I have been thinking… about what our time is…
I can’t help but to wonder what the future will make of all this,
the virus, IQ45, the number of deaths, the shutting down of virtually
every American business… the massive unemployment…all of it…
what will future historians or future philosophers write about this
time we are living in… this year of 2020, in April……
they will say, unprecedented times, extraordinary times,
unparalleled times, a singular event……
and they will all be right and they will all be wrong…
are the times we are living in, are they similar to living in a play,
a tragedy like Romeo and Juliet, or perhaps Oedipus Rex or perhaps
Hamlet? if one looks up tragedy online, you get a lot of Greek plays
and some plays by Shakespeare… the only really modern play listed is
“Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller…
have we lost the ability to understand or create a “tragic” play?
is our modern times so tragic that we cannot even produce a “tragic” play
because to do so would be to simply reproduce our modern headlines…
Could I even be able to compare a Greek play, say, Oedipus Rex, with
any sort of modern event which includes our great “tragedy” the pandemic?
can we compare any part of our modern age with the idea of Greek Tragedies or
any sort of modern tragic plays?
the problem lies with the numbers… We cry at the two deaths of Romeo
and Juliet and feel nothing when our modern death toll rises to over 60,000…
which means in three months, we had more deaths then the entire Vietnam war,
which lasted 11 years…but the problem then arises… people who call 60,000 deaths,
a hoax, a fraud designed to deprived them of their civil rights…are we so
selfish that we see 60,000 deaths as some kind of attack upon our person?
it is a plot to take away my rights… they say, but they do not say that they are sorry or
angry that 60,000 people died needlessly or what an injustice was done…
no, they take the massive death toll as some vague attack on their own person…
what will future historians make of this?
60,000 people died and all people could make of it was an personal attack upon
their rights!
that is practically delusional… to turn the deaths of thousands into
a personal attack upon your rights…to say, being told to stay home to protect
lives is an attack upon your freedoms… what kind of selfish are you?
and what will historians make of this type of selfish behavior and words?
how is this even possible?
the deaths of 60,000 people and the only reaction people have is to complain about
their rights?
no wonder we cannot produce any type of tragedies today…
we are so lost and confused as to think that our rights being
curtailed is more important then the deaths of 60,000 people…
there cannot be a tragedy written about this… only a caricature could
be written about a people who think that their rights have more validity then
the deaths of 60,000 people…and that the deaths of 60,000 is a hoax, a fraud,
designed to take away your liberties…
only a comedy could be written about such ignorance…
I tried to see if Aristotle has some words about tragedies, that I might
create some words I could write today… but no… I cannot create
a tragic play or novel on today’s events because we can’t even
feel remorse or pain or regret over the loss of 60,000 lives…
it is a hoax…fake news…… a nothing burger……
I can’t even tell who I feel more sad about,
the 60,000 deaths or the fools who think their feelings
have more value then 60,000 deaths.
who can produce a decent tragedy when people think their
rights have more value then 60,000 deaths…
I have been thinking… and it is pointless because people values are so screwed up
that they believe their rights preempt the deaths of thousands…
how can I write or explain tragedy when people cannot even be moved by
the deaths of 60,000 because it doesn’t fit into their mode of understanding…
it is fake news and they can’t believe anything else…
how are historians going to write about this?
what will history write about us?
that we cannot even grieve for 60,000 people because it might
interfered with our right to visit the solon or coffee shop?
what a sad commentary on the modern world
and a sad commentary about America……
Kropotkin