After Orwell: Some Thoughts on the Post-Pandemic World

Abstract

This essay investigates the different meanings of the global shock of the Covid-19 pandemic. Written during the times of the epidemic, it offers more questions than answers. Can we consider it „democratic” or is it a pandemic for the poor? What is reality and its social construction in this story, and to what extent these factors overlap? The speed, invisibility, and global reach of the current epidemic are unparalleled. We are more afraid of the danger we do not perceive directly - because it is colorless, odorless, invisible, but it can strike us at any time. Speed and breadth create a sense of inevitability. When a sequence of events arrives in a wave-like manner, the interconnection of its individual components amplifies the effect many times over. The impact of the epidemic is exacerbated by the creation of deadly focal points: it spreads fastest where people live side by side in the highest density. To what extent the prolonged isolation weakens not only our biological, but also social- immune systems? Finally, the essay also investigates how authoritarian power holders use this opportunity to grab even more power, from China to Hungary. The pandemic opened the way for a political danger: a new authoritarianism based on big data and close surveillance, which completes, or in some ways transcends, the dystopian vision of Orwell. An emerging bio-dictatorship might be the new enemy of freedom.