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COVID-19 Trajectory: Death of Capitalism and the Emergence of Post-humanism
Introduction
This academic paper discusses the following: the crisis and demise of capitalism; and the nature
of truth and the emergence of post-humanism, all under the purview of the COVID-19 pandemic. The
pandemic, this academic paper predicts, will change the world as states and governments realize the
limits of capitalism. As a consequence, a post-humanist world also upends our traditional understanding
of truth. This paper then discusses the initiatives implemented by a military establishment or office to
contain the spread of the virus with jeopardizing the basic rights of the stakeholders.
In the Allegory of the Cave
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, Plato describes the world of the senses as a dark prison cell in which
people confuse reality from the mere representation of reality. The things in this world for Plato are
nothing but just poor copy or reproduction of the ideal world. This ideal world belongs to the intellect
while the world of the senses is nothing but an illusion. This means then that for Plato, the truth points
to those principles that have lasting significance. Acquiring knowledge in this regard, is the rising above
or liberation of every man from the illusion of worldly affairs as the only things that matter in our lives.
The modern world rejects Plato’s theory. For Jacques Derrida, there is no reality but signs in
which the complexities of language are a matter of interpretation
(https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/derrida/). Meanwhile, Rene Descartes makes the ego the source or
foundation of all knowledge (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/). Knowledge gave birth to
science and with science, the Industrial Revolution. With modernity, what we have is the world as we
know it today.
However, behind the growth and progress of nations is the reality of power. This power is
manifested most in the realm of politics. Politics is about control. It is not about being good or saintly.
Had it been that way, we could have elected priests, pastors or nuns or other religious leaders. But politics
is about solving problems that beset the society. The society is imperfect because it is composed of
imperfect people. If we allow these people to freely do what they want, there will be chaos and the result
will be anarchy. Hence, we need the rule of the Sovereign. The Sovereign as ruler is law unto the land.
The intent of this academic paper is to explore the impact of a pandemic to our present way of
life. It will try to examine the consequences of the pandemic to capitalism as the source of modern day
culture in which the human is defined by the fantasy of consumer culture.
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Allegory of the Cave by Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett, Paperback, 2017.
COVID-19 and the Death of Capitalism
The world will change after the COVID-19 pandemic. The outbreak, which points to the City of
Wuhan in the Hubei Province in China as source, put the world into a virtual standstill. Governments
imposed travel bans, border restrictions and curfews. Yet, cases continue to soar high in many countries
including the Philippines, until today which caused the doctors and hospitals to be overwhelmed by
patients sick with this pneumonia-like disease (Peng et al., 2020). In addition, the virus puts millions of
people around the world out of work. While affluent states injected hundreds of billions of dollars into
their economy to recover, poor countries suffer a lot from the enormous economic loss because of the
virus.
The coronavirus has also enormous political implications. It meant that a pandemic goes beyond
any border and threatens regional and global stability. The disease proves that no government is powerful
enough to contain an epidemic of this magnitude. Curfews imposed in poor countries result to the
disruption in the lives of people, with some states resorting to harsh measures in order to control the
population. In the end, it has become a battle of life and death. But we can argue that the goal of the
government and public health experts in implementing curfews, travel bans and lockdowns is for the
greatest number of the population to be free from the virus and to be healthy. However, health is not just
