Making sense of 'life' in the COVID life scheme

This is a time which can help us encounter and understand our frustrations, hypocrisy and cynical attitude. Drawn apart from society and friends I see this, the COVID life as an opportunity for making sense of the world, my world. We all know that the COVID life is exactly the 'negation' of our 'normal' lives. Our ‘not thinking of our lives’ attitude has now changed. People are actively contemplating as far as I want to believe. Not that everyone who ‘survives’ the pandemic might turn out to be a philosopher. Well, maybe yes. But part of philosophy is regarding asking the why and again the other part being, ‘why is why’. So, if you haven’t made sense of your world, its time you did because this COVID life is one hell of an 'opportunity' that you won’t want to miss.

One funny thing with the COVID life is that it sure plays that 'dialectical' effect on our lives. Our 'order of things' has been subverted and how we dealt with things, even matters concerning metaphysical tradition have changed. Let’s say how we connect with people. Face to face meetings are gone and now we are stuck to the realms of social media. Dialectically speaking connection is now the ‘unconnection’! The dynamics of social interaction devoid of the face to face interaction feels 'unreal'. What this really should show us is the ‘unreality’ of the social media. We in our earlier ‘normal’ lives could never make sense of this ‘unreality’ because of the life in the seemingly 'dual reality’, but now this is clear.

‘Thinking’ has drastically changed in the COVID life and every other concept one believed to have believed in had to be dismantled under this new COVID life scheme. This is where we are left to frame our own new concepts to play along the new 'scheme of life'. Well, that is only one part of the new life. For me, the other most important part is where we analyze the earlier concept that we believed to have believed in our 'real' lives. And again this is no project for finding the ‘real’ me or you, this is just analyzing ourselves with the ‘parameters’ we believe are ‘unique’ and ours.

Well I leave the analyzing part to you all. Now, what’s interested me in writing this article is ‘unhappiness’. It’s like a concept that all have heard yet none had anything fruitful to talk about. “COVID life has made people ‘unhappy’” is the popular idea we get from society now. Sigmund Freud, the famous Psychoanalyst had this to say regarding human ‘unhappiness’. I find it truly interesting and relevant. Freud says in his Civilization and its Discontents, “unhappiness is much less difficult to experience”. He continues, “We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful to us than any other.”

Freud here says that unhappiness is much difficult to experience because happiness as we may experience has been ‘constructed’ by the society for us. We see this construct of happiness as our 'yardstick' to life. This construct always serves as a point of reference just like the Lacanian ‘Big Other’. This construct creates this yearning in us to achieve it and whenever we fail to do so we are ‘unhappy’. Our whole way of being 'unhappy' is because of keeping a reference point of happiness in the first place. This is the problem that I want to mention. ‘Unhappiness’ is always taken for granted. We tend to believe that it only acts in the presence of happiness but in ‘reality’, ‘unhappiness’ is the ‘real’. In other words, this is how the external world creates suffering for us, by actually trying to shield us from the ‘real’, causing us more pain.

Now back to the other two directions – “from our own body" and "from our relations to other men”. This is where social media steps in, mainly Instagram. I am happy to use the fairy tale - the ‘Snow White’ story here, which the 'liberals' want to be 'cancelled'. What I want to bring up from the story is the ‘magic mirror’. The mirror is the image of the all-knowing conscience (a spiritualist would say) or a neutral medium of technological piece (a materialist would say). In the story, the magic mirror tells the ‘truth’ that the ‘wicked’ queen is not the most beautiful person in the world. One shouldn’t forget the fact that the magic mirror always made the ‘wicked’ queen feel relevant and important but also at the same time it did create jealousy in the mind of the wicked queen (the magic mirror was really ‘wicked’, it seems). This is important to me here.

The ultimate ‘mirroring effect’ is what we feel when we use a social media platform like Instagram. Our body is seen different through our Instagram profiles because in actuality it acts as a ‘mirror’, a ‘wicked mirror’ to be precise. The ‘wicked mirror’ of Instagram wittingly makes us hold ourselves in an elevated position. This is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ at the same time. This ‘unreality’ that we see in the mirror (of ascribing relevance to the image the wicked mirror renders) causes a contradiction to the ego derived from it in the ‘real’ world which in turn causes a great deal of suffering. Now to the third direction from Freud, “our relations to other men”. After the elevation of our selves we tend to compare and contrast, just like the queen did which resulted in her being jealous. Actually, the mirror turns out to be the ‘ego’ (so it is now ‘wicked ego’) of the queen that is speaking for her. That’s why I like these old politically charged ‘incorrect’ stories that liberals hate because they always contain a scope for psychoanalysis and stuff (I’m joking).

By comparing ourselves to some other ‘superior image’ we feel jealous and thus the suffering starts. Time and again, this is proved. We find things are not the things that we hoped for. This causes alienation and psycho-social problems. This causes suffering. I just may not call this ‘unhappiness’ because it is ‘uncharted territory’ and it is the ‘real predicament’ that we have been hiding from.

Again, this is ‘natural’. Even from Snow White’s time, it is clearly there. Now this is achieved in a more effective way by using Instagram and all. I say this because people misunderstand this suffering for ‘unhappiness’ and try to reach towards ‘the Big Other’, ‘the construct’, ‘the happiness’. As Slavoj Zizek says this causes us to yearn for happiness which obviously takes a toll on us making us slide into more suffering. The fundamental psychoanalyst idea is to do away with ‘happiness’ and consider the suffering as ‘natural’. Nowadays we feel an obligation to be happy which is exactly the trap that I am pointing to here. You don’t need to be 'that'; you don’t need 'that' to live. Strip off the ornamental shit and 'live'. It is at least one of those things that COVID life scheme has taught us.