By. Slavoj Zizek
Hegel wrote that the only thing we can learn from history is that we learn nothing from history, so I doubt the epidemic will make us any wiser. The only thing that is clear is that the virus will shatter the very foundations of our lives, causing not only an immense amount of suffering but also economic havoc conceivably worse than the Great Recession.
we must recognize that, sometimes, not telling the entire truth to the public can effectively prevent a wave of panic that could lead to more victims.
The really difficult thing to accept is the fact that the ongoing epidemic is a result of natural contingency at its purest, that it just happened and hides no deeper meaning. In the larger order of things, we are just a species with no special importance.
Martin Luther King put it more than half a century ago: “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”
Byung-Chul Han "Driven by the demand to persevere and not to fail, as well as by the ambition of efficiency, we become committers and sacrificers at the same time and enter a swirl of demarcation, self-exploitation and collapse. When production is immaterial, everyone already owns the means of production him- or herself. The neoliberal system is no longer a class system in the proper sense. It does not consist of classes that display mutual antagonism. This is what accounts for the system’s stability.” Han argues that subjects become self-exploiters: “Today, everyone is an auto-exploiting labourer in his or her own enterprise. People are now master and slave in one. Even class struggle has transformed into an inner struggle against oneself.” The individual has become what Han calls “the achievement-subject”; the individual does not believe they are subjugated “subjects” but rather “projects: Always refashioning and reinventing ourselves” which “amounts to a form of compulsion and constraint—indeed, to a more efficient kind of subjectivation and subjugation. As a project deeming itself free of external and alien limitations, the I is now subjugating itself to internal limitations and self-constraints, which are taking the form of compulsive achievement and optimization."
We are bombarded by calls to work from home, in safe isolation. But which groups can do this? Precarious intellectual workers and managers who are able to cooperate through email and teleconferencing, so that even when they are quarantined their work goes on more or less smoothly. They may gain even more time to “exploit ourselves.” But what about those whose work has to take place outside, in factories and fields, in stores, hospitals and public transport? Many things have to take place in the unsafe outside so that others can survive in their private quarantine.
last but not least, we should avoid the temptation to condemn strict self-discipline and dedication to work and propagate the stance of “Just take it easy!”—Arbeit macht frei! (“Work sets you free”) is still the right motto, although it was brutally misused by the Nazis. Yes, there is hard exhaustive work for many who deal with the effects of the epidemics—but it is a meaningful work for the benefit of the community which brings its own satisfaction, not the stupid effort of trying to succeed in the market. When a medical worker gets deadly tired from working overtime, when a caregiver is exhausted by a demanding charge, they are tired in a way that is different from the exhaustion of those driven by obsessive career moves. Their tiredness is worthwhile.
Glossaries:
discernible (Visible). Proximity (Closeness). Corporeal (Bodily,pysical). injuction (ruling, order). protract (continuous). exert (use). impenetrable (unpassable). cadres (kader). undermine (ruin, harm). denounce (criticize, blame). imposture (fraud, deceit). blistering (inveigh, kritik keras). annihilate (destroy). compell (force). retain (hold, keep). onslaught (serangan gencar). slain (killed). lethal (deadly). ruthless (cruel). prevail (dominate). predicament (kondisi sulit). debilitating (weaken). seduce (persuade, tempt). precarious (critical). deceptive (bersifat menipu).
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