18 April

I keep coming back to one insight from Camus. Humans are not free, because there are pestilences. The thing that annoys me most is the choice we're being asked to make between 'normal life' and lockdowns. Normal life is delusional, it's the life Camus talked about, where we pretend we're 'free' and pestilences don't exist. We do mass travel, mass gatherings, mass commuting, mass shopping, mass health care, and come to think this is normal life. It isn't, it's flirting with disaster. (And remembering that many chronic diseases like heart diseases, cancer, Alzheimers are likely also pestilences - microbial.) Imo people should stop trying to paint this as a battle between two ways forward, 'opening up' society again or locking it down. There is only one sensible way forward; to change the way we live to recognise pestilences, permanently. We're inventing some of that right now, in work, education etc. And at every point the 'normal life' people keep trying to tear that down. We can't wait to get back to living like the world is our playground, and nothing will be learned or changed. (P.S. the corner store was smart, anti-pestilence urban design.)