"Things are going to be getting very real this year, even as some continue to deny reality, to an almost astonishing degree of self-absorption and denial. What is it going to take?" Jesse, 27 February 2020 “One reason we rush so quickly to the vulgar satisfactions of judgement, and love to revel in our righteous outrage, is that it spares us from the impotent pain of empathy, and the harder, messier work of understanding." Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing "As in all periods of speculation, men sought not to be persuaded by the reality of things but to find excuses for escaping into the new world of fantasy." "John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929 “Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves. In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were human: they did not believe in plagues. Albert Camus, The Plague
