hug another person innocently? If they are now programmed to practise social distancing and to constantly wash their hands, schools will become breeding grounds for neuroses for the next generation of adults. I have just read that a footballer, a player for Hertha BSC Berlin, has not yet understood anything and is completely irresponsible (that’s what it says!) – because he was happy to see his colleagues again and innocently shook their hands in greeting. He comes from Africa, where people are a bit different from us Germans. Now the poor guy is being dragged through the media as a fool or an incorrigible ignoramus.
The fact that almost everyone accepts this shows, among other things, how much we allow ourselves to be manipulated by images of horror, and how much most of us want to avoid facing the fact that we are all going to die, and that it is only through death that life gains its meaning and vitality. Do we want a dead life to keep death at bay? Not just coronavirus death, but ordinary death that we do not want to see or feel? Do we really want the dead life of pleasure to which we have become so accustomed? Must we have everything we have? How much baggage do we carry around with us, how much dullness is there in our activities and in our modern world of experience, in our busyness? Do I really want to live the way I live? Perhaps we should take seriously what Jesus said about this: Whoever wants to save his life will lose it. This man understood something about life. But the crowd shouted (just like today – see Boris Palmer and his Greens): ‘Crucify him! Are such statements only for the pulpit and not for real life?
What do I really want?
I deliberately use the first person here. We can (and should) ask ourselves this question as a society, but ‘society’ is always the other. That way you can stay on the outside, make your demands and not get your feet wet. No, you have to ask yourself all the questions that Corona makes visible, you have to say ‘I’. For example, more than half of those who die from COVID-19 who are not elderly are overweight (I say it plainly because the polite medical term ‘you are obese’ obscures what this is really about). I know that sounds harsh, and I also know that obesity is an addiction that people do not choose, like other addictions. Perhaps, as I argue in my book The World We Live In, it is even a collective disease. One thing is certain: a hundred years ago it was virtually non-existent. It is a phenomenon of modernity and affluent society (although it tends to affect the poor). But I also know from my practice that when you hide a disease or addiction behind a Latin (or English) name, you don’t see it and you don’t recognise the message it contains. That’s why I call it by its (German) name, like all diseases, even if it hurts some people.
But it’s not about overweight people, and I certainly don’t want to discriminate against them. Rather, I see something deeply symbolic about our modern lives. The question is: am I too fat? It doesn’t necessarily have to be body fat, but I can check whether my wardrobe is too big, for example. This is probably the case for most Germans. A few months ago I read that the average German buys more than 50 items of clothing a year. That includes every infant and every elderly person, so the number is probably well over a hundred for most people in between. Isn’t that a lot? In the same way, anyone could look at any other aspect of their life and ask: Do I really need this? Do I really want this? Does it make me happy or just fat?
We all need a shot across the bow from time to time to wake us up a bit. For me, Corona is such a shot, or rather a cannonball. It will undoubtedly destroy a lot, but without it we would simply carry on as before, never waking up from our modern dream that we can defeat death, control nature and shape life to our own liking if we just try hard enough, and that all this would then be a ‘successful life’ – unlike the violent upheavals we are currently experiencing. So far, however, there are few signs of this awakening – apart from football. Strangely enough, some of the much-maligned football officials (not FIFA or UEFA, of course), along with many club managers, coaches and even some players, are the first and so far only ones to at least think aloud that things cannot go on as they are, that professional football has become too ‘fat’ and should not return to pre-Corona conditions. Whether anything will come of it remains to be seen, but at least there are concrete ideas and suggestions on how to return to a more modest level and put the fun back into the game.
Otherwise, everyone is just waiting for everything to pick up again, for as many cars, flights, holidays, clothes, cosmetics, bicycles (preferably with batteries), food and luxury goods as possible to be bought and sold at any time, super-fresh from all over the world, preferably organically grown and fairly traded. Before Corona, Frankfurt airport had 1,400 (!) aircraft movements per day. With 18 hours of operation, that’s 75 take-offs and landings per hour, or one every 50 seconds. And that’s just one airport! We’ve got used to thinking that this is normal. But isn’t it actually quite extraordinary? Now everything has come to a standstill, but the intention is to return to the old way of life as soon as possible. The same goes for the cars on the scrapheap and the beaches where we can breathe again – everything should go back to the way it was as soon as possible. We don’t want to change our lifestyles, do we? Not even if we are against climate change. I fear it will take a lot of upheaval before anything more than cosmetic changes are made.
At least Corona could be an opportunity to question ourselves. Not what we are doing wrong, not where we should or must limit ourselves. That is all moralising and leads nowhere. But we can ask ourselves what is really important to us, what we really want. For example, I ask myself whether all my (almost always work-related) flights are really necessary. Asking myself this question doesn’t mean that I think about it a lot; I just let the question sink in. I know that the answer will come to me in time – usually only when I’ve forgotten the question. Then it’s not a question of giving up something (that doesn’t work anyway), but a clear, self-evident insight or spontaneous action.
One could also ask whether nature, in the form of the coronavirus, is telling us something about what it wants or what it will no longer tolerate. But to do that, we need to stop and think. In this respect, coronavirus is like any other disease: it always contains a message, it is always a call to look at ourselves and our lives and to listen to our inner voice. It is not a matter of deciphering the message so that you know what ‘the disease is trying to tell you’. In the end, this is just another way of maintaining control. No: first and foremost, every illness shows you that you are not in control of your life and that you are at the mercy of something else (life, nature, fate, or whatever you want to call it). When you really see this, it is the first step towards healing. What to do next will then become clear.
