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
They are usually buried deep in official statistics folders, far away from awareness. Death figures are not something anyone likes looking at on a regular, let alone daily, basis. Not even actuaries, presumably.
It changed with Covid-19 (why 19 when the pandemic started in 2020, but that's another question).
Daily death figures are everywhere. They do not make comfortable reading, listening to or talking about. For anyone who lost a relative or a friend, they are horrifically painful. If not, fear for one's own fate is a powerful enough trigger.
Starting with the ancients, not just classical Greece and Rome, death was a topic to ponder and draw wisdom from. Every thing that was left undone, all the words that could have been spoken, the impermanence of life, they were brought to the forefront of consciousness, or so we like to think.
It's not modern philosophers who invented "Memento Mori", nor are these two Latin words widely quoted. How could they be? They are translated as "remember death" or less abstract, "remember that you are mortal".
The current pandemic is generating, among other things, a daily death bulletin board. Does it get registered as we skim through the news? Is anyone looking at these numbers with a statistician's eyes, to understand how much of a killing machine the virus is?
Covid deniers need not read any further. There is a virus taking rounds and not enough is known about it so far.
What can be said for sure is death has become much more of a presence in everyone's life. No idea if this new reality is going to change anything in human behaviour.
Future social historians, you've got your work ready for you.
Comments
Post a Comment