Mohammad Fazeli – Lecturer in Sociology
"Homo" is the prefix denoting the typology of human beings. Past human species classified in this way include Homo erectus and Homo habilis, which lived millions of years ago. The only surviving member of this typology is Homo sapiens, the “wise man” who lives on the planet today.
Homo sapiens has relied on the ability to think and create to overcome nature. In the age of Covid-19, however, he must take on a different character: to be housebound. To become “Homo housebound”, in the context of its ancestral lineage.
Homo sapiens has conquered the world, but isolation is the route to survival for Homo housebound. To survive, he must resign from the external world - an undesired result of the accomplishments of Homo sapiens. He must now adapt to and practice home living, and even make changes to the nature of his house.
Homo housebound must provide a place to change clothes by the front door, and perhaps a bathroom behind the entrance to keep the viruses out of the house. To survive, he now has to practice hours of entertainment at home, read books, listen to music, surf the Internet, and even exercise at home. Homo housebound must learn to tolerate each other in close proximity.
Homo housebound needs new institutions, technologies, interests, behaviors and habits. His dependence on the Internet increases, and his desires and sensitivities change. He can no longer go to restaurants, gyms or even religious ceremonies. He gets used to living through cyberspace in order to survive, and he who rejects the new way of life puts his life in danger.
Homo housebound needs institutions that minimize the need to leave the home: organizations that are telework-based. A new class order may be formed on the basis of the distinction between jobs suitable for teleworking (possibly white-collars) and others. Homo sapiens conquered the world, expanded tourism, and created a variety of human gatherings (conferences, stadiums, theaters, cinemas, weddings, mourning, marches, etc.). Homo housebound gets stuck at home and experiences his world in isolation.
Homo housebound conflicts with Homo sapiens in the philosophy of life. The pleasures of Homo sapiens lie in the hustle and bustle of collective presence, overcoming nature, and extroversion, while Homo housebound creeps inward to survive. Life becomes difficult or life-threatening for humans who are extroverted and have no way inward. Homo sapiens strives to build a secure and trustable world, and Homo housebound experiences and institutionalizes coexistence with distrust of everything. Those in closest proximity become untrustable under the threat of virus.
Homo sapiens has struggled for centuries to forget death from life, while Homo housebound actively adapts to ever-present risk of death. "Living with death" becomes part of his experience. Homo housebound experiences loneliness not only in life but also in death. Collective mourning is as taboo as weddings and any collective ceremonies.
In the words of Marx, Homo sapiens worked "together" to change the world. Homo housebound distances from others in order to survive, while the world changes, some becomes poorer, more unequality and more prone to violence. The perception of life expectancy changes. Death before one’s time has become common and expected, as it was in old times.
Showing off becomes unnecessary. There is no wedding or celebration to flaunt clothes and fashion or the grandeur of one’s house. Homo housebound does not even offer the glory of his house to guests and may live more unpretentiously. Even the perception of physical beauty changes. What is beauty behind a mask?
Norms and power relations, systems of social control, consumption patterns, structures of political interaction, patterns of formation and transmission of emotions, depth of bonds, capacity for political protest, and anything of the kind created by Homo sapiens is subject to change. The Homo housebound way of life creates new manifestations and meanings in such things
If a vaccine is not provided and Covid-19 does not disappear, Homo sapiens must theorize and institutionalize living as Homo housebound. Sociology, political science, economics, public policy, and other sciences must change. They must cater to and describe a new world order under Homo housebound. Man, as a social animal, is now undergoing change and demanding new science.
@fazeli_mohammad
Mo_fazeli@sbu.ac.ir
