Covid and the Cult of Technology

My latest essay for Panda

In the first edition of this series examining the philosophical underpinnings of the Covid Event, I described Nietzsche’s prescience in identifying in his time an emergent modern psychology. This psychology could be entitled the psychology of ‘the last man’. In our day, it has been embraced as a comforting but insidious protective blanket which smothers us all in sickly warmth.

Without this desire to be one with the herd, this desire for bland safety, for a planetary mask, ‘2020’ would not have been possible. But the psychological conditions which were necessary for the events of 2020, also required something else – the cult of technology…

Lockdowns happened because they could happen 

Would schools and businesses have ever closed were it not for the decision-makers knowing full well that their own working lives could carry on unimpeded?

Without the digital magic of ‘quantitative easing’ and helicopter money, would the idea of shutting down large swathes of the economy have even been entertained?

Vaccine passports on mobile apps using QR codes happened because they could happen. 

The government and media complex had the technology, and the collaborative partnership was already in place owing to surveillance methods developed during the ‘War on Terror’.

The mRNA injections themselves were rolled out because the technology was at hand, not because they were deemed effective. No successful trial has ever been carried out of the gene therapy.

And the very essence of the event relied upon the technology of mass testing, the daily case and death counts beamed out on 24/7 media channels, alongside the viral images of hospital wards in Italy and Wuhan.

Masks themselves, along with the brief but deadly ventilator obsession, represented for many the quaint ideal that ‘citizens’ and ‘workers’ could also participate – by analogy – in the same great technological project to eradicate the virus, not using binary codes but pieces of old cloth and 20th century style mechanical tech.

We are all in this – the great technocratic project – together. And together, something had to be done. Anything. The precautionary principle was to be unleashed like never before.

And all of this emerged from the hubris and narcissism of bureaucrats, philanthropists, and journalists, a hubris itself soaked in the progressive notions that ‘science’ and ‘technology’ could solve intractable human inefficiencies. 

Life, for decades, has seemingly been one TED talk away from achieving a final great leap of rational progress, of cleanliness. If only the right people could get a firm grip on the right machinery…

Please read the rest on the Panda website.