Nomonde Gwebu (Postgraduate Student

Beneath the Surface of COVID-19

NOMONDE GWEBU Postgraduate Student

The Afternoon Before the Shutdown

There is a nervous energy in the local shopping mall. Surgical masks, bandanas and makeshift strips of cloth fastened around faces with suspicious eyes darting to-and-fro. Lengthy queues of shoppers, waiting in panic to purchase the ingredients of their “last supper” (Bible, 1987) The local liquor store, at the news it will be closed for twenty-one days is teeming with people. There is loud house music and belching laughter, now subdued to a few strained chuckles, dampened by the emotions: Am I doing the right thing? What is happening? As a world, as a nation and as a higher learning community, we have been confronted with the fragility and mystery of what is holding our current existence together. Everything can change suddenly with the invasion and rapid replication of microscopic cells.

These cells do not spread in and of themselves, but are transported and transmitted within us, mapping our movements, tracking our actions and depositing their substance onto everything we touch.

As a world, as a nation and as a higher learning community, we have been confronted with the fragility and mystery of The COVID-19 cells are what is holding our current existence together. ” This question, illustrated by most commonly transmitted the patrons of the liquor store, by droplet infection. Within is one that whispers gently the droplet, the individual to many of us. It lies beneath COVID-19 cell attaches to our scheduled appointments; the healthy person’s host cell beneath all the things we have and moves undetected to the vaguely or firmly decided to do. intestine, spleen and lungs where it may have the most

dramatic effect. The parasitic cells flourish by injecting their genetic material into healthy cells. This genetic material is experienced by the host cells a an “instruction” to replicate. This instruction is carried out, unquestioningly, unremittingly, until a breaking or “critical point” is reached. At this maximum capacity, the host can no longer carry out any of its normal functions and receives the final instruction: “self-destruct” (Our World in Data, 2020).

What is our world made of?

At root, this is the process mapping of all erring, vices and character defects. They do not multiply in and of themselves, but are transported within us, and from person to person, mapping our movements, tracking our actions and depositing their substance into everything we do and come into contact with. This layer, or realm of what is real, beneath the surface, normally imperceptible to the physical eye, has been thrust, violently into the realm of matter.

This intangible level of human existence is often evaded because of difficulties in quantification, problems with subjective realities (ThiisEvensen, 1987) and parts of human life that can be deduced and debated but for which there seems to be no attainable consensus, even about whether or not a consensus should be sought. Because of these seemingly unsurmountable challenges, we could be tempted to overlook the pull that this intangible world exerts on the tangible world. This essay proposes that adopting this stance would be a grave error.

Who makes our world?

As architects, and the broader community of individuals who shape the built environment, we cannot produce anything greater, or of a higher moral code than the sum total balance of “healthy” and “sickly” cells we possess. When we find ourselves infected with greed, oppressions, prejudice and lust for material success this corruption, nurtured and replicating in the unseen realm of the soul, is the very soil in which all ideas, creativity and design will germinate. “To design is to prefer” (Louisiana Channel, 2018) the manifesting preference is quantifiable to the extent of its materiality. But where does the preference or “design” originate? From the unseen, soul of the designer. A man cannot design the world without first designing himself (Schulz, 1971).

The unexamined life is not worth living -Socrates

The problem is that the healthy cells are both “unquestioning” and “unremitting” in their

replication of corrupt instructions. As those in the front lines have striven for, and attained success by proactively confronting cases of infection; so must we confront our own character defects and our own parasitic tendencies in our professional and personal lives. Like those who have achieved success, we must question corrupt “instructions” and resist defaulting to, what on the surface seems like the status quo.

It takes courage to know and confront oneself. It takes courage to face all the areas that one knows can and should be better. Courage is the cure. Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at its testing point (Lewis, 1943). Patience that seizes to be patient when tested never was; humility which whithers in the glare of success… never was.

A key; the healthy cells have not been able to protect themselves from COVID-19 from within, they have needed help. How have the cells been saved? By external intervention. Where their own courage failed; they have been saved by the courage of others.

The question that underlies our personal equation of healthy and sickly cells is: Am I useful to myself? What is the nature of the cells that make up the realm of my soul; the seat from which everything I produce materially and creatively will emerge. What am I producing?

Solitude, at regular intervals of a person’s life, is necessary As medical and other professionals are dispatched to address the virus from the outside; we are offered – we are implored - to take up the most powerful weapon we have to combat sickness of the soul: introspection. Social distancing is forced introspection. The frenetic activities of modern life naturally preclude the solitude necessary for introspection; only those who know its true value create it, and protect it.

Having failed to have the courage to withdraw periodically from noise and movement; to stay home and have difficult conversations, to make tough calls in our businesses and confront systemic problems in our nations; globally, we have been plunged into a forced introspective, “essentials-only” environment. In this immersion, we have the opportunity to escape the cycle of mindless unquestioning, unremitting repetition, through which we have been enslaved. As nations and individuals, we have an opportunity to re-invent, reimagine and re-programme who we want to be, and what we want to produce.

When we introspect, we identify

inner diseases that we have been allowed to develop. As we trace back their origins and spreading patterns, it becomes possible to identify and address corrupt instructions infiltrating our lives, our families, our careers and our nations from their sources. A wise man remarked “If the medicine you are taking is sweet, it probably will not cure your disease”. COVID-19 has that bitter sting that the unfiltered, undiluted truth often does; but perhaps its effects, the ones we cannot see or quantify, are healing a deeper condition

References:

Thiis-Evensen, T., 1987. Archetype in Arhitecture. 1st Edition ed. Oslo: Norwegian University Press.

Bible, T. H., 1987. The Amplified Translation. 6th Aedition ed. New York: FaithWords.

Our World in Data, 2020. Statistics and Research: Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19). [Online] Available at: https://ourworldindata.org/ coronavirus [Accessed 28 April 2020].

Louisiana Channel, 2018. Alejandro Aravena: To Design is to Prefer. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=trylBuckSCA [Accessed 23 April 2020].

Schulz, C. N., 1971. Existence, Space and Architecture. 1st Edition ed. London: Studio Vista Limited.

Lewis, C., 1943. The Screwtape Letters. 18th Edition ed. Boston: Harvard.