Pause
As I said, you need to pause. If you start doing things immediately, you cannot see or hear the message. Corona is a message for all of us, for all of humanity, because it affects us all. Not just one message, but many messages in one. But we will only perceive them if we allow ourselves to be moved by Corona and everything that happens, if we surrender. This includes not wanting to know immediately what it all means. At the moment people – whether they know anything or not – are spitting out more opinions into the ether than viruses. This is the defence against being moved, the defence against any change that might come as a result of Corona. All those who think they know what to do now cannot hear the message. To hear it, you have to be quiet.
Last night I thought of Fritz, a former friend of my wife’s. They studied together and travelled every day with two other friends from Bonn to Cologne to attend the University of Applied Sciences. Fritz was gay and a hedonist who enjoyed life. Once, after we had drunk a lot of wine at our house, he and one of the two women who had been with us spent the night in our living room, sleeping on the rather large sofa. During the night I had to go to the toilet and to my surprise – women had never been sexually interesting to Fritz – I heard very distinct noises coming from the living room. At breakfast I asked Fritz how his night had been and he said with a grin: As far as I’m concerned, there could be a lot more genders” (Fritz was unfortunately born a bit too early, because back then, unlike today, there were only two genders).
A few years later, when we were no longer living in Bonn, we heard that Fritz was HIV-positive. At that time it was a death sentence. In a few years, like everyone you knew, AIDS would break out, and then death was only a matter of time, and a very short one at that. And dying was miserable. A good year later, Fritz took another test – it was negative. The first test had been wrong. Because of that false test, he had lived under the threat of death for a year and must have suffered greatly.
A scandal, you might say. But one that probably saved Fritz’s life. Until then, he had been visiting Cologne’s gay bars at least once a month, having random sex with strangers, almost always involving drugs. Now that was over; the false test had forced him to change his life.
Even today, with COVID-19, the tests and all the figures and diagnoses being circulated are anything but reliable. Much of it smacks of scandal, and many medical experts are being denounced for expressing uncomfortable opinions and interpretations of the available data. But it is almost inevitable that politicians will rely on certain experts and dismiss or simply ignore opposing voices as irrelevant or even wrong, without a single politician (or any other layperson) being able to make a professional judgement about what is right. Even if a politician listens to all the experts, they do not know what is right. They have to make decisions, and they do so in uncertainty. This time, decisions had to be made very quickly, and it is only human to block out anything that challenges the chosen path. Every psychology student learns this; it is called ‘cognitive dissonance’ and everyone is subject to it, including all critics. Everyone initially blocks out anything that does not suit them. The debate about what is right is necessary, but it is also futile, because no one knows – except in retrospect.
As someone who is affected – and we are all affected in some way – you can just take it as it is. Whether I like it or not, whether I think it makes sense or not, whether I suffer from it or not: I am exposed to it all. That doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything and accept everything. I can well imagine that there may be rules that I will not obey. But no one knows whether the lockdown, with all its foreseeable negative consequences, might not also have its good points. The only way to find out is to go along with it and accept it. Fritz is a good example. We never know what an event will mean for our future. You can take everything, from the virus itself to the political measures taken to contain it, as what life is throwing at you at the moment and see what it does to you and whether it opens up perspectives you would never have thought of before.
Personally, it’s good for me in that sense. I have to give up a big trip to Asia and several trips to other European countries, which always include meetings with friends in addition to my fulfilling work, and I lose a lot of money. The psychological institute I run together with one of my two sons, where we normally run a training or self-awareness course every weekend, has been closed since mid-March until further notice. Since then I have done almost nothing. I have no daily or even weekly schedule, but I am busy all day, and a lot of creative things are happening – or I am clearing out cupboards. I just expose myself to the situation as it is and learn a lot about myself in the process. For example, I realised how much I have been living and working at full throttle for the last 10 to 15 years. I was quite relaxed and enjoyed it very much, but now I realise how good it is for me to take a real break, without giving a single thought to when things will go on and what needs to be done.
I have realised something very important: the modern belief that we are responsible for our lives, that we can (and must) create and realise them according to our own ideas, is a myth, a quasi-religious belief that has nothing to do with reality. I know that I am not the creator and maker of my life. A tiny virus infects a person somewhere in Asia and brings the whole world to a standstill. It just happened, no one did it. It’s the same with my life: a tiny sperm, one of countless millions ejaculated by my father, was taken up by one of my mother’s eggs. It became all that I am, all by itself. And this morning, as I have done every morning for almost 72 years, I just woke up, all by myself. That is life. To quote Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, ‘a wheel that rolls by itself’. So I’m just going to wait and see what happens. And I won’t deny myself the joy of holding my grandchild on my lap and letting her cuddle with me, nor will I allow anyone to deny me that joy. I’ve survived this far – and if things turn out differently, it will have been worth it.
Marmagen (Eifel), 5th May 2020
Copyright: Wilfried Nelles
About the author
Dr Wilfried Nelles runs the Nelles Institute for Phenomenological Psychology and Life Integration in Nettersheim, Germany, together with his son Malte. There are other Nelles Institutes in Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Romania and China. Nelles is the author of many books, which have been translated into ten languages. His new book, The World We Live In. Consciousness and the Path of the Soul” will be published on 20 May by Innenwelt Verlag, Cologne.
