From the outset, this pandemic was an affront to the idea of unlimited Progress, our ability to dominate nature through science and technology, through our pragmatic ingenuity. But then nature (or perhaps science itself) threw a virus at us that we fundamentally couldn't control.
This is one reason why natural immunity cannot be acknowledged as a major contribution to herd immunity and the pathway out of the pandemic. For us to reassert the idea of Progress requires that the solution be of our own making--scientific progress must offer the sole fix.
So, in the name of Progress, we forbade socializing, forbade encountering others face-to-face, forbade working unless the work could be technologically mediated or was necessary for bare biological survival. For the first time since Antigone, we forbade burying our dead.
Progress?
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
