Eric Weinstein Opines:

“We got here not because we couldn’t foresee this future, in fact, we extensively studied it. We got here because we decided to ignore the future that we knew was coming. The specific class of people that we had at the helm of our institutions were constitutionally incapable of putting their foot down in order to assert that we needed deeper reserves in order to handle what they called a surge capacity.”

“So do I know what’s going on? Hmph. What I said during this section of our last episode still holds true this week: my continuing discussions with a number of people I respect deeply seem surprisingly inconclusive to me, even at this late date. So my mind wanders to the second-order question of why it would be so difficult to sketch a straightforward narrative to guide us. In fact, Dr. Peter Thiel’s most recent video evidences some of this confusion, where he shares that, as a physician, he feels so spun around by what he is hearing that even he is forced to think in political, rather than medical or scientific terms to explain the situation.

To simplify: there are three great risks regarding the coronavirus, one of overreaction, one of under-reaction, and one of inappropriate reaction.”

With this he introduces a topic close to my heart: The possibility of establishing a ‘Game B’ which could introduce us to the possibility of meaningful, and survivable collectivity.

First, I totally disagree with his explanation, which is vastly too specific… however apparently coherent it seems. That coherence is utterly unjustified in the present context and situation!

I would suggest a few responses so basic that they are easily overlooked:

1. There is no ‘we’. This is a hypnotic fiction of habitual language that becomes more lethal as the its pretense becomes more blatant.

If anything is in evidence, it is primarily this. Having failed to forge anything resembling an intelligent or meaningfully unified collective, what we have is swarms of competing mini-leaders attempting to contrive a narrative that will win converts. In a crises, this is lethal.

2. Our political systems are, primarily, dramatic. Hollywood finally won us over to the degree that our leaders, if we are ignorant enough to use such language, are actors rather than statespeople (a few notable exceptions exist, but they are mostly flotsam in the storming idiocy of the context they must contend with (and against)).

3. Our educational systems were converted to factories of stupidity and conformity long ago, primarily by the Republican agenda.

And

4. To the degree ‘we’ refers to any meaningful collectivity, we are guilty of ‘riding a dead horse’ socially, politically, cognitively, emotionally… organizationally… and economically…and we’ve been endlessly arguing over absurd minutae and bizarre suggestions… instead of either dismounting and walking… or… obtaining a new mount.