I long for quarantine to be something other than the fantasy of quarantine ending: my fantasy is the end of fantasizing, the embrace of reality, of spiritual realism and self-sufficiency.
I’ve tried to read across as wide a range of disciplines and domains during lockdown. One observation: critical theory isn’t very helpful — contemporary radicals just seem to be talking to themselves, which doesn’t seem very radical. The major insights of contemporary philosophy/theory could be summarized on a 8x11 piece of paper. Much of it is brilliant — but it’s all surface play: academics — however intelligent — talking to themselves, for themselves. It’s almost like there’s a fear of leaving the footnotes out, of stepping outside of the citation ring.
Every nihilist becomes a nihilist by recreating nihilism in disguise.
There’s a desperation across the entire culture matrix for transcendence. Everyone — left right center — promises it in one way or another. The desire is so diverse — and so perverse — that I won’t — and can’t — begin to catalogue it.
Needless to say we invent stupid solutions to stupid problems.
