TPO#9: We're in Deep Now
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So. Hello. How are you all?
I've been (very) sporadically checking in with people these recent weeks. On my usually quiet Facebook account, I've occasionally asked people how they are and 30 or 40 comments quickly pop up. It's heartening for a number of reasons, and also a little funny, given that most of my friends aren't the most online people in the world. Everyone seems to have turned to the screen as a form of intimacy — as a way to stitch ourselves into a broader sense of the "the social" that exists out there but is, in a rather novel way, now out of reach.
But that kind of inversion is to be expected in times like these. Among the many strange things about our current moment is the way everything has turned into a loaded decision, each day now filled with unexpected calculus. In my own life, it was whether I came home to stay with my parents who are 73 and 81 — a rather bizarre choice between the sensible advice to stay away from the elderly, and my father's slightly panicked questioning: "who will look after us if something happens?" — and for good or ill, I succumbed to the emotional pressure of the latter. Thus far we are all fine, and I'm tempted to joke that the real risk appears to be less the virus and more that we might murder each other... but the longer this goes on, the more worried I am, and the more I regret coming here.
But it feels like everything these days is a weighted decision. Is it ok to go to grocery store? Should you order something from Amazon? Is it ok to handle the mail or is that totally paranoid? Should you get takeout to support a local business, or are you exploiting the gig workers who'll end up delivering your food? It's a miasma.
In one sense, that calculus feels of a part with the weirdness of the current moment. But in another, it sort of reveals that life is in fact a cumulative series of ethical decisions about our impact on the world. You can't deal with the consequence of everything you do; you'd go nuts. But for people like me, who perhaps slip a little too easily into the comfort of their own life, it is a reminder to think about the impact of, well, being alive. In the era of both the pandemic, but also climate change, that seems the stark reality of life, and worth remembering.
A Retro Moment
Our current era of remakes bores me to tears. For example: I am so tired of the endless barrage of retro content that I have entirely ignored Picard, a show laser-targeted at people at those, like me, who grew up on ST:TNG. So, you'd think that turns to the past would frustrate me. But, a recent happening that has left me feeling good has been ~something like a return of blogging.
Writers Bijan Stephen and Kyle Chayka started Indoor Voices at the start of all this, for blogging while everyone was killing time at home. I'm charmed by how retro it feels: not that it's backward-looking, but rather, that it is casual, personal, reflective, scattershot... and thus, bloggy. It's nice. Sure, it inevitably ended up being a lot of the usual voices you'd expect from an NYC media thing, but that's not bad in and of itself.
It does make me think: I love writing this newsletter (truly) but what often makes me slightly uncomfortable is that, because it shows up in people's email inboxes, it feels like an imposition. I wonder if it isn't better to simply start blogging again — to say to people, "here just go to this website, I wrote again."
The traditional thinking is that blogging was killed by social media, and that seems quite true. There's a reason that bloggers, writers, and academics in particular gravitated toward Twitter; it scratches that specific itch of providing a platform, engagement... and drama. But perhaps we are starting to come out the other side of something — that the noise of social media pushes some to return to something a little more quiet, personal, and hopefully, weird.
Viral Links
I think we can all agree I'm going to hell for that subheading. But I suspect I am not alone in looking for things to make sense of the current moment. It's hard to do, because we are right in the middle of something (or, god forbid, at the beginning of it). But I'm still looking for smart things to help at least ground myself at a time of great uncertainty.
So here are three. At ole' standby Real Life, Rob Horning writes on the theatre that accompanies both the individual and state response to the virus — something Rob calls "posing with the coronavirus flag." Rob:
It depressingly feels as though everything I do is merely symbolic, photo ops for structuring my own unfolding story, but there is no way to tell for sure. There is no unilateral move one can make that would make the difference, and no view from above from which you can always tell who is merely posing with the flag and who is really part of a team of responders.
At Verso — which, btw, has an amazing sale of 80% off on a whole bunch of ebooks right now — Judith Butler (yeah) writes on the pandemic and the limits of global capitalism.
The imperative to isolate coincides with a new recognition of our global interdependence during the new time and space of pandemic. On the one hand, we are asked to sequester ourselves in family units, shared dwelling spaces, or individual domiciles, deprived of social contact and relegated to spheres of relative isolation; on the other hand, we are faced with a virus that swiftly crosses borders, oblivious to the very idea of national territory.
And in Jacobin, Mike Davis writes about the way in which the virus will likely end up exacerbating inter-societal and international inequalities.
This history — especially the unknown consequences of interactions with malnutrition and existing infections — should warn us that COVID-19 might take a different and more deadly path in the dense, sickly slums of Africa and South Asia. With cases now appearing in Lagos, Kigali, Addis Ababa, and Kinshasa, no one knows (and won’t know for a long time because of the absence of testing) how it may synergize with local health conditions and diseases. Some have claimed that because the urban population of Africa is the world’s youngest, the pandemic will only have a mild impact. In light of the 1918 experience, this is a foolish extrapolation, as is the assumption that the pandemic, like seasonal flu, will recede with warmer weather. (Tom Hanks just got the virus in Australia where it’s still summer.)
That's it for this round. I hope you are keeping well and that you are yours are healthy and safe. Until next time, friends. Be in touch.