Get a Grip

Civilisation is far more tenuous than people realise.  We are all evolved primates, with pretensions of superiority.  The truth of the matter is that people are still creatures of instinct motivated by fear and self-preservation, than they are of logic.  It takes little to sever the bonds between communities and bring out the worse in people.

I have been to many places all over the world, many of them not tourist spots.  I have seen little to give me a sense of optimism when it comes to humanity.  We replay our tragedies over and over again.  It is difficult to convey that sense of fatalism when people are tied to what they see around them, and barely look out the window, let alone understand what happens all over the world.

Homo Sapiens Sapiens, the subspecies of Homo Sapiens we belong to, has only existed for less than 300,000 years.  The first Homo Sapiens have been dated to around 3 million years ago.  In that time, we have climbed to civilisation in fits and starts.  We gathered to create settlements, and then fell back into the nomadic life several times.  Small cities rose, and then were wiped out, many, many times.  We have had agricultural revolutions several times, and yet, we managed to fall back into barbarity again and again.

Living in this age, we take the concept of civilisation for granted, as if it were a right, and it will always be so.  That is an illusion.  There were hominid species before us who had semblances of civilisation, and they are gone.  Homo Erectus, an extinct hominid that predated us by a million years or so, lived in hunter-gatherer societies.  They had art, they buried their dead with ceremonies, and created encampments.  We can deduce they had some form of culture and religion.  They are dust, and in time, we will be also.  It does not take money to collapse a nation.  We only need to put in the correct ingredients, and society will tear itself apart.

First, create an existential threat that is based on something known, but extrapolated to an exaggerated degree of danger.  It is not death that drives people to extremes, but the fear of death.  The event is met with resignation.  The waiting fills the mind with the terror of the unknown, and feeds fears.  It also happens naturally.

In this case, we have this current novel coronavirus outbreak, originating from China.  People read the news and are made familiar with terms such as “coronavirus” and “epidemic”, without fully understanding the nature of infection and transmission.  If the threat were wholly unknown, it cannot create realistic fears.  A threat must have the façade of familiarity, because people can only truly extrapolate terror from known fears.

Secondly, saturate the modes of communication with news of the existential threat.  On one hand, we have news reports that update on the spread, and the measures to be taken and taken at various strata of society, from supranational to national down to the individual.  In an ideal world, this is helpful.  In reality, the repetition of events and updates, functions as propaganda, and instills in the psychologically weak, a sense of pervasive threat and impending doom.  Over time, it permeates from the lowest common denominator upwards, feeding that sense of threat and terror.

The nature of news is that since it is not fake news, it cannot be legitimately countered or suppressed without creating a sense of suspicion with the authorities.  For example, if ten news outlets report the same three cases, it creates the illusion, in the mind of the audience, that there are a multitude of cases.  We must also consider that social media functions like a forest fire, and is uncontrolled.  Stories, videos, pictures; are shared and reshared, further feeding the climate of fear.

Thirdly, separate the various strata of the community by causing them to isolate themselves and create a siege mentality.  This means shutting down gathering and events, causing panic for supplies and commodities, and creating a sense of scarcity by creating bottlenecks in the logistic chain, further fuelling that sense of scarcity.

People are, by nature, communal.  This is the trait of our species, which allowed us to overcome predators and the environment.  By breaking that community, it makes individual family groups far more vulnerable.  The irony is that the more advanced society becomes, the more vulnerable we are to this due to the specialisation of skills.  What eventually happens is that the more vulnerable in society are left behind, and the surviving groups will cannibalise each other.

Within the context of Singapore, this is actually a severe, and subtle test of our Total Defence, specifically our social, psychological, and economic defence.  Military threats are relatively straightforward since the enemy is identified and vilified, and the populace ca be suitably motivated to resist.  But an enemy that cannot be quantified cannot be easily fought.  We become our own enemies.

An epidemic, or even the illusion of one, eventually breaks the social contract, and people turn on each other.  It puts a psychological strain that inhibits clear thought, which impacts policymaking and adherence to the social order.  Finally, it causes us to make mistakes that impact the economy.  For example, Lim Tean, a Singapore politician, is calling for DORSCON red, in the name of safety and public interest.  That is stupidity.  It will raise the level of hysteria, and it may push the economy into a recession.  DORSCON one entails the closing of schools and places of work.  It implies that we have lost control of the situation, and the government has failed.  It will severely impact business confidence, and impact social order negatively.

Individuals may be rational and logical.  But people in large numbers, clouded by emotions, are no better than animals.  They are the zombie plague of self-preservation and panic.  The larger the crowd, the lower the intellect.  Stupidity born of fear feeds on itself, and the more intelligent will rationalise that foolishness.  This has played out over and over again, all over the world.

In all this, I hope to be proven wrong.  Perhaps I am harsh to dismiss the masses of humanity, and there will be beacons of leadership and sanity in all this.  We will all die eventually, but it is unconscionable that we cease to live before death for fear of it.  In the face of this challenge, we take precautions.  But we carry on.  We adjust our social interactions.  But we forge on.  We remain vigilant.  But we still function as society.  At the height of SARS, Lee Kuan Yew said, “… let’s get a grip on ourselves.”  I think Singaporeans should, and start behaving like they belong to a modern, civilised state.