What do you think?
Rate this book
Este virus que nos vuelve locos
Antes de la llegada del coronavirus, la humanidad ha vivido pandemias más letales, pero, hasta ahora, nunca se había confinado a escala global ni había dado pie a tanta retórica obsesiva.
En este libro, el reconocido filósofo frances Bernard-Henri Levy intenta hacer un balance de este Primer Pavor Mundial, que nos ha dejado una realidad más inverosímil que la ficción. Levy no aborda aquí lo que el virus ha "dicho", sino lo que el mundo le ha hecho decir. No le interesan las "lecciones" que hay que extraer de la pandemia, sino el delirio interpretativo de cada uno como augur del "mundo de despues" en un momento en que está solo consigo mismo. Un "mundo de despues" secuestrado por dos fuerzas. Por un lado, los "rentistas de la muerte" y los tiranos persuasivos que aprovecharán esta emergencia sanitaria y el delirio higienista para ahogar a sus pueblos o expandir su imperio. Y, por otro, los Ódeclinistas", los que optan por el decrecimiento, los Ócolapsólogos" y otros adalides de la penitencia, que disfrazan su egoísmo de autosacrificio y, so pretexto de que nada debe "volver a ser como antes", pasan sin pena alguna el duelo por las mejores virtudes de la civilización occidental.
El autor teme que los paladines del confinamiento, adictos al espacio virtual y a las pantallas, le cojan el gusto a la vida retirada y se despidan del mundo por mucho tiempo.
En este libro, el reconocido filósofo frances Bernard-Henri Levy intenta hacer un balance de este Primer Pavor Mundial, que nos ha dejado una realidad más inverosímil que la ficción. Levy no aborda aquí lo que el virus ha "dicho", sino lo que el mundo le ha hecho decir. No le interesan las "lecciones" que hay que extraer de la pandemia, sino el delirio interpretativo de cada uno como augur del "mundo de despues" en un momento en que está solo consigo mismo. Un "mundo de despues" secuestrado por dos fuerzas. Por un lado, los "rentistas de la muerte" y los tiranos persuasivos que aprovecharán esta emergencia sanitaria y el delirio higienista para ahogar a sus pueblos o expandir su imperio. Y, por otro, los Ódeclinistas", los que optan por el decrecimiento, los Ócolapsólogos" y otros adalides de la penitencia, que disfrazan su egoísmo de autosacrificio y, so pretexto de que nada debe "volver a ser como antes", pasan sin pena alguna el duelo por las mejores virtudes de la civilización occidental.
El autor teme que los paladines del confinamiento, adictos al espacio virtual y a las pantallas, le cojan el gusto a la vida retirada y se despidan del mundo por mucho tiempo.
124 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2020
84 people are currently reading
381 people want to read
About the author
Bernard-Henri Lévy
107 books241 followersBernard-Henri Lévy is a philosopher, activist, filmmaker, and author of more than thirty books including The Genius of Judaism, American Vertigo, Barbarism with a Human Face, and Who Killed Daniel Pearl? His writing has appeared extensively in publications throughout Europe and the United States. His documentaries include Peshmerga, The Battle of Mosul, The Oath of Tobruk, and Bosna! Lévy is cofounder of the antiracist group SOS Racisme and has served on diplomatic missions for the French government.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 81 reviews
August 2, 2020
The Virus in the Age of Madness is the English translation of prominent French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy’s latest book-length essay. At 128 pages, it packs a powerful punch and his Diogenes-inspired worldview tallies very much with my own. As Friedrich Nietzsche once stated — ”Cynicism is the only form in which common souls come close to honesty”, and this book is a product of both Lévy’s rampant cynicism as well as the traits of critical thinking and analysis and is eye-opening and fascinating in equal measure. Picking it up is likely a redundant idea if you enjoy living life in blissful ignorance and are apathetic to the reality of our world and its politics. That said, if you enjoy challenging ideas, questioning official stories and looking deep into the truth behind the facades in these troubling times then this tour de force is at once inimitable and unmissable.
Lévy reminds readers that the situations in which we can generally learn the most about homo sapiens and their thought processes are those most appropriately described as ’crises’. However, although many people would consider the emergence of COVID-19 as the ’crisis’, the author would perhaps also use the same terminology for the incisive and often provocative discourse he provides as an illustration of the ubiquitous and seemingly incontrovertible truth, and it is far from pleasant — we are being exploited. He suggests that in relation to our current health ‘crisis’, we the public are being manipulated and would-be autocrats are using the reality of the global coronavirus pandemic to further their ideologies right under our very noses. It makes for startling but necessary reading and is accompanied by a cornucopia of objective examples.
This profound intervention passionately reminds us of our commitment to each other and responsibility across the globe, our need to look out and not shut down. Lévy engages personally with the sights and sounds, the values and meaning of a world transformed by pandemic and draws lessons for the long term. The icing on the cake is that for both the French and the English editions, Lévy is donating his proceeds to organisations supporting independent bookshops. Many thanks to Yale University Press for an ARC.
Lévy reminds readers that the situations in which we can generally learn the most about homo sapiens and their thought processes are those most appropriately described as ’crises’. However, although many people would consider the emergence of COVID-19 as the ’crisis’, the author would perhaps also use the same terminology for the incisive and often provocative discourse he provides as an illustration of the ubiquitous and seemingly incontrovertible truth, and it is far from pleasant — we are being exploited. He suggests that in relation to our current health ‘crisis’, we the public are being manipulated and would-be autocrats are using the reality of the global coronavirus pandemic to further their ideologies right under our very noses. It makes for startling but necessary reading and is accompanied by a cornucopia of objective examples.
This profound intervention passionately reminds us of our commitment to each other and responsibility across the globe, our need to look out and not shut down. Lévy engages personally with the sights and sounds, the values and meaning of a world transformed by pandemic and draws lessons for the long term. The icing on the cake is that for both the French and the English editions, Lévy is donating his proceeds to organisations supporting independent bookshops. Many thanks to Yale University Press for an ARC.
July 24, 2020
É o post de Facebook mais longo que li na vida. Alguns dos argumentos apresentados são dignos do pensamento mais básico das redes sociais - redes essas que o autor tanto critica, mas que parece ter-se deixado afectar por elas. E é o pináculo do efeito nefasto da actualidade na literatura, que cada vez mais vive dos fenómenos da moda cuja atenção mediática apenas um par de dias. A facilidade com que hoje se publica um livro leva a uma rapidez do seu consumo e ao seu rápido envelhecimento. Mas um pensamento de rápido consumo parece que não funciona nas páginas de um livro - que é, pelo menos, a impressão para a eternidade (figurada) do pensamento do seu autor, ou seja, o seu conteúdo interessará mais do que no mês que se segue à sua publicação. Uma boa parte das coisas que Lévy aponta já não têm interesse para os tempos que correm: tudo o que envolveu o confinamento e o que as pessoas disseram e fizeram já passou. No turbilhão de informação criada pela covid, estas coisas tornam-se no livro apenas datadas. No entanto, há alguns pontos que o autor levanta que são interessantes e reveladores para o futuro: quais serão os efeitos secundários do medo propagado de forma generalizada.
January 1, 2023
C’est une œuvre remarquable et une lecture courageuse du confinement étatique de Covid, de la politique du coronavirus et des illusions qui ont arrivé aux masses.
J’ai été touché par les efforts indéfectibles et incessants de Lévy qui ont fin de démasquer la peur et le souci de la santé publique en tant qu’effort orchestré et collectif par tant de personnes au sein de la gauchvisant la liberté des français, la foi et les temples de culte.
J’étais en larmes au dernier chapitre, et ça ne m'arrive jamais! c’est encore pourquoi il fallait résister, coûte que coûte, à ce vent de folie qui souffle sur le monde
J’ai été touché par les efforts indéfectibles et incessants de Lévy qui ont fin de démasquer la peur et le souci de la santé publique en tant qu’effort orchestré et collectif par tant de personnes au sein de la gauchvisant la liberté des français, la foi et les temples de culte.
J’étais en larmes au dernier chapitre, et ça ne m'arrive jamais! c’est encore pourquoi il fallait résister, coûte que coûte, à ce vent de folie qui souffle sur le monde
August 10, 2020
Living with the Coronavirus is like living in an echo chamber, listening to the reverberations of one's own thoughts. Except the world outside our chamber is equally obsessed with the virus. Daily case counts, positivity ratios, deaths, hospital beds being used, we watch the numbers like an ICU nurse monitoring a patient’s vital signs. Meanwhile the same world we left before we entered the world of the Coronavirus is spinning onward. Atmospheric CO2 is increasing, species are becoming extinct, children in Asia and Africa and South America are dying of hunger, autocrats are solidifying their holds and abolishing democracy, the world spins on. What are we to do? We’re stuck in our houses—unless we are Black or Hispanic essential workers, or first responders, or homeless people who have no houses, or refugees who lost their houses—living within a virtual reality of biased newscasts, medical and epidemiological experts who predict an even more dire future, and we obsess. When will I be able to go out for a beer, take another cruise, go to Costco without feeling murderously hateful toward those morons walking around the store with their face masks below their noses?
When French Philosopher, Bernard-Henri Lévy masturbates, the lettered world can’t help watching. In his new book, The Virus in the Age of Madness, he demonstrates why we watch his self-indulgence with such fascination: he is an exhibitionist. If it were anyone else, I would describe the book as a rant. But of course philosophers don’t rant, they expound, they expatiate, they pontificate. It doesn’t matter that Lévy is frustrated that he has to stay at home, that nobody cares about his favorite causes, that pantomathic brilliance of his sort has been surpassed by medical expertise as the reigning god in the mind of the people. He isn’t just throwing a tantrum, he is treating us to insights. So he reacts as he does to almost everything else: he tells us what’s on his mind, coated with a layer of cynicism, wit and searing anger.
Voyeur that I am, I was unable to put the book down once I began reading. Egoist as I am, as a writer, I was continually struck by the thought, “why couldn’t I have said it the way he did?” His imagery, his ability to relate his arguments to ideas of the ages, his facility with language, even in translation, are awesome, as we have come to expect. And he has some true insights. For at least a moment, he took my mind off our local crisis and my own concern with my health to think about the wider world, which has suffered more than I ever will, was suffering that way before the virus, and will suffer doubly so, after the virus. He’d just returned from Bangladesh when the virus arrived, and he was fresh with observations and analysis of the plight of the people there, but when he published his thoughts in the Wall Street Journal and Paris Match, he was met with the response, “What are you doing in the Gulf of Bengal when you should be at home? Didn't urgency or decency demand that you shelter in place like the rest of us?" Never mind that his actual visit to Bangladesh predated the onset of the virus. He is justifiably angry. And he extends his anger to a condemnation of a self-centered Western world that cares only about itself and not a whit about a starving child in Bangladesh. And his net grows wider, as he condemns Euro-American self-centeredness, the virus, and everything else that robbed him of his due when he wrote his penetrating article. He has a point, perhaps not about the attention he should have gotten for his article, but about our tunnel vision once the virus came into view.
