It's so easy to become offended. It actually comes pretty natural. Someone says something. You feel it's directed at you Strong reaction follows No need to react, it's got nothing to do with you as a person Imagine some remarks about academic work versus manual one, a bit dismissive about the latter. You don't have a degree and never wanted one. You know very well it takes years of experience and training to do what you're doing. Talent is involved too, as some people do have "two left hands". You still feel you should add something to the conversation, but not sure if it is going to be well-received. No need to enlighten the other party right now Most people think in terms of opposites. If it's not this, it's that and it can't be anything else. Certainty of one's convictions is also a form of self-reassurance that everything is stable in one's world. Other points of view cannot be allowed because they are disruptive. Cognitive disrup...
If a 4-year old can ask a parent who has just sneezed :"Have you got the virus?", something has definitely changed in the world.
The new player on the stage ( I know, Shakespeare has said it before, "all the world's a stage"), this new player is terribly feared and ferociously pursued.
It's both fast and evasive, it carries no ID (do scientists know something we don't?), it can kill. It does kill and maim.
For short, more than just a bloody nuisance. Fleeing communism or fascism or any -ism used to involve crossing some form of physical border, risking life and limb.
No point anymore in viewing the other side of any border as a safe space.
The Virus has made sure old perceptions have become totally useless, even dangerous. It loves ridiculing us, the whole lot.
Take that "There's safety in numbers". Gotta be joking, no?
Is it still true that "No man is an island "? (I know, just quoting John Donne, full poem on this site.)
Not true. Everyone is and has to stay an island till the Virus has either completed its karmic cycle or it's beaten back by the Vaccine.
Writers have a very difficult task ahead. They can write ad nauseam (I know a bit of Latin too) about the V-factor. They can revive Romanticism or other literary Golden Age. They can just devote a lot more time to reading than writing.
Which one will prevail?
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