The Cure

The dominant capitalist meme against Covid lockdowns is that "the cure" is worse than the disease. In this telling, the economic slowdown caused by lockdown is worse than having people die. This has always been and continues to be the dominant logic of capitalism, but it has rarely been expressed so succinctly. This exact same logic is applied to the climate emergency: yes, millions will die, but this is preferable to an economic slowdown. Where the comparison fails is with the fact that the pandemic is not an existential crisis, as is global heating. Still, we need an explanation for those who refuse the mask and the science behind both Covid and climate change. Tad Delay uses a left- Lacanian framework to approach the problem of obstinate reaction: "...we are subjects who desire, not subjects who desire to know … and only occasionally does that desire attach to a desire for knowledge’. Nor of course is it heroism or rigour that distinguishes a clearer from a less clear thinker about evidence: it is often a ‘crisis’ that ‘creates the certain mental conditions by which they [people] can transition into a different way of thinking about something’." A crisis. A rupture that upends the desire to fit in, to be pleased with oneself, to say the right thing, to follow the cult.