You're Reading the Wrong Book (About Coronavirus)

Over the past weeks I've seen dozens of articles in The Guardian, the New York Times, New Yorker, etc. which compare the current epidemic, and its implications for human nature, to Albert Camus' The Plague. 

With witty prose and a knowing sidelong glance at our handling of the Coronavirus, authors from every publication have put pen to paper explaining the significance of Camus' account of a town overtaken by pestilence. 

Lit Hub posted an article comparing Camus' plague to the scourge of Fascism and Totalitarianism in the 20th century. The LA Times rebukes such an interpretation as banal, "the Nazis were not evil because they occupied an extreme position on the political spectrum but because they were enemies of life itself". The New York Times-- a technocrat's paper-- notes modern bureaucracy is just as lethargic as that of the ministries in Camus' story. Washington Post published an article simply comparing the book to our new reality in quarantine.

I fear that these comparisons are too easy. Anyone who has read Camus and is familiar with his theory of the absurd will know that any book of his is filled with allusions to his existential worldview. In The Stranger, we are confronted with a man utterly disconnected from his society. In The Fall, Camus describes a man's devolution to insanity after hearing someone jump off a bridge to their death. 

The Plague details a pestilence which reveals human nature, our frivolous consumerism and desire for normalcy and comfort. So it's natural to reach immediately to such a cathartic story when everything seems abnormal and distinctly uncomfortable.

However, a good story is not always the best story, nor the story we need to hear. Camus has another work which encapsulates not just our fears about disease, but our fears about mortality in general. Camus' book, The Myth of Sisyphus is the story we should read.

The Myth of Sisyphus is, in my estimation, Camus' greatest work. Certainly, it is among the greatest responses to the existentialism of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard in the 20th century. The book is short and it explains Camus' concept of the Absurd.

The Absurd is the relationship between man and the universe. It is the realization that while we all have wants, needs, fears, and triumphs, the universe is cold and silent to them all. No matter how much we scream and rage against it, we will lose our voice in service of nothing.

What Nietzsche decided was that many would succumb to this hopelessness. He wrote of "the last man", a person so consumed by immediate gratification, so lost in the commercial satisfaction of the world that he would never pursue meaning. Or else, Nietzsche thought humanity, without the strictures of objective morality, would decide all was permissible and wage wars of ideology to establish relative moralities over spheres of control. 

Camus believed something different, something more hopeful. In The Myth of Sisyphus, he argues that humanity needs a new ideal. We should, as intelligent hominids in an uncaring universe, hold ideals of unity, freedom, justice, and love not because but despite of the state of nature. In other words, we should accept the absurdity of existence with compassion for one another. 

It is similar to the adage often misattributed to Plato: "be kind, for everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about". Camus believes we are all going through a battle. In the face of a world which cares not whether we live or die, we should care for one another in a way the world refuses to. 

This is the message we need to hear now. As the novel coronavirus bares down on us, we must fight for higher wages for those now deemed essential, equality for those populations worst effected, and rights for the workers who have tried to keep us fed, clothed, warm, and healthy.