The coronavirus pandemic has triggered a catalogue of crises – medical, political, economic, cultural and personal – that have affected each one of us, differing only in degree. But underpinning all these predicaments has been the most important crisis of all – the crisis of meaning.
The “stupid self-replicating mechanism” of the virus “hides no deeper meaning,” believes Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, even as he has written a book called Pandemic! Covid-19 Shakes the World to help understand the consequences of this unprecedented situation. While the pandemic itself has no lesson to exhort, one of its inadvertent functions has been to expose the hollow systems of society that we had long taken for granted. In doing so, Covid-19 has asked humanity the ultimate question – what does it mean to be alive?
Even before the pandemic broke out, we were living at a unique juncture of history – a time when two seemingly contradictory narratives had been jostling for our attention, determined to provide us with the definitive purpose of life. The essence of existence was shaped by two frontiers that were radically distinct, and yet, in the paradoxical realms of the recent past (which would be till sometime in February), had managed to co-exist comfortably since the financial crisis of 2008.
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