Michael Lee
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We never anticipate tragedy and suffering before they arise. — Michael Lee

That certainly seems to be the philosophy of conservative America. We really have to get away from that notion. There is no need for holding off planning a response to a catastrophe until after the catastrophe hits you on the head like a sledge hammer. At least some planning for "probable or likely" catastrophes (Like plagues that have regularly occurred on planet Earth) should be done BEFORE they hit.

Everything either costs money or effort, or restrictive laws or great impedence to daily comfort, or all of these at the same time.

Ofcourse we should have some preparations for plagues and any given possible bad event.

However people only have so much they can handle in terms of effort or money expenditures, and we are all going to die some day anyway.

Its a matter of balance.

Which political party gets to decide how close to the threshold of 99.9999% no risk of plagues/catastrophe, that we should go to on that spectrum?

What a bad way to view life, as 'not a hospital'. Given that you do things right, such as not having unprotected sex with someone unhealthy, you won't catch a disease. Coronovirus doesn't contradict me. For lot's it was only a phase and it is largely media hyper.

We are like the very organisms that sicken and pollute us.

Healing contradicts Albert.

Some of us, have a good set of genetics, and immune system. I'm not the same as everyone concerning coronovirus. People like me, are less likely to become infected.

If we kept the planet clean we would probably experience less disease and emergencies.

I, as life, am offended to be 'not a hospital'.

Hospitals are nothing without doctors and nurses; medication comes from the Earth.

There is nothing wrong with how the planet works.

We never anticipate tragedy and suffering before they arise. — Michael Lee

Great video, and I love Camus and his attitude. I recovered recently from what was probably COVID-19. Since I wasn't hospitalized or rich, I didn't get a test. In any case, I was as sick as I've been in many years. I could hardly get out of bed, so I kept up with the news. The unpleasant symptoms and the folly of human beings (from which I do not exempt myself) took me to some dark places. It was only because loved one's depended on me that I was afraid to disappear.

Don't get me wrong.I didn't want to drown in my own lungs. I didn't want more stupid pain. But nonexistence was appealing. I'm young enough to still have dreams but old enough for those dreams to be no longer large or important enough to tie me desperately to this earth. A person slowly faces their smallness in the scheme of things as they age, which perhaps you know. The dead are soon forgotten, for the living are charged with all the usual greed and fear that the dead once were.

Camus and the video try to be positive. And maybe there's even a Christian message (in the best sense) in the suggestion that a plague can shake us from our hard-heartedness and dollar-chasing games of status. At the same time, as humans we take great pleasure in our projects. We live in the future. And I think we do anticipate tragedy and suffering to some degree, if reluctantly, in order to dodge them. The video suggests a kind of sensualism or seizing the moment as a way to live with the truth of our absurd vulnerability. I can relate to that, but in dark moments it's one more bogus comfort. Our going on looks like irrational instinct. 'The poor keep breeding more slaves.' The proles are prolific. I'm not saying it's wrong. I just thought of us crowded in cities, many living with no savings, no property. A massive, fragile system. So collectively I agree that we refuse to anticipate tragedy and suffering. Now that I'm physically healthy, I coming to terms with the social vibe of the world, trapped at home but lucky enough to work online at least.

Strange times.

The Plague is a great novel. Like many others, it can be interpreted in many different ways, but Camus' main intention was political. The Plague is a parable about the Nazi occupation of France and a warning about the danger of Stalinism. Camus made this more explicit in his next work L'état de siège. Sartre criticized him for making a metaphor based on an abstract danger when the responsibility of Nazism was human. The careless European citizens who turned their backs on the resistible rise of Hitler (Arturo Ui in Brecht's play) were guilty of more than frivolity. They were also guilty in other sense of stupidity and selfishness. They thought they were saving themselves while Hitler was killing Communists, Jews, Gypsies and others. "First he came after the communists, but I'm not a communist...", you know the story.

The criticism against the novel seems to me too exaggerated but there is some point to it. Like many leaders in Europe - including Churchill - Europeans thought it was enough to give the beast something to eat to be sure. From an indecent position - in Camus' words - came devastation for all.

I believe that current civilized public opinion is similar. We have turned the Corona-virus into a calamity of fate, a more or less unpredictable natural force, and all we care about is whether we were prepared for the inevitable war against an invisible enemy. My question is: Do we have any responsibility for the plague? Is our way of life responsible for it in any way? The mass production of meat, the dismantling of health care, the overpopulation of the suburbs... advanced capitalism has nothing to do with it?

We can say no and go straight ahead towards the following plague... or the ultimate end: global warming.

Don't worry. Be happy playing martian wars in your console. Nothing really important happens outside.

Oh, yeah. You have to buy a shotgun too. It's the best weapon against the tsunami.

:mask:

We have turned the Corona-virus into a calamity of fate, a more or less unpredictable natural force, and all we care about is whether we were prepared for the inevitable war against an invisible enemy. My question is: Do we have any responsibility for the plague? Is our way of life responsible for it in any way? The mass production of meat, the dismantling of health care, the overpopulation of the suburbs... advanced capitalism has nothing to do with it? — David Mo

Mauvaise foi, eh?


:death: :flower:

We never anticipate tragedy and suffering before they arise. — Michael Lee

Hobbes, The State of Nature, And Locked Doors

Perhaps it's not that we fail to anticipate tragedy; maybe it's just that the tragedy that befalls us is not the one we anticipated.

Mauvaise foi, eh? — 180 Proof

That's just.