Lévy admits he’s angry, but it’s not so much that the world didn’t do the right thing, for he never lets us know what the right thing might be. It’s that it did too many wrong things. He castigates those who talk about the coming of the virus in terms befitting Armageddon, but belittles the “willfully ignorant and imbecilic cynicism of the American President” who minimizes its effects. There is no way to win in his book. Doctors, who, historically, have had privileged access in the halls of influence on kings, presidents, and potentates, are excoriated as the new false gods, who, out of their depth, advise politicians and the public on a society-wide response to the virus that only takes into account its medical and epidemiological aspects and ignores the economic and social consequences of their recommendations—recommendations which he admits following, because none of us really knows what to do.
There are brilliant observations lurking within and behind his vituperativeness. That the virus is mindless, not an intentional entity that has arrived in our midst to awaken us from our torpor regarding the climate, global inequality, wanton lasciviousness or any other human sin. That hunkering down inside one’s abode out of fear is not an exhilarating voyage into self-discovery, because humans are basically social, which is why solitary confinement is the ultimate imprisonment. That a dysfunctional, me-first America has left word leadership to the Chinese. But mostly, I was struck with and unable to forget his point that the world we left to become absorbed in the Coronavirus is still there, and we still have solved a miniscule number of its current problems, most of which are more painful to more people and potentially more disastrous for our race and our planet than the Coronavirus ever will be.
I still think The Virus in the Age of Madness is an egotistical, self-absorbed, exhibit of a philosophically-tinged tantrum, but I was thoroughly captivated by it, and, as a book to shake one out of his or her virus-induced ennui, it works wonderfully.
When French Philosopher, Bernard-Henri Lévy masturbates, the lettered world can’t help watching. In his new book, The Virus in the Age of Madness, he demonstrates why we watch his self-indulgence with such fascination: he is an exhibitionist. If it were anyone else, I would describe the book as a rant. But of course philosophers don’t rant, they expound, they expatiate, they pontificate. It doesn’t matter that Lévy is frustrated that he has to stay at home, that nobody cares about his favorite causes, that pantomathic brilliance of his sort has been surpassed by medical expertise as the reigning god in the mind of the people. He isn’t just throwing a tantrum, he is treating us to insights. So he reacts as he does to almost everything else: he tells us what’s on his mind, coated with a layer of cynicism, wit and searing anger.
Voyeur that I am, I was unable to put the book down once I began reading. Egoist as I am, as a writer, I was continually struck by the thought, “why couldn’t I have said it the way he did?” His imagery, his ability to relate his arguments to ideas of the ages, his facility with language, even in translation, are awesome, as we have come to expect. And he has some true insights. For at least a moment, he took my mind off our local crisis and my own concern with my health to think about the wider world, which has suffered more than I ever will, was suffering that way before the virus, and will suffer doubly so, after the virus. He’d just returned from Bangladesh when the virus arrived, and he was fresh with observations and analysis of the plight of the people there, but when he published his thoughts in the Wall Street Journal and Paris Match, he was met with the response, “What are you doing in the Gulf of Bengal when you should be at home? Didn't urgency or decency demand that you shelter in place like the rest of us?" Never mind that his actual visit to Bangladesh predated the onset of the virus. He is justifiably angry. And he extends his anger to a condemnation of a self-centered Western world that cares only about itself and not a whit about a starving child in Bangladesh. And his net grows wider, as he condemns Euro-American self-centeredness, the virus, and everything else that robbed him of his due when he wrote his penetrating article. He has a point, perhaps not about the attention he should have gotten for his article, but about our tunnel vision once the virus came into view.
Lévy admits he’s angry, but it’s not so much that the world didn’t do the right thing, for he never lets us know what the right thing might be. It’s that it did too many wrong things. He castigates those who talk about the coming of the virus in terms befitting Armageddon, but belittles the “willfully ignorant and imbecilic cynicism of the American President” who minimizes its effects. There is no way to win in his book. Doctors, who, historically, have had privileged access in the halls of influence on kings, presidents, and potentates, are excoriated as the new false gods, who, out of their depth, advise politicians and the public on a society-wide response to the virus that only takes into account its medical and epidemiological aspects and ignores the economic and social consequences of their recommendations—recommendations which he admits following, because none of us really knows what to do.
There are brilliant observations lurking within and behind his vituperativeness. That the virus is mindless, not an intentional entity that has arrived in our midst to awaken us from our torpor regarding the climate, global inequality, wanton lasciviousness or any other human sin. That hunkering down inside one’s abode out of fear is not an exhilarating voyage into self-discovery, because humans are basically social, which is why solitary confinement is the ultimate imprisonment. That a dysfunctional, me-first America has left word leadership to the Chinese. But mostly, I was struck with and unable to forget his point that the world we left to become absorbed in the Coronavirus is still there, and we still have solved a miniscule number of its current problems, most of which are more painful to more people and potentially more disastrous for our race and our planet than the Coronavirus ever will be.
I still think The Virus in the Age of Madness is an egotistical, self-absorbed, exhibit of a philosophically-tinged tantrum, but I was thoroughly captivated by it, and, as a book to shake one out of his or her virus-induced ennui, it works wonderfully.
February 16, 2022
This book by a well-known liberal European philosopher is a suprisingly refreshing questioning of the conventional liberal hysteria over the COVID-19 pandemic, but is unfortunately marred by the writer's irrational dislike of former United States President Donald Trump, whose approach the author unwittingly and seemingly incomprehendingly, actually butresses.
When COVID-19 emerged as a global threat, the hurried response, championed especially by liberals the world over, was to "shelter in place" and "shut-down" the economy while relying on "science." But as events emerged, it now seems the cure may end up harming far more people than the disease has or ever will kill. Liberals especially in the United States, used the COVID-19 shut-downs to attempt to re-engineer government and society into an enlarged welfare state-- law would be used to prevent businesses from functioning and people from working--while the government would provide "stimulus" payments to provide people and businesses with funds while they did not work. Doctors and "science" would rule all decision-making. Leaders such as former President Trump, who questioned this approach and raised economic concerns to the approach, would be tamped down and that is exactly what happened.
But it turned out the "science" was not so determined. First only "N95" facemasks were of any use. Then the science said any mask of any type helped. Now it is back to only certain kinds of masks help. First the world population was at risk of death according to doctors. But it soon became very clear that unlike past pandemics such as the 1918 Spanish Flu, the risk was not equal to all, and COVID-19 deaths were highly concentrated among those over 60, the feeble, those with pre-existing health conditions and that for the rest of people over 96% percent survived COVID infection. Schools were forced closed even though it became and remains extremely clear that young children are among the least infected populations with the least morbidity. Shutting down public education has greatly harmed the liberal march towards "equality" in society as the lower and lower middle class children had and have less access to online education and the more progressive and private schools reopened.
The economics of the COVID "madness" have become devastating--the huge infusion of government funds into the economy while preventing people from working and businesses from operating has caused the worst inflation in years and supply chain disruptions not seen since the World Wars. The inflation and lack of products hurt the poor most of all.
Despite being uber-liberal, from page one of his work Levy raises the concerns that the cure for COVID put forth by the liberals may in fact have done more harm to liberal causes and society in general than the threat of COVID itself. He is one of the few liberals to say this and should be applauded for his efforts. Levy says in his book "To the extent possible, we had to calculate the number of lives saved by shutting down the world and compare it with the number imperiled by the shutdown. We had to be reminded that the social, economic and health consequences of the shutdown will be long-lasting and calamitous, possibly greater than the direct toll of the virus itself... a targeted approach would be better than a horizontal interdiction in which we close up shops across the board, regardless of the social, humanitarian and economic costs."
The words Levy writes have been proven to be sadly true and he is to be commended for standing up to the liberal policies that have now been shown to have done more harm than good.
But where Levy goes deeply wrong is his irrational hatred of former President Trump. Throughout the book Levy goes out his way to demean and insult Trump. His hatred of Trump is so great he fails to see he himself is conveying what Trump tried to do with COVID policy.
You will not read a single sentence in this book about President Trump's successful Operation Warp Speed policy implemented early on in the pandemic that made use of the science liberals blamed Trump for ignoring. Operation Warp speed used the practices of private businesss and specialized military procurement to successfully use private pharma businesses to develop, test and produce multiple effective vaccines in record time-- an accomplishment that in the long run will prove to have saved more lives than all the maskings and shutdowns combined. Please see the article "Inside Operation Warp Speed" by David Adler in the Summer 2021 issue of the journal American Affairs as just one penetrating analysis.
And Trump tried to do exactly what Levy said should have been done-- Trump said we needed to consider the economy and the quality of life and not allow COVID to shut down society and the economy, that the one size fits all approach would cause more harm than good--exactly what Levy says-- and Trump also said doctors did not have all the answers and their single minded approach was not always in the interest of society as a whole--again, exactly what Levy propounds.
No one will ever say Donald Trump was kind and compassionate. But sometimes a firm approach is in the best interest. I wish Levy could have been more balanced with Trump. It might have made his book's argument more persuasive.
Regardless of its shortcomings this book from this liberal philosopher is an important perspective on our disastrous response to the COVID pandemic.
When COVID-19 emerged as a global threat, the hurried response, championed especially by liberals the world over, was to "shelter in place" and "shut-down" the economy while relying on "science." But as events emerged, it now seems the cure may end up harming far more people than the disease has or ever will kill. Liberals especially in the United States, used the COVID-19 shut-downs to attempt to re-engineer government and society into an enlarged welfare state-- law would be used to prevent businesses from functioning and people from working--while the government would provide "stimulus" payments to provide people and businesses with funds while they did not work. Doctors and "science" would rule all decision-making. Leaders such as former President Trump, who questioned this approach and raised economic concerns to the approach, would be tamped down and that is exactly what happened.
But it turned out the "science" was not so determined. First only "N95" facemasks were of any use. Then the science said any mask of any type helped. Now it is back to only certain kinds of masks help. First the world population was at risk of death according to doctors. But it soon became very clear that unlike past pandemics such as the 1918 Spanish Flu, the risk was not equal to all, and COVID-19 deaths were highly concentrated among those over 60, the feeble, those with pre-existing health conditions and that for the rest of people over 96% percent survived COVID infection. Schools were forced closed even though it became and remains extremely clear that young children are among the least infected populations with the least morbidity. Shutting down public education has greatly harmed the liberal march towards "equality" in society as the lower and lower middle class children had and have less access to online education and the more progressive and private schools reopened.
The economics of the COVID "madness" have become devastating--the huge infusion of government funds into the economy while preventing people from working and businesses from operating has caused the worst inflation in years and supply chain disruptions not seen since the World Wars. The inflation and lack of products hurt the poor most of all.
Despite being uber-liberal, from page one of his work Levy raises the concerns that the cure for COVID put forth by the liberals may in fact have done more harm to liberal causes and society in general than the threat of COVID itself. He is one of the few liberals to say this and should be applauded for his efforts. Levy says in his book "To the extent possible, we had to calculate the number of lives saved by shutting down the world and compare it with the number imperiled by the shutdown. We had to be reminded that the social, economic and health consequences of the shutdown will be long-lasting and calamitous, possibly greater than the direct toll of the virus itself... a targeted approach would be better than a horizontal interdiction in which we close up shops across the board, regardless of the social, humanitarian and economic costs."
