The virus that unites people by separating them from one another

Like every good thing that befalls us, every affliction too has, before everything else, a dimension of trial. We generally think that the trial comes from places we do not know, places we have not studied, but in fact it often comes precisely from where we think we have studied, where we think we know and have memorized; yet all at once we forget what we have memorized, our laziness, idleness, or stinginess regarding the subject we studied takes hold, and we do not give the right answer, we do not take the right stance.

Of course, not all of us make the same mistakes or show the same level of forgetfulness; as the name trial implies, there are those who pass it, there are those who scrape by, and then there are those who fail miserably.

We are going through a harsh trial regarding the corona virus. In fact it is a quite unprecedented process and trial. On one side it is a virus that finds and catches all the peoples of the country, indeed all the peoples of the world, rich and poor and destitute, worker and employer, religious and irreligious, black and white, all races, without separating them from one another, and treats everyone equally. Perhaps it observes some differences that we do not know, do not see, have not noticed, but we have not yet been able to learn of this. Because as far as we can see, it does not yet observe any difference. Indeed perhaps it has even begun to strike the richer countries earlier.

In a sense it makes us live, in the most bitter way, the experience of the wholeness, the fusion, and the unity of a world that has become globalized, integrated with itself, fused, interwoven.

In fact we ignored much stronger signals about the unity of this world. The experience of others' death, poverty, and suffering that global communication devices bring every day into our homes, and not enough, into our very pockets, and put before our eyes, did not teach us or explain to us enough the responsibility that globalization should have imposed. The bodies of baby Aylan washed up on the Mediterranean shore, and of the child Erva fallen at the foot of an olive tree, should have been felt as shocks big enough in this globe. Global habits made it only a media commodity for us, and did not set our feelings in motion.

The great tragedy behind Aylan and Erva was in fact knocking on the door of the whole world every day, but the world found a way to meet this experience of the so-called global world with an obliviousness more terrible than the event itself. Everyone focused on the measures to be taken against these images that dropped into their pockets, their computer and TV screens bringing a series of refugees to their doors. When it came to that point, the world that had recklessly exploited all the possibilities of globalization was focusing on finding ways to escape the responsibility this could place on it.

Now, through the doors they have shut tight, a tiny little virus passes in the easiest and most ruthless manner and establishes its sultanate over the whole world. Moreover, without distinguishing even the brainy people because of the brainless among us. By applying that tremendous rule of equality (God knows best). Surpassing the exceptions globalization set, it spreads by applying absolute globalization, leaving no exception.

Against a virus that recognizes no borders, all people now unite by distancing from one another, by breaking away, by isolating. This is the virus's tremendous irony. By separating all of us from one another it develops in all of us a common consciousness, a common language, and a common sensibility. People who are accustomed to constantly dividing, conflicting, and squabbling by talking, by standing close to one another, by closing distances, now unite and fuse by moving away from one another thanks to a virus. This sight alone gives the impression that the virus is an intelligent virus doing a very meaningful, consistent, and planned job.

We are all in the same world, and we are all responsible toward one another. So much so that because of the brainless among us we may all perish. That is why, regarding harmful things, we do not have the luxury of saying "this concerns only me." We must be more sensitive and more responsible about where our freedoms touch one another's freedom, and moreover where they call down one another's disaster.

We are all perhaps for the first time exposed to the same trial on this scale, and moreover a trial that strikes us from the same place and unites us despite all our differences and divergences. Yet we do not refrain from splitting apart over our answers to this trial. We do not refrain from turning even this event into an opportunity for our own political gains. Yet we are in a situation in which we should be busy opening our eyes and ears and understanding what this virus is telling us. There is no point in pitting Friday prayer against umrah or nightclubs, European travels against sports matches.

Just look, this virus does not distinguish any of them.

It will not pay off for anyone to try to draw this virus to their side for their own political gains either. It does not look like a virus that can be fooled and drawn to one's side.

Perhaps, now that it has set us apart from one another, it gives us an opportunity to rethink the meaningfulness, value, and validity of our social distances.

How much it unites us while distancing us; we can start from precisely this point.

This invitation actually comes to us every day on some occasion, but for the first time it comes this decisively, this resolutely, and this effectively. It is worthwhile to open our eyes and lend an ear.