THE SLEEP OF REASON

The artist and Chinese political dissident, Ai Weiwei's recent warning that "Abandonment of rational thinking leads to a collapse in which fear and joy, ignorance and reason, all blow in the wind" is a terrifyingly accurately depiction of this moment in time with America's President and his followers denying reality and furiously tweeting in the dark.

The Sleep of Reason by Francisco Goya

Credit: Brooklyn Museum

Years of attacks on scientific knowledge, rationality and expertise of all kinds, particularly relating to critical health, environmental and climate-related issues have, tragically, set the stage for just such a destabilized and destructive state of mind. As a consequence, today, with a dangerous pandemic sweeping across the land, and one hundred and fifty thousand Americans already dead, even the most minimally-invasive and 'reasonable' steps to mitigate the disaster such as mask-wearing and social-distancing continue to be met with powerful surges of irrational fantasies and fears, leaving the rest of us, in Ai Weiwei's imagery, and Bob Dylan's prophetic words from the 1960's, "blowing in the wind."

So deep is this 'sleep' of un-reason that violations and distortions of ordinary rules of law and governance, institutional standards, decorum and even measurable facts seemingly pass unnoticed and un-opposed in the night. Swirling in a maelstrom of Orwellian double-speak, "alternative facts," cries of "fake news," conspiracy theories and a continuing flood of blatant lies and denials, the reasoned process of discourse essential to the functioning of democracy becomes muddied and impossible to sustain.

While the President's 'gut feelings' about untested cures and virus prevention are given equal weight against demonstrable scientific evidence, leading scientists and epidemiologists are demeaned and their voices silenced. Widespread national protests in favor of Black Lives and against police violence become distorted into exaggerated and menacing projections of 'anarchism' in the streets. At the point where the most fundamental democratic acts of census taking, voting and delivering the mail provoke radically fearful and polarized reactions, the narcotic has fully taken hold.

Reason seems to have been fully detached from the requirements of fact. Propaganda, passion and sheer misinformation are free to activate the latent fears and anxieties in the mind of a paralyzed and destabilized public. Faith in the electoral process erodes, and in an American first, a sitting President openly proclaims that he might not accept the results of an election that goes against him! 

In just such a moment, some threshold is crossed. It could be the point when the unprecedented intrusion of federal paramilitary units into American cities against the wishes of state and local officials in the name of preserving 'law and order' becomes more than just one more fleeting outrage in the news cycle. Perhaps it will be the moment when the fever breaks.

For there is a point when sleepers do awaken. At times they are shaken into consciousness by the very intensity of the fearful specters unleashed in their own minds; at others by encounters with the rough and unforgiving edge of external reality against which even their fantasies are powerless.

"El sueño de la razon prodúce monstros" (The sleep of reason produces monsters), the Spanish painter Francisco Goya inscribed in his famous etching more than two centuries ago during a similar collapse of rationality in the chaotic aftermath of the French Revolution. Yet the lesson of history is that, inevitably, the darkly demonic forms, wildly exaggerated images, fears and nightmares will fade in the bright light of day: reason reasserted. In a partial reframe of Dr. Martin Luther King's famous words: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward reason."

lka

Rhyme or Reason: Responses to the Pandemic

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Daniel Defoe's classic novel "Journal of the Plague Year" based on the experience of London in 1665 details the understandable but often irrational behavior of both leaders and citizens coming to terms with the deadly epidemic sweeping the City during that year in which London lost between 14 and 21 percent of its population.

Image from the Great London Plague of 1665

Credit: Science Source

First came the very human response of denial: surely this will pass swiftly; perhaps it is limited to very few people or certain regions of the city; perhaps it can be contained; perhaps when the weather warms it will magically vanish; perhaps prayer will help.


Then distortion of the data soon followed to support these theories. As bodies piled up or were carted away, records were altered to attribute the deaths to other, more usual, acceptable, or even invented causes. Naturally, those responsible for affected districts sought to avoid the blame or opprobrium of being associated with the disease, and thus reported these false accounts to their superiors.

As in every case we know of from ancient Rome, to Europe in the Middle Ages, to modern-day China, actual facts about a growing epidemic, no matter how tightly controlled by the authorities, will be leaked to the general public, with predictable responses. Spreading like wildfire, often blowing limited or incomplete bits of information completely out of context, rumors themselves contribute to the impact of the contagion.

One all-too-human tendency inevitably leads down the path of stigmatizing easy-to-identify 'others' as the source. Another is the search for quick cures: rituals, signs or amulets to ward off the illness; or in other cases the promotion of folk-medicines or sometimes dangerous potions claimed by others to heal the sick.

From the perspective of authorities anxious to avoid challenges to their power, the next step is often to portray the disease and disaster as emanating from foreign sources, both external and internal. During the Antonine smallpox plague in ancient Rome, Christians were portrayed as the disease's source since they refused to serve the Roman Gods. During the Middle Ages in Europe, popular fear and anger during the scourge of the Black Death was directed against the Jews who were charged with and often murdered for poisoning the wells regardless of the fact that they drank the same water and often suffered from the same diseases.

If all this sounds familiar in the age of Covid-19, it should. But in this twenty-first century, we all should know better. Plagues and pandemics, despite President Trump's declarations, do not "magically go away by April;" nor are they "hoaxes" concocted by political enemies; or malicious evils carried by immigrants or sent by rival powers; nor can they be cured by untested potions, wishes or by "injecting disinfectants."


"History does not repeat itself, But it does rhyme," Mark Twain is alleged to have said.

In an age defined by science and deep medical knowledge, not myth, mystery and ignorance, isn't it time for us to finally bring the rhyme scheme up to date? A few nations, including Australia, New Zealand and South Korea are applying science and expertise to defeat our current plague. Can we do the same?

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Les Adler