Corona and the human being in everyday life
Contents
Corona and the human being in everyday life
In the crisis, people show their vulnerable side: hoarding purchases of toilet paper, pasta and canned food, operators of department stores and chain shops who want to cheat on the rent, manufacturers and traders who sell protective masks and other essential equipment at extortionate prices, many times overpriced, others celebrate Corona parties … It seems easy to see this behaviour as »bad« because this assessment is made possible by the social context and the situation in which we currently find ourselves. Normally, we would at best wonder about the person who buys 20 packets of toilet paper. However, our moral evaluation in the face of empty »hoarded« shelves now takes as its yardstick the question of solidary and non‐solidary behaviour. On the other hand, we also know »good« behaviour in the crisis: Neighbourhood and shopping help, support for local trade, landlords who voluntarily waive rent and, after all, it is most people who adhere to the recommendations even without prohibitions. Solidarity is the value to be named here because the Corona crisis shows us how much we depend on togetherness and helping each other.
Our own vulnerability does not consist so much in the intimacy that is directly addressed when we stand in front of empty shelves and cannot imagine what we will soon do without toilet paper. Rather, it consists in the reference to the suffering of the many sick and in the face of death, which is brought before our eyes by frightening figures, for example from Bergamo in northern Italy. It does not matter whether we know this from our own experience (e.g. through the illness of relatives or experiences from the workplace, e.g. in care), because we are also clearly told all this through the media. They are currently shaping our consciousness and the question of how we secretly think about it and want to deal with it personally.
The Corona crisis also reminds us of what Frankl called the »tragic triad«, three things that we irrevocably encounter again and again, that are »brought to us by life«: Suffering, guilt and death. Besides all the freedom and self‐determination we have as human beings, we can never protect ourselves from the inevitable. All three categories come under the existential magnifying glass, so to speak, in the crisis; we see clearly how every life is challenged by suffering, guilt and death. However, we should definitely also see the tragic triad in the context of free will: In logotherapy and existential analysis, we assume that human beings have free will. We are not free from conditions, whatever they may be. But we are free to shape everything possible for us in our own way. In connection with suffering, guilt and death, Frankl’s appeal to free will applies to the freedom, the creative leeway we have in dealing with these.