The words Levy writes have been proven to be sadly true and he is to be commended for standing up to the liberal policies that have now been shown to have done more harm than good.
But where Levy goes deeply wrong is his irrational hatred of former President Trump. Throughout the book Levy goes out his way to demean and insult Trump. His hatred of Trump is so great he fails to see he himself is conveying what Trump tried to do with COVID policy.
You will not read a single sentence in this book about President Trump's successful Operation Warp Speed policy implemented early on in the pandemic that made use of the science liberals blamed Trump for ignoring. Operation Warp speed used the practices of private businesss and specialized military procurement to successfully use private pharma businesses to develop, test and produce multiple effective vaccines in record time-- an accomplishment that in the long run will prove to have saved more lives than all the maskings and shutdowns combined. Please see the article "Inside Operation Warp Speed" by David Adler in the Summer 2021 issue of the journal American Affairs as just one penetrating analysis.
And Trump tried to do exactly what Levy said should have been done-- Trump said we needed to consider the economy and the quality of life and not allow COVID to shut down society and the economy, that the one size fits all approach would cause more harm than good--exactly what Levy says-- and Trump also said doctors did not have all the answers and their single minded approach was not always in the interest of society as a whole--again, exactly what Levy propounds.
No one will ever say Donald Trump was kind and compassionate. But sometimes a firm approach is in the best interest. I wish Levy could have been more balanced with Trump. It might have made his book's argument more persuasive.
Regardless of its shortcomings this book from this liberal philosopher is an important perspective on our disastrous response to the COVID pandemic.
December 4, 2021
O poziție dură contra entuziasmului populației în a accepta auto-izolarea și carantinarea. Și, evident, la început ai multe motive să critici poziția lui Bernard-Henri Lévy. Apoi, treptat, începi să îi înțelegi argumentele și să îi dai pe alocuri dreptate. Doar că eu am citit cartea acum și îmi amintesc panica și nebunia din lunile blocadei de la noi din primăvara lui 2020. El a scris chiar atunci. Cu plusuri și minusuri, un volum de citit. Mai jos câteva detalii despre argumentele autorului:
https://vderevlean.wordpress.com/2021...
https://vderevlean.wordpress.com/2021...
October 15, 2020
Across five chapters, Lévy reflects upon our global “Great Confinement” and surrender to the current tragic but not unprecedented world health crisis. This is a quintessentially French read: in full support of the human spirit writ large, a vigorous interrogation of metaphors and the actions that come from them.
Take chapter 2, “Divine Surprise”: a clearheaded dissection of the “nature is healing/nature is teaching a lesson” thinking, which leads to considering the pandemic as a judgment or an opportunity or a poetic moment. Lévy uncovers how appalling, cynical, and damaging this metaphor is: “an old Marxist refrain of the final crisis of capitalism in her morning-after guise of collapsology, or one of the children’s diseases of socialism updated as disasterism.”
Or chapter 3, Delicious Confinement: “to find virtue in the thing, to congratulate oneself for the new adventure… to start every conversation by indulging in an exchange about confinement status or what television series to binge-watch next… as if the couch were the trenches…” as fundamentally indecent. To those essential workers who do not have such choices; to the redefinition of “essential workers” to those who deliver lunches and dinners to said homes; to those who don’t have homes or gardens to tend.
Or the last chapter 5, “Goodbye, World?” which considers the enormously unfair burden the world’s poor face, in the face of not merely a medical pandemic but also the pains of economic withdrawal and isolationism.
Read this. Read it twice, as its brevity belies its many insights.
Take chapter 2, “Divine Surprise”: a clearheaded dissection of the “nature is healing/nature is teaching a lesson” thinking, which leads to considering the pandemic as a judgment or an opportunity or a poetic moment. Lévy uncovers how appalling, cynical, and damaging this metaphor is: “an old Marxist refrain of the final crisis of capitalism in her morning-after guise of collapsology, or one of the children’s diseases of socialism updated as disasterism.”
Or chapter 3, Delicious Confinement: “to find virtue in the thing, to congratulate oneself for the new adventure… to start every conversation by indulging in an exchange about confinement status or what television series to binge-watch next… as if the couch were the trenches…” as fundamentally indecent. To those essential workers who do not have such choices; to the redefinition of “essential workers” to those who deliver lunches and dinners to said homes; to those who don’t have homes or gardens to tend.
Or the last chapter 5, “Goodbye, World?” which considers the enormously unfair burden the world’s poor face, in the face of not merely a medical pandemic but also the pains of economic withdrawal and isolationism.
Read this. Read it twice, as its brevity belies its many insights.
Want to read
July 20, 2020https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BvAxRM4...
(In the video there's a fiery exchange between Henri Lévy and Éric Zemmour. Zemmour laid bare some of the contradictions of Henri Lévy)
July 1, 2020
Quelques points très intéressants au milieu d’un bain de critiques qui tournent en rond sans réels profondeurs ni développements. Un style qui passe du bien écrit et agréable au lourdeurs d’un écrivain qui cherche à étayer son point de vue avec le maximum de références philosophiques en une même phrase.
February 22, 2022
i’m not going to spend much time on this since it’s not worth it, but it really seems like BHL’s problem with “political psychoses” or totalitarianism only applies if the perpetrators have Russian or chinese names (he manages to turn this covid book into a plea for Western imperialism again). full of false dichotomies, overblown metaphors, and sometimes just straight up lies.
i’m also not sure if BHL thought everyone was living in some kind of liberal utopia before the advent of the virus. like oh yeah, covid is the first time i and everyone i know has had to make concessions to “freedom” in exchange for “survival” and biopolitics. before covid everyone got along smashingly and liberal democracy was as healthy and beloved as ever. seems like maybe a globe trotting french dandy who’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars isn’t the best one to test these waters, or has the best insights into what it’s been like living through the pandemic. i work for essentially minimum wage, i get up, i go to work, i go home. my extremely average western life has changed remarkably little during covid, which to me is much more interesting than whatever spew of self-righteous bullshit comes from BHL
i’m also not sure if BHL thought everyone was living in some kind of liberal utopia before the advent of the virus. like oh yeah, covid is the first time i and everyone i know has had to make concessions to “freedom” in exchange for “survival” and biopolitics. before covid everyone got along smashingly and liberal democracy was as healthy and beloved as ever. seems like maybe a globe trotting french dandy who’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars isn’t the best one to test these waters, or has the best insights into what it’s been like living through the pandemic. i work for essentially minimum wage, i get up, i go to work, i go home. my extremely average western life has changed remarkably little during covid, which to me is much more interesting than whatever spew of self-righteous bullshit comes from BHL
February 20, 2021
The rantings of an angry old man who spends the first four chapters bemoaning the social/economic/cultural changes in the world due to COVID. Then in chapter five blames the very world he was defending in the first four chapters, for the inequality and unjustness in the world which have been exacerbated due to COVID. He wraps up his arguments by saying “And that is the reason for my anger….” He offers no advice or wisdom for the way forward. I think he just wanted to have a dummy spit (as we say in Australia).
July 6, 2020
Ceci est le premier livre que je découvre, concernant BHL. Merci pour ce bon tour d'horizons ! Quel légèreté, quelle non-égocentré parcours (comparé à certains philosophes contemportains de l'auteur). J'en conseille la lecture.
August 4, 2020
What are we doing?
A fine rage against the dying of the night as we give all up to the pandemic and leave the poorest with nothing. What about Russia and China? China the source of this but is using it shut down opposition in Hong Kong and continue its final solution against the Uighurs. What will come out of this new world we are facing with the fool on the hill helping the decline of human rights, the rule of law etc. Must read before we have to start saying #NeverAgain about now.
A fine rage against the dying of the night as we give all up to the pandemic and leave the poorest with nothing. What about Russia and China? China the source of this but is using it shut down opposition in Hong Kong and continue its final solution against the Uighurs. What will come out of this new world we are facing with the fool on the hill helping the decline of human rights, the rule of law etc. Must read before we have to start saying #NeverAgain about now.
August 26, 2020
Premature thoughts on the pandemic with a whole lot of name dropping.
August 3, 2021
Two stars, because this dude is like. The pinnacle of grumpy liberalism in this book. I can't speak to the rest of his career and his actions, as this was my introduction to him and his work. It sounds like he's done an admirable job when it comes to reporting on and caring about global issues. But my understanding of the New Philosophers is that they're a group characterized by their rejection of Marxism, and this is exactly that.
He has valid concerns: what about the homeless? What about the actions of emergency powers, and reinstating safe levels of government control once the crisis is over? What about the overwhelming concern with the pandemic washing out all other global news?
This was published in May 2020. France received its first COVID case on January 24th, possibly with one before, in December. France went into lockdown on March 16th 2020. So it's no wonder that this is a half-baked crockpot of bullshit, considering the timeline. There wasn't yet a second wave, he talks about "now that we are opening up". I wonder what, beyond another book on his resume, prompted him to decide to write a complete review of the pandemic so far and publish it in such a rushed timeframe.
He talks about how he grew up in socialism/Marxism and how it was disastrous. Unsurprising , considering his affiliations. I would like to know more about that, and so maybe I'll return to this once I read some more of his works.
He complains about the glorification of the medical community above all else, complains about the economy. Complains about treating "the medical community" as a unified monolith when it's comprised of infighting and arguments. Compares medical teams worldwide recommending isolation to governments, to French eugenicists advising Parisian mayors in the 20s.
Much like my review, he can't pick a path and stick to it. He flip-flops back and forth and contradicts himself constantly. In one chapter, he complains about how the lockdown measures were too harsh and took a toll on people's mental, emotional, and social well-being, how this imposed isolation was a danger not just economically, but personally. Later, he mocks the idea that lockdown was hard, that people were struggling and miserable, living their comfy lives working from home, having youtube yoga classes and zoom happy hour with their friends. He then calls this a slap in the face to the homeless, who have been ignored.
What about the lower class, the working class? He makes the immediate jump from middle class comfort to homeless misery without more than passing (and superficial) praise to the frontline workers, who (medical professions aside) are hardly being paid more than minimum wage. What about those living paycheque to paycheque, whose houses don't have internet and who can't afford it? What about the rest, monsieur bernard?
He complains of marxism; he acts then like it is an individual problem that we as individuals are to solve, that people are homeless, that people are starving. Monsieur Bernard, what shall I do to help them? Should I invite them into a home that I can hardly pay for? Should I offer up my job? Should I go out and risk infecting them, to give them food?
Or should I put pressure on the government to do that? What, Monsieur Bernard, do you propose is a nice, liberal, non-marxist solution to homelessness and hunger? He looks, of course, to the free market, and to lockdowns as a threat to that. As THE damaging process and action. We should not have closed, he cries, what about the joblessness and recession?
Monsieur Bernard, the market was not working beforehand. Here in Canada, there were government benefits extended to those who had lost their jobs due to covid (provided they had made $5000 in the previous tax year), to students, and to those caring for disabled individuals. This did not extend to unemployed homeless. It did not extend to people who were looking for jobs before the pandemic and now could not find work. It did not extend to disabled people themselves, to the working poor, to groups who did not reach the means-testing that the Liberal government received.
