Pandemic and the Power of Magical Thinking

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During the present Covid-19 outbreak, I return again and again to the question: What are people thinking? Why are they engaging in denial, reckless behavior, conspiracy theories, protests, and astounding callousness regarding acceptable death rates? The latter aspect being the only time that science, specifically “math,” is permitted into a debate where one side argues for letting the virus do its work in killing people. Such a very modest proposal. Putting aside the very real animators of a lot of this pro-death tribe – racism, xenophobia, entitlement, greed, and plain old stupid, what gives?

Plague Doctor

Folks in the Middle Ages may be excused some of their panic and anxiety. There was no science at the time to help them understand the origins of the Black Plague. If I were at the Port of Messina in 1347 when the ships put in with mostly dead and dying crews, covered in boils, oozing blood and pus, I might have been looking to the skies for a phalanx of celestial beings ready to do battle. I might have expected volcanic eruptions, eclipses, and earthquakes. Or my immediate action might be almost exactly the same as now – taking swiftly to my heels for home and a jug of Sicilian wine. Be that as it may, when the Black Death traveled throughout Europe, shopkeepers closed up, priests neglected Last Rites, and people avoided each other … like the Plague. Even without the benefit of microbiologists, epidemiologists, and infectious disease experts, they pretty well divined at least some of what to do and what not to do. Mask-wearing during plague times was definitely in vogue.

So we’ve hurtled on to the 21st Century in the midst of global pandemic, knowing far more precisely where it came from and how it spreads, and yet a great many Americans aren’t convinced that shops should close, and people should stay away from one another – and maybe that should include gathering at churches. Apparently, some adherents got off track super-early in the Bible when they read Cain’s sneery, defensive reply to God on the whereabouts of Abel. Since God put a protective mark on the lout for doing his brother in, well, perhaps the wrong lesson was learned.

Hanging around the Internet comments and listening to the increasingly phantasmagoric national briefings, I’ve arrived at one possible explanation. The lazy way out of thinking scientifically and acknowledging the inevitability of really rotten truths is to believe in Magic. We are sotted by it. We toss essential spiritual teachings out the window in favor of the miraculous and magical elements of our various religions. Taking care of the old, sick, and poor? Loving peace, hating war? Forget all that rot, and get on with the water-into-wine and sea-partings.

Not just God, the Devil, and the entire cast and characters of Paradise Lost, but we’re accompanied daily by all of the unseen world: ghosts, fairies, guardian angels, witches, evil spirits, Sasquatches, aliens, and demons. Contemporary Knights Templar are just loitering in the cafes of Rome and Paris, drinking espressos and planning the Apocalypse (the big loud one – not this crappy, slow, dumb one).

Scholars more clever than I could make a good argument that the mass of people now are as much in thrall to magic and the supernatural as at any time in the Middle Ages. After all, you can “prove” literally anything simply by posting a manipulated image or video, creating a bot to do your bidding, or grossly enhancing your personal appeal on Tinder. And someone will believe it. Magic!

Magical thinking makes viruses “just disappear one day” even while there are billions of readily available hosts to propagate it. It makes the greedy and callous believe that death will come only for those other people who they believe are expendable.What, me worry? Brave protesters who normally love to arrive at Confederate statues or Second Amendment rallies masked and geared up, all of a sudden experience a serious violation of their civil rights when it’s suggested a mask might serve a salutary purpose in public. Okay, that last one isn’t magical thinking, it’s just the plain old stupid. But magical thinking does make you believe you’re a Constitutional scholar.

Photograph: Seth Herald/Reuters

Magical thinking explains why people can’t wrap their minds around the immensity of geologic time but readily accept a heavenly, feathered infinitude after death or Rapture. So even if the worst happens, they are sucked out of all the worry and mess the rest of us heathens face. To a Better Place. One might call it The Good Place. Uh-oh.

Image: Colleen Hayes / NBC | 2019 NBCUniversal Media, LLC

Magical thinking makes people believe they are invulnerable because they know the occult secrets of essential oils, bleach, blow dryers on high heat, and hydroxychloroquine. And, like, really bright light. Like radiation. Which kills things. Indiscriminately.

Lest I sound like a total killjoy, realize that I like a lot of magical things myself.  My reading life would be an arid wasteland without it. My favorite miraculous event is spontaneous combustion. So whimsical and sanitary. I have a list of targets in my head. And yet, not one single occurrence in real life. NOT ONE, despite what Dickens' described as the unfortunate fate of Mr. Krook in Bleak House:

The cat has retreated close to it and stands snarling, not at them, at something on the ground before the fire. There is a very little fire left in the grate, but there is a smouldering, suffocating vapour in the room and a dark, greasy coating on the walls and ceiling.

I also want us to solve the problem of intergalactic travel, because I’m betting there are some extraterrestrials out there with better ideas. They probably have universal health care. I like elves and changelings, haints and spirits. But I don’t look to any of them coming to my aid, or alternatively, causing me harm.

We are a world awash in the unseen. Is it any wonder that an unseen virus gets the same magical treatment? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some spells to cast.