The post-coronavirus digital era in Europe might remind us of the famous Heraclitus quote «Everything changes». Right now, we’re all moving in a universe of financial and moral instability that is constantly changing.
The division of Europe into two-speed worlds, with the South ending up being just a place for tourism and fun, and the North just a machine that works all year long to enjoy some summer vacation, sounds old and cliché. The real deal is that Europeans are the biggest consumers of antidepressant pills in the world. The use of antidepressants has increased by almost two and a half times from 2000 to 2020 in eighteen European countries, according to data of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
That is not questionable, since we’re going through the biggest existential crisis since World War 2, which implies the biggest identity crisis of the ego. This disarticulation of the subject from the «-self» reminds me of «Steppenwolf» by Hermann Hesse, who was searching for the meaning of existence in a zero-time space, and declared «The love of this atmosphere comes, no doubt, from the days of my childhood, and a secret yearning I have for something homelike drives me, though with little hope, to follow the same old stupid road».
But what is the daily life of the average European, who is going through this great identity crisis? One-day creatures, such as the characters of the Irvin Yalom’s book, they often work remotely, have limited social contacts, have only one child or decide to remain childless, as two children are considered a luxury for the economically advantaged. Frequently, they find short-term relationships through dating apps and buy second-hand clothes from websites, using the latest iPhone or Mac Pro. This is the pessimistic end of a collectivity of ethnicities, the European cradle that gave birth to art and democracy, and it’s now eating its own flesh, just like the «Fight Club» character Tyler Dern, who was claiming to be Jack’s wild revenge, while punching men and smashing jaws. Eventually he set on fire the Twin Towers, the absolute symbol of Capitalism, but also killed himself.
How will this phase of capitalism be overcome when the European, like a fruitful teenager, turns against his parents and judges them, executing this unconscionable death of his own father? And at the same time, while the Western thinker of German Rationalism and Wittgenstein is eating his own flesh and unfolding the philosophical structure, inherited by the European collective unconscious that he is a part of, the «wandering» Europe is still the unfulfilled dream of the lost paradise, for which immigrants from Islamic repressive regimes do not hesitate to risk their own lives just to taste.
Societies that are undergoing an existential crisis often have to move through the «Lestrigones and the Cyclops» of Kavafis’ «Ithaca», till they understand that the solution for the reconstruction they were looking for lies in this difficult turn toward the «inside». According to Hesse, the European is the one, who has undergone the philosophical influence of ancient Greek rational thinking, who has lived the Judao-Christian religiousness, and who has undergone the influences of the Roman administration system and the Roman institutions. All this burden that Europeans carry from their pioneering ancestors is the best cultural asset that a person in crisis could have, because, even at this time that Europe is in crisis, thousands of migrants from Africa and Asia do not hesitate to risk their own lives, as long as they have a chance in the European dream. Let’s not forget that all these migrants come from Islamic centralistic regimes, and everything that is based on violence to be maintained is condemned, according to Heinrich Müller.
This situation that we are currently going through is not an end of an era, it’s just a slope towards new ways of thinking that occurred after the fall of communism in 1989, bringing all Europeans together in a united way of living and thinking. There is no hope in trying to revive obsolete ways of living, extremely left oriented, because without freedom of speech, without freedom of movement and working, we are going to end up like the protagonist of Tomas Vasiliefky’s movie «United States of Love». In this movie all four women, whose story was shared, were the victims of such an oppressive way of living in communism and didn’t have any loophole to live according to their true desires.
Communism’s failure is not a synonym of capitalism’s upcoming fall. It is just a stepping stone to our evolution. The key in order to achieve this is keep on evolving but also showing empathy to those who are not as privileged as we are. What modern Europeans in the middle of the crisis possess without understanding is the knowledge to move forward, gained from the mistakes of our past. According to global report of happiness, Finland stands first in happiness rate among all countries, and Lebanon and Afganistan are among the last. According to Jeffrey Zaks, one οf the conductors of the global report of happiness, what comes as a lesson from observing Europeans the last years is that, solidarity among people and generosity combined with living in a country, that has an honest government, is the key to happiness.
In most times in our lives, we get trapped in the prison of our own mind, a prison whose key is hidden in a place that is only known to us. We are not trees, so that we have to stay still in a place even if we don’t like it. There is no better time to start being digital nomads with our educational background, in order to combine good working conditions with an affordable way of living.
What I suggest, since philosophy itself cannot improve the life of the inhabitants, is the use of our ancestral ability to find solutions to the problems by thinking out of the box, and in this case, to give a chance to remote working, not to be afraid of living in smaller cities and not just in the capital, if this can give us a better quality of life, and no matter how crazy it may sound during the present social conditions, not to be afraid of creating a family, because, although it is economically demanding, it is mentally vital.
Our ancestors are the people who devised Democracy, Religion -with Freedom rather than Submission- and the adventure to explore the whole world, since, being pioneers, they did not hesitate to cross the Atlantic sea just to see what is beyond the line of the horizon. This unique ability of wanting to discover pristine paths is the spiritual torch that we have to use in order to get out of our deadlock. «If it doesn’t come out of your soul like a rocket, don’t do it» Bukowski used to say, and there is no greater rocket than the instinct of spiritual survival.