Monsieur Bernard, I wonder if you considered Australia. Prior to the delta variant, they enforced hard lockdown, and because of an extended hard lockdown, had very few cases. Every time there was a new flare-up, they locked down again. They were able to have near-complete economic reopenings that lasted for much longer than the ones in my hometown did. Here, we left the first lockdown and entered half-assed ones in between. Here, we had more cases daily on our best day, provincially, than Australia has had so far on their worst, nationally.
He name-drops with little to no elaboration. Certainly, tell us more about Carl Schmitt. Tell us his name, tell us nothing of an elaboration or an extension of his ideas in relation to the current situation. Tell us about, for some reason, Plato. Tell us about the problems with no solutions. Rail against the world and offer no solutions.
Is this what classifies as a "public intellectual" these days? The most miserable, milquetoast perspective on public crisis, griping like an old man about very real problems, but simply blaming the world for being as it is, with no corrections?
The discussion about Jewish thought on the matter, on the Rabbis' perspective on isolation, was interesting, but again, felt like it went nowhere but to confirm his own views and perspective. Confirmation bias to the most severe, rather than challenging his consideration on the matter.
This review is now about as long as one of the chapters in this so-called book. As a retrospective, this book was horrendous. It aged like cheap steak left out for a week: rotting and covered in flies. We're now in a fourth wave. We have vaccinations internationally. Isolation is lifting, well and truly, and now in many places in the so-called West, masks aren't even required in public. India is overwhelmed again. Cuba is in crisis again and, due to the American blockade, has developed their own vaccines internally. Israel continues to tread on Palestine, Trump was voted out and attempted an actual coup on the Capitol, the Haitian president was assassinated in his own home. Billionaires are performing their own personal space race. Western Europe flooded worse than ever before; North America is on fire. And the virus still spreads.
Railing against the perspective of the medical community, railing against the deference of public policy to known (and/but still evolving) science, complaining about the economy and the "disproportionate" response to the effects of COVID—I wonder if he still agrees with all of this. I wonder what he thinks now.
All of this isn't to mention his bizzare discussion of China's role in the matter. I can't exactly treat anyone as an expert on the matter if they try to argue that China is actually communist in anything but name—Monsieur Bernard, I believe the term is "authoritarian capitalism", which has something to do with your beloved free market. Behaving as if America has been acting for anything but its own interests for decades is also an interesting choice. Again, it would have been an interesting point if he had actually taken the time to elaborate on it, rather than giving a coked-up conspiracy about "Chinese development and freedom vs Western paranoia about the virus", what the actual shit, sir???
I could write a response to this that's just as long as his "book" itself. But I've spent too much time on it already. Instead I think I will return to, you know, actual action instead of just complaining.
He has valid concerns: what about the homeless? What about the actions of emergency powers, and reinstating safe levels of government control once the crisis is over? What about the overwhelming concern with the pandemic washing out all other global news?
This was published in May 2020. France received its first COVID case on January 24th, possibly with one before, in December. France went into lockdown on March 16th 2020. So it's no wonder that this is a half-baked crockpot of bullshit, considering the timeline. There wasn't yet a second wave, he talks about "now that we are opening up". I wonder what, beyond another book on his resume, prompted him to decide to write a complete review of the pandemic so far and publish it in such a rushed timeframe.
He talks about how he grew up in socialism/Marxism and how it was disastrous. Unsurprising , considering his affiliations. I would like to know more about that, and so maybe I'll return to this once I read some more of his works.
He complains about the glorification of the medical community above all else, complains about the economy. Complains about treating "the medical community" as a unified monolith when it's comprised of infighting and arguments. Compares medical teams worldwide recommending isolation to governments, to French eugenicists advising Parisian mayors in the 20s.
Much like my review, he can't pick a path and stick to it. He flip-flops back and forth and contradicts himself constantly. In one chapter, he complains about how the lockdown measures were too harsh and took a toll on people's mental, emotional, and social well-being, how this imposed isolation was a danger not just economically, but personally. Later, he mocks the idea that lockdown was hard, that people were struggling and miserable, living their comfy lives working from home, having youtube yoga classes and zoom happy hour with their friends. He then calls this a slap in the face to the homeless, who have been ignored.
What about the lower class, the working class? He makes the immediate jump from middle class comfort to homeless misery without more than passing (and superficial) praise to the frontline workers, who (medical professions aside) are hardly being paid more than minimum wage. What about those living paycheque to paycheque, whose houses don't have internet and who can't afford it? What about the rest, monsieur bernard?
He complains of marxism; he acts then like it is an individual problem that we as individuals are to solve, that people are homeless, that people are starving. Monsieur Bernard, what shall I do to help them? Should I invite them into a home that I can hardly pay for? Should I offer up my job? Should I go out and risk infecting them, to give them food?
Or should I put pressure on the government to do that? What, Monsieur Bernard, do you propose is a nice, liberal, non-marxist solution to homelessness and hunger? He looks, of course, to the free market, and to lockdowns as a threat to that. As THE damaging process and action. We should not have closed, he cries, what about the joblessness and recession?
Monsieur Bernard, the market was not working beforehand. Here in Canada, there were government benefits extended to those who had lost their jobs due to covid (provided they had made $5000 in the previous tax year), to students, and to those caring for disabled individuals. This did not extend to unemployed homeless. It did not extend to people who were looking for jobs before the pandemic and now could not find work. It did not extend to disabled people themselves, to the working poor, to groups who did not reach the means-testing that the Liberal government received.
Monsieur Bernard, I wonder if you considered Australia. Prior to the delta variant, they enforced hard lockdown, and because of an extended hard lockdown, had very few cases. Every time there was a new flare-up, they locked down again. They were able to have near-complete economic reopenings that lasted for much longer than the ones in my hometown did. Here, we left the first lockdown and entered half-assed ones in between. Here, we had more cases daily on our best day, provincially, than Australia has had so far on their worst, nationally.
He name-drops with little to no elaboration. Certainly, tell us more about Carl Schmitt. Tell us his name, tell us nothing of an elaboration or an extension of his ideas in relation to the current situation. Tell us about, for some reason, Plato. Tell us about the problems with no solutions. Rail against the world and offer no solutions.
Is this what classifies as a "public intellectual" these days? The most miserable, milquetoast perspective on public crisis, griping like an old man about very real problems, but simply blaming the world for being as it is, with no corrections?
The discussion about Jewish thought on the matter, on the Rabbis' perspective on isolation, was interesting, but again, felt like it went nowhere but to confirm his own views and perspective. Confirmation bias to the most severe, rather than challenging his consideration on the matter.
This review is now about as long as one of the chapters in this so-called book. As a retrospective, this book was horrendous. It aged like cheap steak left out for a week: rotting and covered in flies. We're now in a fourth wave. We have vaccinations internationally. Isolation is lifting, well and truly, and now in many places in the so-called West, masks aren't even required in public. India is overwhelmed again. Cuba is in crisis again and, due to the American blockade, has developed their own vaccines internally. Israel continues to tread on Palestine, Trump was voted out and attempted an actual coup on the Capitol, the Haitian president was assassinated in his own home. Billionaires are performing their own personal space race. Western Europe flooded worse than ever before; North America is on fire. And the virus still spreads.
Railing against the perspective of the medical community, railing against the deference of public policy to known (and/but still evolving) science, complaining about the economy and the "disproportionate" response to the effects of COVID—I wonder if he still agrees with all of this. I wonder what he thinks now.
All of this isn't to mention his bizzare discussion of China's role in the matter. I can't exactly treat anyone as an expert on the matter if they try to argue that China is actually communist in anything but name—Monsieur Bernard, I believe the term is "authoritarian capitalism", which has something to do with your beloved free market. Behaving as if America has been acting for anything but its own interests for decades is also an interesting choice. Again, it would have been an interesting point if he had actually taken the time to elaborate on it, rather than giving a coked-up conspiracy about "Chinese development and freedom vs Western paranoia about the virus", what the actual shit, sir???
I could write a response to this that's just as long as his "book" itself. But I've spent too much time on it already. Instead I think I will return to, you know, actual action instead of just complaining.
May 18, 2021
Je ne connaissais pas l'essayiste et philosophe français Bernard-Henri Lévy, qui fût l'un des dirigeants des «Nouveaux Philosophes» en 1976. Un homme qui a plusieurs livres dernière la patte, donc, et qui a déjà une plume et une pensée assez inébranlable lorsqu'il écrit «Ce virus qui rend fou», à 72 ans. Le court essai apporte son avis sur une pandémie qui, s'il ne tente pas d'en démentir la véracité, essaie pourtant de mettre les choses en perspective et exposer les mauvais côtés de l'espèce humaine en s'appuyant sur les évènements de la dernière année.
Dans l'ensemble, le propos de BHL est pertinent, s'appuie sur des faits ou, lorsqu'il consiste en argumentations et divagations, s'appuie quand même sur le mode de pensée de philosophes classiques. L'intellectualisation de la pandémie et l'analyse de la réaction humaine est intéressante, mais quand même un peu pompeuse et pédante par moments. On sent un auteur aigri, épuisé des bassesses de l'Homme, ce qui n'est pas faux. Mais on s'acharne beaucoup sur la volonté qu'ont plusieurs à chercher un aspect positif qu'aura amené la pandémie, au niveau environnemental, par exemple.
Dans un autre chapitre, on déplorera le statut de quasi-héros qu'auront obtenu les travailleurs de la santé durant le COVID. Bien sûr, l'auteur comprend la situation, mais l'essai traite davantage des inconvénients de ce switch politique, se basant sur d'autres exemples ultérieurs. Encore une fois, qu'on soit d'accord ou non, l'auteur se défend bien, et au moins, amène des arguments. Même si il est nihiliste, et que je ne rejoins pas son point de vue à tous les égards, BHL réussit quand même très bien à exposer son avis, qu'il conclue dans un dernier chapitre - le plus efficace - où il énumère plusieurs conflits et situations horribles se déroulant ailleurs dans le Monde, mais dont personne n'aura entendu parler, à cause de la pandémie.
Bref, c'est court et confrontant, et percutant.
Dans l'ensemble, le propos de BHL est pertinent, s'appuie sur des faits ou, lorsqu'il consiste en argumentations et divagations, s'appuie quand même sur le mode de pensée de philosophes classiques. L'intellectualisation de la pandémie et l'analyse de la réaction humaine est intéressante, mais quand même un peu pompeuse et pédante par moments. On sent un auteur aigri, épuisé des bassesses de l'Homme, ce qui n'est pas faux. Mais on s'acharne beaucoup sur la volonté qu'ont plusieurs à chercher un aspect positif qu'aura amené la pandémie, au niveau environnemental, par exemple.
Dans un autre chapitre, on déplorera le statut de quasi-héros qu'auront obtenu les travailleurs de la santé durant le COVID. Bien sûr, l'auteur comprend la situation, mais l'essai traite davantage des inconvénients de ce switch politique, se basant sur d'autres exemples ultérieurs. Encore une fois, qu'on soit d'accord ou non, l'auteur se défend bien, et au moins, amène des arguments. Même si il est nihiliste, et que je ne rejoins pas son point de vue à tous les égards, BHL réussit quand même très bien à exposer son avis, qu'il conclue dans un dernier chapitre - le plus efficace - où il énumère plusieurs conflits et situations horribles se déroulant ailleurs dans le Monde, mais dont personne n'aura entendu parler, à cause de la pandémie.
