Life in the Anthropocene

SARS-CoV-2 has penetrated our world. Here in Central Europe, it has drastically changed our everyday lives and society. We have never experienced such a situation before and we have yet to develop a language to discuss it. People are even talking about a war against the virus. But against which enemy is this war actually being waged?

-  Bernd Scherer

Researchers debate whether viruses even constitute living beings. Although they are capable of reproduction, this is only possible with a host that provides the environment where they reproduce and sometimes also mutate. The virus merely contains the code that controls the process of replication and replication, but lacks an independent metabolic process. In this sense, viruses cannot be classed as organisms acting independently or as living beings – which implies warfare cannot kill off viruses, but merely interrupt their replication.

In the case of the current pandemic, human cells become hosts for the coronavirus. The virus begins to replicate in these cells; the human becomes the virus’s host. Here, human ways of life, processes of economic exchange and political structures are the real media transmitting the virus. The significance of the virus itself as a biological entity is minimal. Its meaning derives from its carriers, without whom it cannot exist.

The cultural and social role of the coronavirus becomes clear when viewed against the background of its biological existence. It embeds itself into a host – in this case humans, who are transforming the planet during the current epoch, known as the Anthropocene. Now, the coronavirus has disrupted the governing principles of the Anthropocene world. Or to put it more precisely, humans – with the help of their guest, the virus – are subjecting the Anthropocene world they have created to a stress test. It is not a process humans intended. In this process, humans are first and foremost a species in nature, both carriers and spreaders of viruses that attack the man-made world.