Existential Givens in the COVID-19 Crisis

Abstract

COVID-19 confronts humanity with an undeniable, unprecedented crisis. The focus of this article is the opportunities it offers for a proverbial pressing of the reset button by prompting pause and reflection on habitual patterns and serving as an “urgent experience” with the potential to spark revitalizing intentionality. Using Greening’s four dialectical existential givens— life/death, community/isolation, freedom/determinism, and meaning/absurdity—as a guiding framework, I explore imbalances in aspects of life in the United States that have been illuminated by COVID-19. Then, I employ existential–humanistic theorizing and research as a vision of how these dialectical forces can be transcended by confronting paradoxes posed by these givens (vs. simplistically overemphasizing either their positive or their negative aspects) and by activating the creative potential therein. Specifically, COVID-19 offers opportunities for individuals to relinquish an unsustainable and ineffective way of being inherent in and reinforced by the U.S. cultural narrative; to embrace ambiguity and tragedy; to actively identify, remediate, and reconcile underacknowledged and underactualized human capacities; and therefore to heal false dichotomies and become more capable of living fully, authentically, and flexibly. Accordingly, COVID-19 also provides opportunities for collective co-creation of a cultural narrative involving evolution toward enhanced senses of consciousness and caring.