Bref, c'est court et confrontant, et percutant.
July 26, 2020
O autor parte de uma premissa, pedida emprestada a Rudolf Virchow: "uma epidemia é um fenómeno social que tem alguns aspectos médicos". Esta visão enforma toda a análise de "Este Vírus que nos Enlouquece", uma reflexão filosófica e semiótica, que nos ajuda a ver para além da realidade que os média nos venderam, a propósito da pandemia de Sars-Cov2.
Poucos passam incólumes a este ensaio escrito quase em tempo real, porque muitos foram aqueles que desprezaram a sociedade, no seu todo, em favor de uma visão higienista do mundo, esquecendo que estar vivo não é o mesmo que viver e colocando em confronto realidades que, na verdade, não se opõem, a saúde e a economia. Recorrendo a citações de outros filósofos, Bernard-Henri Lévy encaminha-nos para a conclusão de que o vírus do medo é muito mais pernicioso do que o novo coronavírus.
"Este Vírus que nos Enlouquece" ajuda-nos a questionar o discurso hegemónico dos últimos meses, lembra que foi dado aos médicos poder excessivo - não esquecer que "uma epidemia é um fenómeno social que tem alguns aspectos médicos" -, alerta-nos contra os festejos, nem sempre contidos, dos radicais do ambientalismo pela "oportunidade" que a situação pandémica representa para as suas ideias de decrescimento, chama a atenção para a hipocrisia dos que usam as varandas para aplaudir profissionais de saúde e, simultaneamente, para espiar e denunciar os vizinhos que tenham comportamentos anti-confinamento, recordando ainda que o próprio conceito de "confinamento" tem raízes no fascismo italiano, que usava essa designação para o isolamento dos opositores políticos.
Resumindo, é uma obra contra a corrente, que todos deveriam ler. Especialmente os apresentadores de telejornais e aqueles que decidem a agenda e o tom das notícias nos média. Compreendendo o que aqui está escrito, perceberiam o ridículo em que laboraram, com sermões à populaça que mais não fizeram do que difundir o vírus do medo.
Poucos passam incólumes a este ensaio escrito quase em tempo real, porque muitos foram aqueles que desprezaram a sociedade, no seu todo, em favor de uma visão higienista do mundo, esquecendo que estar vivo não é o mesmo que viver e colocando em confronto realidades que, na verdade, não se opõem, a saúde e a economia. Recorrendo a citações de outros filósofos, Bernard-Henri Lévy encaminha-nos para a conclusão de que o vírus do medo é muito mais pernicioso do que o novo coronavírus.
"Este Vírus que nos Enlouquece" ajuda-nos a questionar o discurso hegemónico dos últimos meses, lembra que foi dado aos médicos poder excessivo - não esquecer que "uma epidemia é um fenómeno social que tem alguns aspectos médicos" -, alerta-nos contra os festejos, nem sempre contidos, dos radicais do ambientalismo pela "oportunidade" que a situação pandémica representa para as suas ideias de decrescimento, chama a atenção para a hipocrisia dos que usam as varandas para aplaudir profissionais de saúde e, simultaneamente, para espiar e denunciar os vizinhos que tenham comportamentos anti-confinamento, recordando ainda que o próprio conceito de "confinamento" tem raízes no fascismo italiano, que usava essa designação para o isolamento dos opositores políticos.
Resumindo, é uma obra contra a corrente, que todos deveriam ler. Especialmente os apresentadores de telejornais e aqueles que decidem a agenda e o tom das notícias nos média. Compreendendo o que aqui está escrito, perceberiam o ridículo em que laboraram, com sermões à populaça que mais não fizeram do que difundir o vírus do medo.
December 19, 2020
Acest virus care ne smintește încearcă să trateze pandemia la rece, fără implicațiile, de multe ori false, ale instrumentelor media, menite să influențele populația spre anumite puncte de interes.
"Și nu doar pandemia de Covid s-a abătut asupra lumii, ci și pandemia de frică."
"Și nu doar pandemia de Covid s-a abătut asupra lumii, ci și pandemia de frică."
January 2, 2022
This short book is dense with philosophical musings on the harms caused by reactions to COVID. One particularly memorable section was about how human beings are not meant to isolate in their homes, and how indecent it is to revel in the belief that you’re saving the world by staying in your basement and binge-watching Netflix series. The Trump-bashing gets a little old, but overall I enjoyed all of the correlations the author made to historical philosophers.
August 12, 2020
In my new book, Plagued: Surviving A Modern Pandemic, now going to press August 24th, I offer a number of lessons we, collectively as a species, could be learning from this experience, but I have more recently been sobered and chastened by reading Virus in the Age of Madness by Bernard Henri Levy, only just translated a few weeks ago by Yale Press.
In my book, and in these blog posts, I took the position that viral pandemics have stricken human civilizations for more than 7000 years and inevitably expose cultural fault lines. They are a painful but necessary corrective. It is easy to see how much larger is the swath Covid has cut through populations of lower caste—racial and ethnic minorities; indigenous peoples; migrant refugees, prisoners, and our neglected elderly and handicapped. But to impute catharsis, Levy scolds, is to overreach; that falls into the realm of hope and belief, not evidence or logic.
Levy writes:
In his most recent monthly Museletter, Richard Heinberg waded into the feud between Extinction Rebellion and Deep Adaptation. Both take as a given (as do I) that a near-term collapse of global financial arrangements is inevitable. The pandemic lockdown is likely to hasten that day of reckoning, as Nate Hagens predicted in March in his prescient Overview of the Systemic Implications of the Coronavirus . The latest numbers from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and others well situated to measure the damage forecast an economic downturn of unprecedented scale, but those same institutions nonetheless predict gradual recovery over some years to decades, eventually to pre-crisis GDP and renewed growth. That irrepressible optimism is what buoys stock exchanges. The World Trade Organization estimates that global trade is poised to fall by between 13 and 32 percent in 2020, the worst crisis since the early 1930s, but evoking the 1930s seems also to promise a New Deal just over the horizon.
And yet, in the real world, entire industries are now confronting the same realities as sports franchises. Many shuttered retail storefronts and eateries will never reopen. Business-school models that augured success pre-2020 no longer apply in a semi-constant-pandemic world. And yet, disruption alone does not assure collapse. It may, however, incentivize repentance and reform.
Levy writes:
I would say if there is a lesson we can take from this pandemic, even as it grinds on, it is that a trillion dollars, three trillion, ten trillion, are not that big a get when the chips are down and you are confronted with far greater losses if you don’t spend for prevention. Even knowing that modern currency systems are fictions, as easily erased as written into existence, climate change has always been nickel and dimed by national legislatures since before the Kyoto Protocol. The mere billions pledged to the Green Climate Fund have amounted, so far, to only a jar full of paper IOUs. Some, like Bush’s and Obama’s, rather than be called in for payment, have been retrieved from the jar and burned.
This review has already run overlong, but bear with me a short while more. In his most recent GatesNote, Bill Gates runs some useful numbers:
Gates then goes on to show how, within a few decades, climate change will be costing 5 times the number of lives each year as Covid is expected to take in 2020. It is likely costing some of those lives this week in summer heat waves where there is no electricity to run air conditioners because it was knocked out by the most recent of the record-breaking Atlantic hurricanes, El Derecho, or monsoonal rains. His three pieces of advice:
Let science and innovation lead the way.
Make sure solutions work for poor countries too.
Start now.
Pandemics have always been a part of living on Earth. They have been with us since we began. They can never be eliminated, but they can be tamed. There will be times when you have to stay home and miss sports, concerts, eating out, and other gatherings, but it’s not all bad. These can be special moments if you choose to benefit from them.
The climate crisis is infinitely worse than any pandemic, and yet most people continue to ignore it and assume there is nothing they could do that would make a difference. We ignore the warnings. But human extinction is a much larger threat than losing some percent of the population from a virus. What a pandemic shows is that small changes by individuals—wearing masks, keeping physical distances, avoiding closed-in spaces full of strangers—add up to a large collective effort that can arrest the disease. Likewise, small steps, such as using solar power, making biochar for your garden, and not burning things if there is another way to “dispose” of them, can make a big difference to the climate.
Levy asks if Covid is a
I think in that last line Levy sets up a false dichotomy. Economics is the system for oikos - managing one’s home. We need a systemic approach that is life affirming and provides our needs. We need a new system that works equally well in a time of plague and climate emergency. We used to speak of universal basic income as a theory, but Covid made it real. Debt jubilee is a theory, but it may soon be widely applied. All the parts are there, laid out before us, we only need the quiet determination to take our time and assemble them now, with care and thoughtfulness, and craft a better world.
In my book, and in these blog posts, I took the position that viral pandemics have stricken human civilizations for more than 7000 years and inevitably expose cultural fault lines. They are a painful but necessary corrective. It is easy to see how much larger is the swath Covid has cut through populations of lower caste—racial and ethnic minorities; indigenous peoples; migrant refugees, prisoners, and our neglected elderly and handicapped. But to impute catharsis, Levy scolds, is to overreach; that falls into the realm of hope and belief, not evidence or logic.
Levy writes:
Perhaps [the pandemic] was the victory of collapsologists who, always alert to the end of the world, see it heading towards us once again and giving us one last chance to repent and reset.
***
There are two schools of thought that have been particularly egregious; two, whose sanctimonious warnings to the effect that the coronavirus is speaking to humanity, have done the most damage.
On one end of the spectrum there are those who believe the human actions made the virus, arguing that when we disrupt natural habitats and meddle with ecosystems, viruses emerge, or that human overpopulation provokes viral exchanges from animals to humans, as David Quammen argued in The New York Times.
And, there are those who would have us believe that Covid-19 is the direct result of human hubris, interconnectedness, and globalization, or that nature is sending us a message, in the words, alas, of Inger Andersson, the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, or as filmmaker Michael Moore postulated, that the virus is a gentle warning from the planet before it takes revenge on humanity over climate change.
These ecologists, sovereignists, and anti-globalists wanted us to know that they knew all along, and saw it coming. Crying, “I told you so,” they have been all too happy to remind us that we had to pull back from globalization, manufacture at home, consume fruits only in season, and beware of international markets.
***
The most eminent of the servile contingent was French philosopher Bruno Latour, who had the gall to write that the virus was a tremendous opportunity, that it is an invisible hand, that with a great screech of the brakes will help ecologists advance their landing program, whatever that means. [See Latour, 2017: Where to land - How to orient yourself in politics] “We are faced with an emergency challenge,” he said, “to combat the coronavirus spread by becoming like the virus, globalization cut-off switches, whose small, insignificant actions, laid end to end, will do like the virus does through small exhalations from mouth to mouth, namely, bring about the revolutionary suspension of the world economy.”
This is the old Marxist refrain of the final crisis of capitalism in her morning-after guise of collapsology, or one of the children’s diseases of socialism, updated as disasterism. I know this all too well, having been born and raised in it. It is disastrous indeed, and obscene.
