Kindle Notes & Highlights
One thing is certain: we cannot simply resume things as they were. We won’t be able to pretend, as we have done so far, not to see the extreme situation into which the religion of money and the blindness of administration have plunged us.
We will have to ask if it is still justifiable to fly for our holidays to remote places, or if maybe it is more urgent that we learn to dwell again in the spaces in which we live, that we look at them with eyes more attentive.
we really have lost the ability to dwell.
We accepted the transformation of our cities and villages into amusement parks for tourists, and now that the epidemic has made the tourists disappear and the cities that had renounced any other form of life are reduced to spectral non-places, we should be able to understand that these were wrong choices, as are almost all of th...
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Why hasn’t there been, as would be quite imag inable and as usually occurs in these cases, opposition? My hypothesis is that the plague was somehow already present, even if only unconsciously, and that people’s life conditions were such that a sudden sign could make them appear as they really were—which is to say, as no less intolerable than a plague.
another element to consider is the evident collapse of any commonly shared belief and faith. We might say that people no longer believe in anything, except in a bare biological existence which should be preserved at any cost. But only tyranny, only the monstrous Leviathan with his drawn sword, can be built upon the fear of losing one’s life.
once the emergency—the plague—is declared over (if it ever is), I do not believe that it will be possible, at least for those who retain a modicum of lucidity, to return to our previous lives. And perhaps this is the most dispiriting thing we can see today—even if it is the case that, as has been said, “[o]nly for the sake of the hopeless ones have we been given hope”2.
Fear is a bad adviser, and I don’t believe that transforming the country into a plague-ridden land, where we all look at each other as potential sources of contagion, is really the solution.
just as it was asserted in the face of terrorism that freedom should be abolished in order to defend freedom, now we are told that life has to be suspended in order to protect life. Are we perhaps
People are so used to living in conditions of perpetual crisis, that they seem not to realise that their lives have been reduced to a purely biological condition that has lost not only its political dimension, but also that of what is simply human.
Fear is revealing many of the things that we pretended not to see. The first is that our society believes in nothing beyond bare life. It is clear that Italians are ready to sacrifice practically everything—their normal life conditions, their social relationships, their work, even friendships, as well as their religious and political convictions—when faced with the danger of getting sick.
bare life is not something that unites people: it blinds and separates them.
what is a society that values nothing above survival?
How did it happen that an entire country, without even realising what was happening, collapsed both ethically and politically in the face of an illness?
Because our neighbour has become a potential source of contagion, we have effectively agreed to suspend our friendships and relationships.
A norm which affirms that we must renounce the good to save the good is as false and contradictory as that which, in order to protect freedom, imposes the renunciation of freedom.
The history of the twentieth century—and, in particular, the rise to power of Nazism in Germany—shows clearly that the state of exception is the mechanism by which democracies can transform themselves into totalitarian states.
Italy is at the moment spearheading the development of a technology of governance that, in the name of public health, renders acceptable a set of life conditions which eliminate all possible political activity, pure and simple. This country is always on the verge of falling back into Fascism, and there are many signs today that this is something more than a risk.
Control exercised through security cameras and, as is now being proposed, through cellphones exceeds by far any form of control exercised under totalitarian regimes such as Fascism or Nazism.
is dangerous, especially in this light, to entrust doctors and scientists with decisions that are ultimately ethical and political. Rightly
I have written elsewhere that science has become the religion of our time. The analogy with religion must be read to the letter. Theologians declared that they could not clearly define God, but in his name they dictated rules of behaviour and burned heretics without hesitation; virologists admit that they do not know exactly what a virus is, but in its name they insist on deciding how human beings should live.
Louis Bolk, a great Dutch scientist, come to mind. According to Bolk, the human species is characterised by a progressive inhibition of its natural, vital processes of adaptation to its environment. These processes are superseded by a hyper-trophic growth of technological apparatuses designed to adapt the environment to mankind. When this process exceeds a certain limit, it becomes counterproductive and transforms itself into the self-destruction of the species.
What we are now living through is more than just a staggering imposition on everybody’s freedoms; it is also a massive campaign to falsify the truth.
