On the Politics of Crises
By: Damian Walsh
Tags: Crisis, Political Science, Politics, Environment, Pandemic

[In the summer of 2020, amidst the Coronavirus (SARS-Cov-2) pandemic, I sat down to write a brief reflection on the state of political science, and what we can learn about the nature of politics and how humanity responds to crises. Now, almost one year later, I’m sharing it outside of my immediate social circles, and I hope that it can be insightful both as a lens into my mindset during the early stages of the pandemic as well as for the further study and understanding of political institutions.]

“Chaos” Photograph by Damian Walsh (North Coventry, PA)

Politics is often seen as a game of sorts, wherein the players seek to create conditions for legislation to pass, garner support, and ultimately earn a favorable outcome. The premise of political science is that these conditions can be studied, replicated, and basic principles understood from them. This lulls the study of politics itself into a sort of rhythmic haze. That’s not an inherently bad thing, on some level it means that our understanding of systems is correct — or at the very least seems to track reality. Pain can break this monotony, and shine an awful light on the fragile or depraved nature of our politics.

Unfortunately, we are living through a time of pain, and some of these fragile institutions are beginning to buckle. The ongoing pandemic raises plenty of questions about what is of value in life and politics. However for the sake of clarity it might be prudent to look at the decline of civilizations more broadly first before focusing in on the steps needed to ameliorate the risk of decline domestically.

There’s a historical argument to be made that humanity has a track record of failing to rise to the challenges that threaten civilizations. Noted historian Jared Diamond perhaps made this point most presciently in his essay, “The Last Americans: Environmental Collapse and the End of Civilization.” In the essay, Diamond lays out examples of societies in the past that failed to perceive environmental threats to their existence, and ultimately led to their collapse. He demonstrates the architectonic nature of the rise and fall of civilizations, and effectively argues that due to the nature of a society’s politics, they often fail to act in a way that preserves them from these non-human threats. If we apply this rationale to the ongoing pandemic, then it becomes clear that we too were unprepared to overcome a threat created by nature.

It can be easy to assume that humanity is insulated from nature as a product of organized civilization and modernity, but it is important to remember that human activity is indelibly tied to global ecology. While studying the novel coronavirus this spring in a Georgetown class titled, “Understanding Extinction,” we came across an article in Scientific American about the connection between habitat loss and the emergence of the novel coronavirus. The article, written by journalist John Vidal, explains that by disrupting pristine habitats, and driving humans into closer contact with weakened animal populations the chance of zoonotic disease transmission increases.

Perhaps we might take a lesson from Albert Camus’ The Plague here. At the end of the story, the protagonist — Rieux — is looking out over the city of Oran as things begin to appear normal and cheerful again after the plague seems to have tapered off. Camus offers us this,

“He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.”

That is to say, we live under these guises of normalcy and happiness until the reality of our frailty catches up with us. There will always be another plague.

As Camus seems to imply here, we won’t despair over this. Likely, we will remain just ignorant enough to fool ourselves into contentment. That point may be upsetting, and provoke a defensive response. Certainly, I would not pretend to argue that there is no such thing as being truly happy or content — there is. However, Camus’ point seems to dovetail nicely with Diamond’s; for some reason or another humanity fails to acknowledge and prepare for these crises. We know, on some level or another, that there will come a time when we will face these challenges, but humanity has consistently fallen into the trap of complacency. As the days continue to creep by, under lockdowns and voluntary isolation, it can be tempting to long for “normalcy” as some great departure from the suffering of today. While that may be true to some extent, normalcy was tenuous, riddled with the invisible fractures that splintered apart under the weight of this pandemic.

At this point it might sound as if we are all just doomed, and nihilism is meant to take over as humanity decays into anarchy. It very well may. However, that’s not fated to happen. There are ways to predict, prepare, and even prevent many of these natural crises that civilizations have failed to overcome previously. I dwell on this because humanity is facing down an environmental crisis unlike any in prior history. We know it is coming, for some places it’s already here, and given the nature of climate change we know that its pace will only accelerate. The question becomes whether modern empires will become a case study or a counterpoint to Diamond’s argument.

As far as an answer to that question, there is at least some framework by which we can judge a given political system’s ability to deal with these issues. The basis of this framework might be called the drive, or ethos as others have called it, of a sociopolitical system. The core drive of a political system determines how both individuals and political actors engage with the system. Politics seems to be driven by necessity. That may be why our responses to crises tend to be reactive rather than proactive.

If we are to look ahead to the looming climate crisis, with its pandemics, natural disasters, and human displacement then we must recognize the necessity of our action. However, it seems that in order to meet these challenges and overcome them may require a dramatic shift in the core drives of American and global politics.

[Originally published on August 12, 2020.]

Stable link: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/politics-crises-damian-walsh/