In his most recent monthly Museletter, Richard Heinberg waded into the feud between Extinction Rebellion and Deep Adaptation. Both take as a given (as do I) that a near-term collapse of global financial arrangements is inevitable. The pandemic lockdown is likely to hasten that day of reckoning, as Nate Hagens predicted in March in his prescient Overview of the Systemic Implications of the Coronavirus . The latest numbers from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and others well situated to measure the damage forecast an economic downturn of unprecedented scale, but those same institutions nonetheless predict gradual recovery over some years to decades, eventually to pre-crisis GDP and renewed growth. That irrepressible optimism is what buoys stock exchanges. The World Trade Organization estimates that global trade is poised to fall by between 13 and 32 percent in 2020, the worst crisis since the early 1930s, but evoking the 1930s seems also to promise a New Deal just over the horizon.
And yet, in the real world, entire industries are now confronting the same realities as sports franchises. Many shuttered retail storefronts and eateries will never reopen. Business-school models that augured success pre-2020 no longer apply in a semi-constant-pandemic world. And yet, disruption alone does not assure collapse. It may, however, incentivize repentance and reform.
Levy writes:
There was another thing that I found increasingly difficult to bear as we settled into the crisis and that was the rapt remarks I heard both in conversations among friends and in print on the theme, “I saw a deer crossing the Champs–Elysées, a hummingbird was at my window, the sky has never been so blue, nor nature so pure, nor New York so beautiful as during the time of the coronavirus.”
I am as sensitive as the next guy to the sweetness of decarbonized air. I too notice myself experiencing moments of grace at the sight of my city slumbering under the sun, crystalline, abstract. And it goes without saying, but is just as well said, that I view the fight against climate change as one of the great emergencies of our time and consider climate change deniers, led by Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, to be dangerously disingenuous at best, and close to criminal. But, as always, there are good ways and bad ways of putting things. And there was, in this particular way of admiring nature, an embarrassing combination of pious sentiment, bad instincts, and for anyone with a modicum of historical sensibility, echos that were regrettable, to say the least.
***
The litany begins with people’s suffering, the canters perching on the shoulders of the dead and the revived alike. Oozing goodness and contrition, they sing, reminding us that even before the pandemic they warned against the folly of a world that could not continue as it was, a world headed straight into a wall. They fob off on us, disguised as good medicine, old finger-pointing claptrap that they hope this time will stick. With restrained but cruel gloating, they hail the revenge of the real, or the natural, over the arrogance of man and his sins. The deviousness of these flagellants—trying their damnedest from their perch on the backs of the victims to scold the survivors and overwhelm them with remonstrances. The calls for a change no less than the streams of reproof and the invitations to rebirth echo the sermons France heard in 1940 asserting that the country had had too much fun; that it had reaped more than it had sown; that it had marched, said Andre Gide, blindfolded to defeat; and that it was time to turn everything around. But they also echo the words of the proponents of America First in the late 1930s. They too viewed the calamities befalling old Europe as the price to be paid for sins that had gone unpunished for too long.
In 2020 in any case both the French and the Americans found themselves in … a giant penitentiary … with Father Paneloux [in Camus’ La Peste] castigating his flock for their criminal indifference and intoning, “Calamity has come to you my brethren, and my brethren you deserved it.”
***
Nostra culpa. And finally there was a foolish conceit: the idea that the virus is speaking to us; that it has a message to deliver; and that because nothing in this world happens without cause or intention, this particular virus, this coronavirus, this virus with spikes and a crown, this king of a virus, must be secretly invested, like a cunning ruse of Hegelian history, with a part of the spirit of the world, and thus with a mission to re-orchestrate the fanfare of all against the government, to function as an unsparing critic of failed globalization….
***
As if a virus could think, know, or intend anything, As if a virus was living.
***
From this dark providentialism, this punitive magical thinking, this viral catechism that turned our lockdown dwellings into so many purgatories and lazarettos, no one was exempt. And perhaps it is a general principle of pandemics, in the face of plague, of the implacable, in the face of the prospect of imminent and indiscriminate death, communities have an irrepressible tendency to bond together in fear and shared repentance and to offer up a promise to the virus god never to return to the old ways but rather to invent themselves anew.
I would say if there is a lesson we can take from this pandemic, even as it grinds on, it is that a trillion dollars, three trillion, ten trillion, are not that big a get when the chips are down and you are confronted with far greater losses if you don’t spend for prevention. Even knowing that modern currency systems are fictions, as easily erased as written into existence, climate change has always been nickel and dimed by national legislatures since before the Kyoto Protocol. The mere billions pledged to the Green Climate Fund have amounted, so far, to only a jar full of paper IOUs. Some, like Bush’s and Obama’s, rather than be called in for payment, have been retrieved from the jar and burned.
This review has already run overlong, but bear with me a short while more. In his most recent GatesNote, Bill Gates runs some useful numbers:
Analysts disagree about how much emissions will go down this year, but the International Energy Agency puts the reduction around 8 percent. In real terms, that means we will release the equivalent of around 47 billion tons of carbon, instead of 51 billion.
That’s a meaningful reduction, and we would be in great shape if we could continue that rate of decrease every year. Unfortunately, we can’t.
Consider what it’s taking to achieve this 8 percent reduction. More than 600,000 people have died, and tens of millions are out of work. This April, car traffic was half what it was in April 2019. For months, air traffic virtually came to a halt.
To put it mildly, this is not a situation that anyone would want to continue. And yet we are still on track to emit 92 percent as much carbon as we did last year. What’s remarkable is not how much emissions will go down because of the pandemic, but how little.
Gates then goes on to show how, within a few decades, climate change will be costing 5 times the number of lives each year as Covid is expected to take in 2020. It is likely costing some of those lives this week in summer heat waves where there is no electricity to run air conditioners because it was knocked out by the most recent of the record-breaking Atlantic hurricanes, El Derecho, or monsoonal rains. His three pieces of advice:
Let science and innovation lead the way.
Make sure solutions work for poor countries too.
Start now.
Pandemics have always been a part of living on Earth. They have been with us since we began. They can never be eliminated, but they can be tamed. There will be times when you have to stay home and miss sports, concerts, eating out, and other gatherings, but it’s not all bad. These can be special moments if you choose to benefit from them.
The climate crisis is infinitely worse than any pandemic, and yet most people continue to ignore it and assume there is nothing they could do that would make a difference. We ignore the warnings. But human extinction is a much larger threat than losing some percent of the population from a virus. What a pandemic shows is that small changes by individuals—wearing masks, keeping physical distances, avoiding closed-in spaces full of strangers—add up to a large collective effort that can arrest the disease. Likewise, small steps, such as using solar power, making biochar for your garden, and not burning things if there is another way to “dispose” of them, can make a big difference to the climate.
Levy asks if Covid is a
…triumph of the masters of the world, who see in this great confinement the English translation of le grand renfermement [the "great confinement”], Michel Foucault spoke of in his early speculations on the power systems of the future in madness and civilization, a rehearsal of sorts for a new way to arrest, oppress and detain a mass of people.
Was it a reign of terror akin to the one born after 1789 with its explosion of fake news, conspiracies, frantic flights, and, soon enough, dark uprisings borne of hopelessness?
Or perhaps it was the opposite: a reassuring sign that the world had changed; that at last life has been made sacred; that from now on, when we come to a choice between life and economics, life will win out.
I think in that last line Levy sets up a false dichotomy. Economics is the system for oikos - managing one’s home. We need a systemic approach that is life affirming and provides our needs. We need a new system that works equally well in a time of plague and climate emergency. We used to speak of universal basic income as a theory, but Covid made it real. Debt jubilee is a theory, but it may soon be widely applied. All the parts are there, laid out before us, we only need the quiet determination to take our time and assemble them now, with care and thoughtfulness, and craft a better world.
March 23, 2021
Lu dans la journée, même avec 103 pages, je trouve qu'il perd trop de temps (et trop de phrases grandiloquentes) pour exprimer 4 idées très simples (le rôle exagéré des médecins, la fausse association de la covid et la globalisation, le prix du confinement sur la qualité de vie et l'oubli du reste de problème au monde.
August 28, 2020
If we look at the year 2020, most people around the world would agree that life has changed forever. Social distancing is everywhere. People wear masks when they venture outdoors. A lot of people work from home. Air travel has been curtailed. More people are buying take-out instead of dining in. Schools are operating at less than normal capacity. Universities shift classes to online platforms. Welcome to the new normal. For some, this is a crazy phenomeon where entire lifestyles need to change because of a microscopic virus. With keen observation, author Bernard-Henri Lévy notes that the madness is not the virus but the reactions caused. Busy cities emptied out into ghost towns. Popular restaurants shut down. Pollution decreased as the number of stay-home workers increased. Violent demonstrations in HK and terrorism in other parts of the world too seem to have disappeared overnight. Most interestingly, we see how the little virus brings out the behaviours rarely seen under normal circumstances. They also bring out our appreciation for "invisible" group of workers such as caregivers, delivery personnel, garbage collectors, freight shippers, online workers, and so on. In a world that is shivering with fear, how about taking time to deal with the "innermost metaphysics" within us? There are a lot of things to be concerned. What we take at face value is often something that is deeply troubling. The author offers this book as a way to question conventional wisdom and the uncritical acceptance of top-down advice, especially from the politicians and the newly elevated social status of medical or health experts.
Lévy explains that the virus has elevated five things into prominence. First, it is the rise of "medical power." People trust the medical professionals more than ever to give them advice, guidance, and all kinds of wisdom with regard to living with the virus or how to avoid it altogether. Medical professionals stand alongside powerful politicians in their regular updates. Lévy cautions us from giving them too much credit. Like scientific research, the medical fraternity don't have all the answers. At the same time, no two medical researchers adopt the same strategy or philosophy of treatment. Their opinions differ greatly and often contradict. Do we believe the first medical advice or do we opt for the one that matches our own views? One wonders how the fear of the virus has also given rise to irrational focus on hygiene. According to French philosopher, Michael Foucault, there is always a risk of social control, and in this context of virus, the marriage of medicine and politics would be fatal. Second, the frivolous justification of the virus as either good from above or evil created from below. The author takes issue with glib remarks about "hidden virtue" of the virus or the presence of the virus as some kind of punishment from the gods above. The trouble with such thinking is that it makes the virus into some kind of a living force that unleashes evil and good on mankind. Such rationalization of good and bad is mad thinking. He also warns us against two other erroneous thoughts: 1) Virus a creation of human activity like what some environmentalists and conspiracy theorists tend to say; 2) Religious judgment. He also attacks "secular religiosity" for trying to put life into something that is not. He sees virus basically as dumb and by our reactions, we have magnified the virus into a godzilla! Third, in "bask in confinement," the author critiques the argument that those forced into confinement are given a chance to put first things first, like family, appreciation, etc. Why was this so-called good thing not appreciated? That is because not everyone has a home and such delight in confinement humiliates the homeless and the displaced in society. Moreover, it is not an intentional exercise but a helpless surrender to circumstances. Lévy also notes that "social distancing" only goes against our very need of humanity: Community and togetherness. He warns that it might only feed the negative tendencies of human beings: Individualism. The fourth kind of madness that the virus unwittingly raises is that of exalting doctors as the know-all and heal-all. The trouble with modern faith in medical practitioners is the same as the famous saying: "One man's meat is another man's poison." The problem is made worse when we let these medical experts (or politicians as advised by health experts) define what is essential and what is not. Aren't books essential? Why are online merchants deemed essential even when they sell non-essential goods? Such blunt tools of advice oversimplifies the meaning of essentials. It is absurd to see how a virus could transform a organizational villain into some kind of a virtuous hero overnight. The fifth issue with modern (and oversimplistic) rationalization over the virus is that of "stay-at-home orders." Who are the authorities trying to protect in the first place? The people or themselves? It might very well become a tool for further social isolation of the marginalized! Lévy scans the troubled spots in the world and laments that the virus have not solved the past problems, only delayed the troubles. Old issues are simply swept under the carpet under the guise of social distancing. These matters are not resolved. They have only hibernated during this pandemic.
