| Submit your comments on this article |
| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| The luxury of apocalypticism |
| 2020-03-24 |
| [Spiked] People’s refusal to panic has been a great source of frustration for the establishment in recent years. ’The planet is burning’, they lie, in relation to climate change, and yet we do not weep or wail or even pay very much attention. ’I want you to panic’, instructs the newest mouthpiece of green apocalypticism, Greta Thunberg, and yet most of us refuse to do so. A No Deal Brexit would unleash economic mayhem, racist pogroms and even a pandemic of super-gonorrhoea, they squealed, incessantly, like millenarian preachers balking at the imminent arrival of the lightning bolt of final judgement, and yet we didn’t flinch. We went to work. We went home. We still supported Brexit. This strange, fascinating tension between the apocalypticism of the intellectual and cultural elites and the scepticism of ordinary people is coming into play in the Covid-19 crisis. Of course, Covid-19 is very different to both No Deal Brexit and climate change. It is a serious medical and social crisis. In contrast, the idea that leaving the EU without a deal would be the greatest crisis to befall Britain since the Luftwaffe dropped its deadly cargo on us was nothing more than political propaganda invented from pure cloth. And the notion that climate change is an End Times event, rather than a practical problem that can be solved with tech, especially the rollout of nuclear power, is little more than the prejudice of Malthusian elites who view the very project of modernity as an intemperate expression of speciesist supremacy by mankind. The media are at the forefront of stirring up apocalyptic dread over Covid-19. In Europe, there is also a performative apocalypticism in some of the more extreme clampdowns on everyday life and social engagement by the political authorities, in particular in Italy, Spain and France. Many governments seem to be driven less by a reasoned, evidence-fuelled strategy of limiting both the spread of the disease and the disorganisation of economic life, than by an urge to be seen to be taking action. They seem motivated more by an instinct to perform the role of worriers about apocalypse, for the benefit of the dread-ridden cultural elites, rather than by the responsibility to behave as true moral leaders who might galvanise the public in a collective mission against illness and a concerted effort to protect economic life. A key problem with this performative apocalypticism is that it fails to think through the consequences of its actions. So obsessed are today’s fashionable doom-predictors with offsetting what they see as the horrendous consequences of human behaviour ‐ whether it’s our polluting activities or our wrong-headed voting habits ‐ that they fail to factor in the consequences of their own agenda of fear. Greens rarely think about the devastating consequences of their anti-growth agenda on under-developed parts of the world. The Remainer elite seemed utterly impervious to warnings that their irrational contempt for the Leave vote threatened the standing of democracy itself. And likewise, the performative warriors against Covid-19 seem far too cavalier about the longer-term economic, social and political consequences of what they are doing. |
| Posted by:M. Murcek |
| #16 This has probably already appeared on The 'burg, but it seems appropriate here. To paraphrase CS Lewis: “This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by a virus, let that virus when it comes find us doing sensible and human things, but with social distancing in the near term to slow it down — teaching remotely, reading, listening to music on our stereos, bathing the children, exercising at home, chatting to our friends over a video conference — not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about viruses. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.” |
| Posted by: Rex Mundi 2020-03-24 12:50 |
| #15 You'll only know if they can't hide the smoke. Because what I'm hearing is that robbery and assault are already happening at store parking lots in the 'nice neighborhoods'. Only Black Friday level stuff, but still. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2020-03-24 12:28 |
| #14 I’m curious about thevery near term effects of cashflow in the dense urban array and how much longer they remain at “normal” levels of violence. The assumption among law enforcement seems to have been that the entitlement support system coupled with small levels of actual commerce were supported clandestinely by massive amounts of drug trade. A purely cash business. With the massive drop in employment and public self-isolation, reducing the drug customer base cash flow into these areas, when will shortages produce criminal violence for basic commodities I am actually surprised it has been so tranquil but wonder if that is due to under-reporting by the MSM? |
| Posted by: NoMoreBS 2020-03-24 11:58 |
| #13 Market's soaring now. It'll tank again a couple times more and bounce around in the next couple of weeks, but if the Trump/Cuomo balanced approach gets implemented during these next few weeks, then the markets will have hit bottom and confidence will soon come back. I'm betting it will happen by end of April -- perhaps when we see leveling off of the spike in unemployment claims in that month's report. |
| Posted by: Lex 2020-03-24 10:13 |
| #12 Actually Crusader there's good news (no snark): policymajers are clearly moving in your/my/our direction on this issue. The evidence is that the political stock of Governor Cuomo -- the prime advocate now for what Dr. David Katz of Yale calls a balanced and "vertical" or "surgical" approach -- Cuomo is soaring now in the eyes of Democratic Party insiders. There's a lot of talk now that he should be the Dems' nominee. Be patient. The rest of the crew will come around in due course. |
| Posted by: Lex 2020-03-24 10:09 |
| #11 Well don't worry about it too much, there was a genius on here just yesterday assuring us that shutting down the world economy won't lead to bankruptcies or economic ruin, so I guess we can all just take a couple of months off economically and all will be well while income slows to a crawl. |
| Posted by: Crusader 2020-03-24 10:02 |
| #10 When it's gonna cost 100 million to save one life (of those likely to die soon anyway of other causes). Colour me suspicious about this. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2020-03-24 09:47 |
| #9 /\ It's not the model, it's simply those living inside the model. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2020-03-24 08:41 |
| #8 We are facing a huge change in our society. The big city model is dying, or at least changing. |
| Posted by: ruprecht 2020-03-24 08:37 |
| #7 Words fail. Would you prefer two months of complete isolation worldwide by all of humanity to get by this one? |
| Posted by: Raj 2020-03-24 08:36 |
| #6 Did we learn nothing, nothing at all, from the over-emotional, over-hasty, ill-advised botchjob reactions to 811 and to the 2008 financial panic? Nothing? I ask: Is it worth it? Ah'm starting to think that if you get the bug, it will have been worth it. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2020-03-24 08:26 |
| #5 Everything in life comes down to the real vs the ideal. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2020-03-24 08:11 |
| #4 ...death panels (c)Sarah Palin |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2020-03-24 08:06 |
| #3 But is it worth it to destroy our children's hopes for a better life in order to prolong their grandparents' lives a few years? Is it worth it to ruin 50 million, 80 million, 100 million lives to prolong the lives of ten or twenty thousand elderly Americans? Words fail. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2020-03-24 03:25 |
| #2 *9/11 |
| Posted by: Lex 2020-03-24 00:15 |
| #1 Stop this panic. Let us breathe, and think, and look beyond the moment. All of us will die; our elderly parents will die at some point; we too will (if we're lucky) live to their age before we pass into the next world. But is it worth it to destroy our children's hopes for a better life in order to prolong their grandparents' lives a few years? Is it worth it to ruin 50 million, 80 million, 100 million lives to prolong the lives of ten or twenty thousand elderly Americans? Did we learn nothing, nothing at all, from the over-emotional, over-hasty, ill-advised botchjob reactions to 811 and to the 2008 financial panic? Nothing? I ask: Is it worth it? |
| Posted by: Lex 2020-03-24 00:15 |