#auspol #covid19 much of this pandemic is playing out as Camus would have predicted. Only a novel comes close…
#auspol #covid19 much of this pandemic is playing out as Camus would have predicted. Only a novel comes close to capturing the full complexity of social life. Some excerpts in Tweets, today about illness and life in an ‘Economy’. /1 https://t.co/d6lMuVtnQl
“Perhaps the easiest way of making a town’s acquaintance is to ascertain how the people in it work, how they love, and how they die…Out citizens work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich. Their chief interest is in commerce, and their chief aim in life is…/2
…as they call it, ‘doing business’. Naturally they don’t eschew such simpler pleasures as love-making, seabathing, going to the pictures. But, very sensibly, they reserve these pastimes for Saturday afternoons and Sundays and employ the rest of the week in making money…/3
…, as much as possible…Certainly nothing is commoner nowadays than to see people working from morn till night and then proceeding to fritter away at card-tables, in cafes and in small-talk what time is left for living. /4
What is more exceptional in our town is the difficulty one may experience there in dying. “Difficulty,” perhaps, is not the right word, ‘discomfort’ would come nearer. Being ill’s never agreeable but there are towns that stand by you, so to speak, when you are sick; /5
in which you can, after a fashion, let yourself go. But…the exigencies of business…the very nature of its pleasures call for good health. An invalid feels out of it there.” /6
As Camus astutely recognises, living in an ‘Economy’ confines poor health to hospitals. Health and poor health cease becoming part of everyday social life, instead delegated to the medical system, to allow commerce to continue uninterrupted. /7
From the very beginning of this pandemic, those politicians who substitute an economy for society have been consistent. They see their role as making enough hospital beds available. Nothing else. Every day the NSW Premier talks about restoring our ‘freedom’ to work. QED. /end