My Thoughts
This book is essentially a push back against the uncritical acceptance of world experts, especially the healthcare professionals and political forces. This is especially when they speak so forcefully as if they had all the right answers when they still do not understand the nature of the virus itself. Policies continue to be shaped and reshaped when new evidence is uncovered. How then are we to live? For Lévy, it appears to be a literary resistance fighter. Fight against conventional wisdom. Fight against the unholy alliance of medicine and politics. Fight against the continued marginalization of the impoverished and the vulnerable. Learn to question the "expert advice" that only provides a partial solution while at the same time dumbing down other legitimate voices. Using philosophy and perspectives of social justice, Lévy warns us that there is more than meets the eye. Things are often not what they claim to be. We need to stand up to make space for the other voices so that we can see the full picture, not just the ones the top ranks want us to hear.
Readers would sense the anger in the writings of Lévy as he probes deep and hard using his knowledge of philosophy and justice. In fact, much of his arguments are driven from key philosopher thoughts. For instance, in criticizing the rise of medical power, he quotes Michael Foucault's warning of the "medical glaze" that exalts medical knowledge to the level of power over people. He also uses religious literature, in particular Jewish writings to describe his disdain for medical power. He also uses lessons from Greek, Roman, and Latin culture as well as other disciplines in a way to remind us to give voice not only to the medical fraternity, but to the humanities as well. Do not listen only to people with specialist skills. Listen to human voices crying out to be heard. I would say Lévy's warnings are most apt and thought provoking. This is especially so in a world of social media and mass availability of all kinds of news and information. I think he has an important reminder for the rest of us, that we need to bring back sanity beginning with how we trust. Perhaps, I would say this book does best to give us the other perspective from the oft-unheard voices. We need to be vigilant against erroneous thinking and not to place our faith in humans more than what they deserve. Do not mute the ordinary. Neither should we glorify those with extraordinary status given them due to irrational fear of the virus.
This book offers a powerful call to correct our mental stances from the five flaws of modern thinking over the virus. If we are able to do that, we will bring back some semblance of sanity and rationality toward what it means to be human. In summary, whatever we hear on TV, radio, or on social media, give a 50% discount. For the other 50%, start thinking critically and constructively toward true goodness of humanity that is not skewed only toward medical knowledge. Life is much more than fighting the virus. Perhaps, this book helps us fill in the other half. I like to end with the words of David Katz article which aptly describes the problem: "Is Our Fight against Coronavirus Worse than the Disease?"
Rating: 4.5 stars of 5.
conrade
This book has been provided courtesy of Yale University Press and NetGalley without requiring a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied
Lévy explains that the virus has elevated five things into prominence. First, it is the rise of "medical power." People trust the medical professionals more than ever to give them advice, guidance, and all kinds of wisdom with regard to living with the virus or how to avoid it altogether. Medical professionals stand alongside powerful politicians in their regular updates. Lévy cautions us from giving them too much credit. Like scientific research, the medical fraternity don't have all the answers. At the same time, no two medical researchers adopt the same strategy or philosophy of treatment. Their opinions differ greatly and often contradict. Do we believe the first medical advice or do we opt for the one that matches our own views? One wonders how the fear of the virus has also given rise to irrational focus on hygiene. According to French philosopher, Michael Foucault, there is always a risk of social control, and in this context of virus, the marriage of medicine and politics would be fatal. Second, the frivolous justification of the virus as either good from above or evil created from below. The author takes issue with glib remarks about "hidden virtue" of the virus or the presence of the virus as some kind of punishment from the gods above. The trouble with such thinking is that it makes the virus into some kind of a living force that unleashes evil and good on mankind. Such rationalization of good and bad is mad thinking. He also warns us against two other erroneous thoughts: 1) Virus a creation of human activity like what some environmentalists and conspiracy theorists tend to say; 2) Religious judgment. He also attacks "secular religiosity" for trying to put life into something that is not. He sees virus basically as dumb and by our reactions, we have magnified the virus into a godzilla! Third, in "bask in confinement," the author critiques the argument that those forced into confinement are given a chance to put first things first, like family, appreciation, etc. Why was this so-called good thing not appreciated? That is because not everyone has a home and such delight in confinement humiliates the homeless and the displaced in society. Moreover, it is not an intentional exercise but a helpless surrender to circumstances. Lévy also notes that "social distancing" only goes against our very need of humanity: Community and togetherness. He warns that it might only feed the negative tendencies of human beings: Individualism. The fourth kind of madness that the virus unwittingly raises is that of exalting doctors as the know-all and heal-all. The trouble with modern faith in medical practitioners is the same as the famous saying: "One man's meat is another man's poison." The problem is made worse when we let these medical experts (or politicians as advised by health experts) define what is essential and what is not. Aren't books essential? Why are online merchants deemed essential even when they sell non-essential goods? Such blunt tools of advice oversimplifies the meaning of essentials. It is absurd to see how a virus could transform a organizational villain into some kind of a virtuous hero overnight. The fifth issue with modern (and oversimplistic) rationalization over the virus is that of "stay-at-home orders." Who are the authorities trying to protect in the first place? The people or themselves? It might very well become a tool for further social isolation of the marginalized! Lévy scans the troubled spots in the world and laments that the virus have not solved the past problems, only delayed the troubles. Old issues are simply swept under the carpet under the guise of social distancing. These matters are not resolved. They have only hibernated during this pandemic.
My Thoughts
This book is essentially a push back against the uncritical acceptance of world experts, especially the healthcare professionals and political forces. This is especially when they speak so forcefully as if they had all the right answers when they still do not understand the nature of the virus itself. Policies continue to be shaped and reshaped when new evidence is uncovered. How then are we to live? For Lévy, it appears to be a literary resistance fighter. Fight against conventional wisdom. Fight against the unholy alliance of medicine and politics. Fight against the continued marginalization of the impoverished and the vulnerable. Learn to question the "expert advice" that only provides a partial solution while at the same time dumbing down other legitimate voices. Using philosophy and perspectives of social justice, Lévy warns us that there is more than meets the eye. Things are often not what they claim to be. We need to stand up to make space for the other voices so that we can see the full picture, not just the ones the top ranks want us to hear.
Readers would sense the anger in the writings of Lévy as he probes deep and hard using his knowledge of philosophy and justice. In fact, much of his arguments are driven from key philosopher thoughts. For instance, in criticizing the rise of medical power, he quotes Michael Foucault's warning of the "medical glaze" that exalts medical knowledge to the level of power over people. He also uses religious literature, in particular Jewish writings to describe his disdain for medical power. He also uses lessons from Greek, Roman, and Latin culture as well as other disciplines in a way to remind us to give voice not only to the medical fraternity, but to the humanities as well. Do not listen only to people with specialist skills. Listen to human voices crying out to be heard. I would say Lévy's warnings are most apt and thought provoking. This is especially so in a world of social media and mass availability of all kinds of news and information. I think he has an important reminder for the rest of us, that we need to bring back sanity beginning with how we trust. Perhaps, I would say this book does best to give us the other perspective from the oft-unheard voices. We need to be vigilant against erroneous thinking and not to place our faith in humans more than what they deserve. Do not mute the ordinary. Neither should we glorify those with extraordinary status given them due to irrational fear of the virus.
This book offers a powerful call to correct our mental stances from the five flaws of modern thinking over the virus. If we are able to do that, we will bring back some semblance of sanity and rationality toward what it means to be human. In summary, whatever we hear on TV, radio, or on social media, give a 50% discount. For the other 50%, start thinking critically and constructively toward true goodness of humanity that is not skewed only toward medical knowledge. Life is much more than fighting the virus. Perhaps, this book helps us fill in the other half. I like to end with the words of David Katz article which aptly describes the problem: "Is Our Fight against Coronavirus Worse than the Disease?"
Rating: 4.5 stars of 5.
conrade
This book has been provided courtesy of Yale University Press and NetGalley without requiring a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied
August 14, 2021
This is really an extended diatribe dressed up in a very learned way (obligatory references to Greek philosophy). Some of the pontificating had merit: our response being all out of proportion to the risks and harms of COVID (though looking at the impact of second waves in places like India gives one pause), and prioritizing bodily health at the cost of abandoning the need for mental and emotional health.
Others were more puzzling - references to Plato won’t quite square why we shouldn’t leave decision making pertaining to emergency regulations to physicians - surely they of all people would better understand the risks.
I was surprised at how little was added in this book (admittedly written just when Europe was responding to the full extent of COVID) by someone with a reputation as one of our greatest public intellectuals.
Others were more puzzling - references to Plato won’t quite square why we shouldn’t leave decision making pertaining to emergency regulations to physicians - surely they of all people would better understand the risks.
I was surprised at how little was added in this book (admittedly written just when Europe was responding to the full extent of COVID) by someone with a reputation as one of our greatest public intellectuals.
June 22, 2020
Il dit des choses intéressantes, c’est dommage qu’il éprouve le besoin d’étaler son érudition et la richesse de son vocabulaire ce qui rend la lecture un peu lassante.
August 12, 2020
Quite an unexpected little book (or rather long essay) by French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy. I thought that he would be more critical with the Corona virus itself but that's not his focus. Instead his evaluation is deeply rooted in being French and being a Philosopher. Does this matter? It does.
First, he draws parallels to what happened when the Germans conquered France in WWII. In a similar way people would appraise the (enforced) quiet atmosphere when everyone in Paris had to stay home. Everyone who is happy that pollution went down because of Corona should think twice.
Next, the author points out that physicians and doctors have gone to the extreme in their attempts to save us humans. We didn't know better so it was okay, but now? The "fight" we will not win, Corona (or one of the mutation) is here to stay like viruses always have. Handling the situation like we currently do is comparable to giving a 5yr old a gun. How could someone resist the temptation of power...
Finally, and this really resonated with me, there is the question what defines us humans and our human society. Surviving alone, the quantity of years, is nothing compared to quality. Defining the situation today (August 2020) as the new normal can't be more than a bad joke. As a vivid SF reader and being born in former East Germany it's impossible to ignore what has been done to our democratic values. I was especially reminded of a story by Theodore Sturgeon , (Mr Costello, Hero) where good intentions transformed the society in a radical way.
