Black Swan: Thoughts on the Pandemic

"Black Swan" is a metaphor introduced to me by my friend Mark. According to Wikipedia and other sources, it refers to 

"The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology, 

coupled with "[t]he psychological biases that blind people, both individually and collectively, to uncertainty and to a rare event's massive role in historical affairs."

With the recent emergence and rapid proliferation of the COVID-19 ("Coronavirus") pandemic, a true Black Swan has landed, right at our doorsteps. An entirely new strain of severe respiratory virus is engulfing our entire planet. It has a high death rate, no vaccine, far too few adequate testing instruments, a slow (and often invisible) incubation, and exponential transmission through respiration, and it is threatening shortly to overwhelm our hospitals and medical facilities, crash our economy, and plunge us into unimaginable chaos within the next few months. Yet our poisonously incompetent and corrupt so-called "president" and his morally bankrupt cronies are in complete denial about this, have slashed funding for research into preventive measures, and are concerned only about the stock market and about putting on a good face for the next election.  We have no leadership, and hence are on our own, facing what may well be the most catastrophic global public health crisis ever.  (For reliable information on all of this, check out Chris Martenson on https://www.peakprosperity.com/.)

When faced with such a global catastrophe, especially one where enforced isolation ("Social distance" is the term du jour) is the only known way to slow the exponential spread of this entirely new strain of respiratory virus (for which there is no immunity and no known vaccine), most of us (who are  not still in denial) are dealing with varying levels of panic, justifiably so.  This could be IT--the collapse of the globalized, industrialized, market-based world we have always known into utterly unpredictable chaos, starvation, violence, and mass die-off--starting with the elderly (that is, me and my wife, among others) who are most susceptible. (We may count ourselves lucky to die first, in fact!)

From a Gaian perspective, this virus could be nature's way of ridding the biosphere of a cancerous subsystem--agro-industrial humanity--which directly threatens its future viability. After all, "blooms"--the rapid expansion and subsequent collapse of algae or other organisms when a temporary new energy source becomes available--are a commonplace occurrence in nature. For many species, such boom-and-bust cycles are commonplace, when a population expands beyond the limit of its carrying capacity, and viruses may thus be part of a complex Gaian regulatory apparatus for dealing with pathogens like ourselves.  But this awareness, needless to say, does not do much to quell our current dread and anxiety.

What does?  Here I would begin with an often-quoted proverb coined by Bill Mollison, the founder of Permaculture, who had a deep, intuitive understanding of the way of nature, as it applies to our own necessary agenda (i.e. staying alive and building healthy human habitats that are symbiotic with, rather than parasitic upon, our biological support system).   And that proverb is "The problem is the solution."

At first glance, this may seem like a trite, almost frivolous cliche, given the gravity of our current situation, but when contemplated more carefully, it reflects an insight of great depth and resonance.  Our problem today, in a nutshell, is not only the virus itself, but also, the essential response to it that virtually everyone is practicing: cancelling every public event and retreating into isolation.  But that isolation--that "self-quarantine"--carries its own set of problems: when we are out of touch with each other, we fall prey to all of our inner demons at once--panic, depression, fear, short tempers, dread...

And this in turn can lead to larger pathologies of alienation--fear and mistrust of others, hoarding, stealing, rumor-mongering, etc.  How could there be any "solution" in such a "problem"?

Throughout history, in every wisdom tradition on the planet, those who reached the highest levels of insight and compassion were those who went into long periods of isolation, to facilitate soul-searching and/or inner development (call it what you will...)  Think, for example, of the ancient Hebrew prophets, Jesus confronting his demons in the desert, the Buddha abandoning his princely life to wander the world in search of enlightenment, Mohammed going out into the cave to encounter Allah...these stories are all variations on the same theme: isolation gives us the opportunity, if we choose to take it, for the kind of inner development that can spawn whole new cultures, new ways of looking at life.  So in this respect, our current, agonizing isolation may be a blessing in disguise--if we choose to accept it.

How so?

Each of us, of course, must answer this for ourselves, based on our own preferred spiritual practice. But here are a few tentative suggestions:

For Christians, Jews, Muslims, and all other monotheistic faith traditions, prayer is the thing. As the grandmother of one of my students once told her: "You can either worry or you can pray. You can't do both."  And prayer is definitely preferable to worry.  I can't claim to be an expert on prayer, since my own inclinations have lead me to embrace Buddhist practice (i.e. meditation) but I'm quite convinced that the two disciplines--meditation and prayer--are not all that different. They are really two different ideological frameworks for achieving the same goal--inner peace, equanimity, and compassion.  All of which are desperately needed these days.  For Christians, a good prayer to start with is the centerpiece of the Prayer of Jesus--"Thy will be done." Either that or the Gesthemane prayer--"Lord, please take this cup from me--not as I will, but as Thou wilt."

For Buddhists and other practitioners of Dharmic religions, or others attracted to these Eastern wisdom traditions, there are myriad meditative techniques to choose from. So I wish to share my own. It is compatible with any belief system--or none at all.  It goes like this:

1. Allot yourself time for 30 deep breaths--about 10-15 minutes will do. (The deep breaths, incidentally, will help your lungs stay healthy--which might be important these days to fend off the virus!)

2. For the first 10 breaths, in and out, focus consecutively on contemplating the value, to yourself and others, of each of the following verb phrases:

(a)  Breathe...Observe...Let Go

(b)  Be well...Do good work...Keep in touch...(with gratitude to Garrison Keillor, who coined these).

(c)  Learn...Teach...Heal...Create...

3.  Repeat these 10 phrases a second time, this time focusing on practicing them as you are doing so. In other words, look upon the words as "windows" describing what you are actually doing at that moment. Try turning them into gerunds if it helps (i.e. "Breathing, Observing, Letting go...") to keep yourself in the present moment.

4. If you can do so authentically, try repeating the 10 phrases a third time, this time vowing to stay with this practice regularly. Renew your vow every time you practice it, until it becomes habitual.

("I vow to breathe...to observe...to let go...")

5. At any time, once you are centered. you can simply drop the words and focus on your in and outbreath all by themselves, for as long as you wish. It might also help to start with a poem or invocation, and end with a blessing, such as "May all living beings benefit from this practice." But that, of course, is entirely up to you.

It might also help to keep a journal, in which you jot down your own thoughts about what each of these verb phrases means to you personally. This practice can be combined, as you wish, with any other contemplative or meditative practice that you already use, in any faith tradition.

I hope and pray that this inner work in solitude helps you maintain a measure of equanimity and compassion in this time of crisis, so that you can be an agent of global healing thereafter, as we return to growing gardens, growing community, and growing awareness.