Good Readers,
While people everywhere buckle down for measures to mitigate the effects of the new coronavirus, I thought it would be good to remind people that we’re in the middle of Lent. If you’re not already fasting, consider fasting from fear, but also feast on wisdom.
Even as infections increase across the globe, most of us likely have little to fear from the virus itself. However, the speed of transmission and its spread mean the virus can have an overwhelming effect. It can overwhelm healthcare systems, as it has in Italy, but it can also overwhelm our ability to make sense of things. The virus of fear and misinformation on the internet has been a pandemic for years — COVID-19 just makes it worse.
I’ll keep this edition of GoodLinks short. There’s enough information out there already, but I hope that you’ll read the sober words below. They explain why preparation and little self-denial are love and why people are prone to unhelpful extremes when facing this type of crisis.
It’s difficult to stay off social media during this type of event, but I’m glad I have. If you weren’t considering a social media fast for Lent before, consider it now. A temporary fast could inoculate you to the worst excesses of panic, conspiracy, and dismissal online — none of which are helpful while preparing for a crisis.
For more on this, you can read last week’s discussion on what the goals of fasting should be or a follow up I wrote on Lent, digital fasts, and rightly ordered loves. Right now, we ought to be thinking of our most vulnerable neighbours.
Preparing for Coronavirus to Strike the U.S. - Scientific American
As noted above, I’ve been off social media as part of my Lenten fast, which means I’ve been spared the wildest bombast across the spectrum surrounding COVID-19, the new Coronavirus now officially labelled a pandemic by the WHO. I’ve still done some reading, though, and I recommend “slow news.” Please stay away from 24hr live infection counts and tweets about how the virus is a Chinese weapon. Read this instead:
We should prepare, not because we may feel personally at risk, but so that we can help lessen the risk for everyone. We should prepare not because we are facing a doomsday scenario out of our control, but because we can alter every aspect of this risk we face as a society.
That’s right, you should prepare because your neighbors need you to prepare—especially your elderly neighbors, your neighbors who work at hospitals, your neighbors with chronic illnesses, and your neighbors who may not have the means or the time to prepare because of lack of resources or time.
Why The Virus Spooks Us: A Theory - The Convivial Society
More in line with the usual themes of this newsletter, L.M. Sacasas examines the shared root of coronavirus dread and dismissal: an unspoken belief in humanity’s scientific and technological mastery over nature. Is there any evil in the world besides human frailty or malice?
When the novel coronavirus appears on the horizon, looming in its potential like some ancient plague ready to devastate society, we may be experiencing more than simply a risk to our physical well-being. We are also experiencing an existential rather than intellectual challenge to the assumptions that have ordered the experience of reality in the modern world for generations.
Analog Anchors for the Online Adrift - The New Atlantis
As long as you’re practicing prudence and staying away from large public gatherings, why not take up journaling? If you’re alone and don’t have someone to share your mind with, call a friend (or elderly acquaintance, and ask them if they need anything and save them a trip).
The only way the psychological chaos of the digital mind can be healthily countered is by introducing a stronger communion. I must have some people or some god to go to if I’m going to stop relying on the digital mind to complete my own. Perhaps the greatest social challenge of the coming decades will be the reinvigoration of widespread mind-sharing between actual, embodied, particular people.
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I agree that we can fast from digital interactions that can cause us more anxiety in this time of crisis.