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- Pandemics reveal moral asymmetries: who we leave to die, who we say must resign themselves, are those we have always left to die. The judgement that was always immanent — these people are less than — becomes manifest.
- And nevertheless, the philosopher in us ought cry out: why was I not prepared to die already?
- The culture of commodification and easy entertainment that spans the globe is anti-noble: it not only does not accept the reality of death, it forces it on others.
- Civil society represses the question, what if orders — in the full, rich meaning of the concept of ‘orders’ — were not obeyed?
- False truths are like false friends: they will not, and cannot, help you in a crisis.
- Just like the American military backs the value and strength of the dollar — fundamentally guarantees it — the dollar, in turn, guarantees our own value — our status — in the ecosystem of liquid capital. That’s why the printing of dollars unnerves us: we feel devalued, destabilized. We realize that we’re pinned to the dollar, and what lies behind. We realize we have nothing else.
- In the pragmatist sense, most academics were always useless and the pandemic is simply making that clear. The literature professor has always stood in-between us and the library shelf and demanded a fee; the economist has always demanded that we call them ‘Oracle’ in exchange for their bad predictions. Now, we can safely move past them — and many others — and live amidst the natural, creative anarchy of…