The book is not for everyone and, as usual, should be read critically. I especially wondered about the political angle (power games between the biggest countries) and it already starts to feel dated. Worth reading for the historical and philosophical angle.
First, he draws parallels to what happened when the Germans conquered France in WWII. In a similar way people would appraise the (enforced) quiet atmosphere when everyone in Paris had to stay home. Everyone who is happy that pollution went down because of Corona should think twice.
Next, the author points out that physicians and doctors have gone to the extreme in their attempts to save us humans. We didn't know better so it was okay, but now? The "fight" we will not win, Corona (or one of the mutation) is here to stay like viruses always have. Handling the situation like we currently do is comparable to giving a 5yr old a gun. How could someone resist the temptation of power...
Finally, and this really resonated with me, there is the question what defines us humans and our human society. Surviving alone, the quantity of years, is nothing compared to quality. Defining the situation today (August 2020) as the new normal can't be more than a bad joke. As a vivid SF reader and being born in former East Germany it's impossible to ignore what has been done to our democratic values. I was especially reminded of a story by Theodore Sturgeon , (Mr Costello, Hero) where good intentions transformed the society in a radical way.
The book is not for everyone and, as usual, should be read critically. I especially wondered about the political angle (power games between the biggest countries) and it already starts to feel dated. Worth reading for the historical and philosophical angle.
August 15, 2020
A radical alternative take on how the pandemic has changed all of our lives, and which takes issue with how easily some of these have been accepted.
Once lost and gone they are likely to be permanently lost unless fought for.
Also illustrates how the dominance of the issue in the news has eclipsed most other issues, and how some world leaders have used this for advantage.
Once lost and gone they are likely to be permanently lost unless fought for.
Also illustrates how the dominance of the issue in the news has eclipsed most other issues, and how some world leaders have used this for advantage.
March 11, 2021
Hardly do I give a 1 star review to a book I actually finished, thank goodness it was a short one.
1 star because of the writing. The first half of the book he quotes so many people in such short snippets I wonder if he is picking and choosing parts of sentences to make his point, to bring legitimacy, when in reality it is extremely distracting and makes his argument hard to follow. In addition to throwing in so many quotes he is all over the place with timelines, in the beginning of a sentence he talks about ancient Greece and modern times half a sentence later. It's whiplash, it's awful.
1 star because of his examples. He makes a lot of comparisons in this book, and it seems he tries to make the big, shocking ones as much as he can, but in doing so he has to stretch things out a bit, and it ends up just not working.
1 star because he is inconsistent. He spends a chapter shaming everyone who used time during social distancing to do projects they didn't previously have time for, to work on self-improvement, and to focus on other things. A few chapters later he laments the news for only talking about COVID while ignoring everyday life. Which do you want angry old man? Everyone stressed and focused on COVID? Or people making the best of a bad situation?
1 star because even through all the quoting and research he does for this book, he does not seem researched enough. On page 72 he says, "But are we really sure the change will disappear with the pandemic?" referring to unpleasant changes like not shaking hands and not gathering in groups in public places. Looking at history, such as the Spanish Flu in 1918 we have learned it took people some time to feel comfortable gathering in churches, schools, in hanging out with friends without concern, BUT IT DID HAPPEN.
He is dramatic, big, extreme. He is angry and uses these pages to rant. He puffs himself up as above everyone else, one of the few to do things right, while putting everyone who is trying their best down. Do not recommend.
1 star because of the writing. The first half of the book he quotes so many people in such short snippets I wonder if he is picking and choosing parts of sentences to make his point, to bring legitimacy, when in reality it is extremely distracting and makes his argument hard to follow. In addition to throwing in so many quotes he is all over the place with timelines, in the beginning of a sentence he talks about ancient Greece and modern times half a sentence later. It's whiplash, it's awful.
1 star because of his examples. He makes a lot of comparisons in this book, and it seems he tries to make the big, shocking ones as much as he can, but in doing so he has to stretch things out a bit, and it ends up just not working.
1 star because he is inconsistent. He spends a chapter shaming everyone who used time during social distancing to do projects they didn't previously have time for, to work on self-improvement, and to focus on other things. A few chapters later he laments the news for only talking about COVID while ignoring everyday life. Which do you want angry old man? Everyone stressed and focused on COVID? Or people making the best of a bad situation?
1 star because even through all the quoting and research he does for this book, he does not seem researched enough. On page 72 he says, "But are we really sure the change will disappear with the pandemic?" referring to unpleasant changes like not shaking hands and not gathering in groups in public places. Looking at history, such as the Spanish Flu in 1918 we have learned it took people some time to feel comfortable gathering in churches, schools, in hanging out with friends without concern, BUT IT DID HAPPEN.
He is dramatic, big, extreme. He is angry and uses these pages to rant. He puffs himself up as above everyone else, one of the few to do things right, while putting everyone who is trying their best down. Do not recommend.
May 29, 2020
Lu : l'essai de BHL sur la Covid…
Je ne sais que penser, c'est un essai rédigé à vif par son auteur, le déconfinement n'était pas non plus commencé au moment où il écrivait ses lignes…
Alors forcément, on ne peut pas être d'accord sur tout (déjà de base, et c'est bien normal), mais on n'a pas, non plus, vécu ce moment de la même manière lui et moi (comme une certitude même…).
Je ne suis pas philosophe et il était intéressant de se pencher sur son regard car BHL décrypte ici le phénomène social pour ce qu'il est.
La grande question est : que dit de nous cette épidémie qui est entrée du jour au lendemain dans nos vies ? Que dit-elle de notre humanité mais aussi de son contraire ? Qu'est-ce qui filtre à travers ce prisme-là ?
Les chaînes d'infos nous ont tellement bassinées de chiffres, l'actualité "covidesque" à n'en plus finir, en boucle : où était donc passé l'autre partie du monde pendant ce temps-là ? Une vraie question !
Et, plus légèrement, nos rapports humains, nos sensations seront-elles irrémédiablement bouleversés ? Notre bise de bonjour "à la française" sera-t-elle bientôt de retour ? Sans réticence, sans virus, avec le sourire qui va avec ?
C'est chez Grasset, ça mériterait d'être "analysé" plus en avant, avec le recul nécessaire...
À noter que les droits d'auteur seront reversés à l'ADELC (Association pour le Développement de la Librairie de Création).
"L’ADELC a été créée par des éditeurs de littérature générale soucieux de favoriser la diffusion de la création éditoriale en apportant à des libraires les moyens de se développer et de conserver leur indépendance." (sic) et rien que pour cela, ça vaut vraiment le coup de le lire !
Je ne sais que penser, c'est un essai rédigé à vif par son auteur, le déconfinement n'était pas non plus commencé au moment où il écrivait ses lignes…
Alors forcément, on ne peut pas être d'accord sur tout (déjà de base, et c'est bien normal), mais on n'a pas, non plus, vécu ce moment de la même manière lui et moi (comme une certitude même…).
Je ne suis pas philosophe et il était intéressant de se pencher sur son regard car BHL décrypte ici le phénomène social pour ce qu'il est.
La grande question est : que dit de nous cette épidémie qui est entrée du jour au lendemain dans nos vies ? Que dit-elle de notre humanité mais aussi de son contraire ? Qu'est-ce qui filtre à travers ce prisme-là ?
Les chaînes d'infos nous ont tellement bassinées de chiffres, l'actualité "covidesque" à n'en plus finir, en boucle : où était donc passé l'autre partie du monde pendant ce temps-là ? Une vraie question !
Et, plus légèrement, nos rapports humains, nos sensations seront-elles irrémédiablement bouleversés ? Notre bise de bonjour "à la française" sera-t-elle bientôt de retour ? Sans réticence, sans virus, avec le sourire qui va avec ?
C'est chez Grasset, ça mériterait d'être "analysé" plus en avant, avec le recul nécessaire...
À noter que les droits d'auteur seront reversés à l'ADELC (Association pour le Développement de la Librairie de Création).
"L’ADELC a été créée par des éditeurs de littérature générale soucieux de favoriser la diffusion de la création éditoriale en apportant à des libraires les moyens de se développer et de conserver leur indépendance." (sic) et rien que pour cela, ça vaut vraiment le coup de le lire !
July 31, 2020
Disclaimer: this was sent to me by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Overall, I give this 3 stars.
Concept: This book contains some great ideas about the state of the world, and how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected it. According to Levy, the manifestation of acute fear was the result of social media and the interconnected nature of our modern world.
Writing: As an academic (BA Hons, MRes) I certainly think this reads is researched very thoroughly. However, it read a little bit clunking and wouldn’t be that accessible for a more general audience. The points he makes are a tad over-written in places and the exact point he is making disappears into the abyss, and it was only through going back and re-scanning did I find it again.
Overall. I would definitely say that this book is informative and well thought out. The research is of a high quality and the author presents some complex arguments about human nature and the concept of fear and propaganda. However, the inaccessibility of this book and the over-written, clunky writing style pulls it down.
Overall, I give this 3 stars.
Concept: This book contains some great ideas about the state of the world, and how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected it. According to Levy, the manifestation of acute fear was the result of social media and the interconnected nature of our modern world.
Writing: As an academic (BA Hons, MRes) I certainly think this reads is researched very thoroughly. However, it read a little bit clunking and wouldn’t be that accessible for a more general audience. The points he makes are a tad over-written in places and the exact point he is making disappears into the abyss, and it was only through going back and re-scanning did I find it again.
Overall. I would definitely say that this book is informative and well thought out. The research is of a high quality and the author presents some complex arguments about human nature and the concept of fear and propaganda. However, the inaccessibility of this book and the over-written, clunky writing style pulls it down.
October 11, 2021
A bombastic essay written early in the pandemic. While Lévy has some good ideas here, I can't help but read these as the rantings of a bitter old man who doesn't want to adjust to a new way of life. So yes, while I agree that a life in lockdown is not really much of a life at all, I also understand the importance of doing so, particularly at a time before scientists had developed vaccines.
Each chapter is essentially a "here's what I find ridiculous" tirade, from idolizing doctors to thinking there's a silver lining to the virus. For me, Lévy's most persuasive chapter is his last one, which is basically: even if it feels like the world has stopped, all of the problems we were facing before (genocide, massive deforestation, authoritarian dictators) are still very much happening, so let's not forget about those once we return to normal. I'd be curious to hear his thoughts now, as I get the sense 1) that he thought "normal" would come back much sooner, and 2) he didn't anticipate the massive demonstrations from last summer after the murder of George Floyd.
The Trump bashing was fun and funny.
Each chapter is essentially a "here's what I find ridiculous" tirade, from idolizing doctors to thinking there's a silver lining to the virus. For me, Lévy's most persuasive chapter is his last one, which is basically: even if it feels like the world has stopped, all of the problems we were facing before (genocide, massive deforestation, authoritarian dictators) are still very much happening, so let's not forget about those once we return to normal. I'd be curious to hear his thoughts now, as I get the sense 1) that he thought "normal" would come back much sooner, and 2) he didn't anticipate the massive demonstrations from last summer after the murder of George Floyd.
The Trump bashing was fun and funny.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 81 reviews