The Final Solution: Art in the Age of COVID-19

Eruditon has been generated under all manner of conditions. Though everything is existential there are undoubtedly examples of philosophic premises like Wittgenstein’s “The world is that which is the case,” the first proposition from the Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus, which exist in an ether. A field like language philosophy might seem irrelevant to war, though those who traffic in ethics and game theory like "prisoner's dilemma" or especially "the trolley problem" (which is unfortunately exemplified in many recent medical instances where equipment is scarce) would naturally find an application in situations in which there's great conflict, like our present pandemic. But the history of thought is unpredictable. Does the ivory tower provide the repose necessary for the generation of great ideas or are the trenches where the human spirit is tested, the places where great insights into the nature of both art and humanity are to be found? Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night, Remarque’s All's Quiet on the Western Front and Picasso’s Guernica are all products of the battlefield. Yet what about Emily Dickenson who worked in complete isolation from the world? One can only wonder what the esthetic products of the current calamity will be. The fact that coronavirus is an equal opportunity employer poses perplexing questions since practically no one is unscathed. Darkness at Noon and l984 were responses to totalitarianism. Wings of the Dove and The Remembrance of Things Past might be said to derive their impetus from the project of Art itself while Stephen King's The Stand and Steven Soderbergh's Contagion were plainly the product of fear.

The Final Solution:The WPA

The natural human tendency is to think life will return to normal. The soldier goes to war and comes home expecting to continue on where he left off—and there are many cases which illustrate that happening. Many veterans have come home and extended their educations courtesy of the G.I. Bill. The high school sweetheart or wife they left behind was waiting for them—or not. There are many people who think that after the period of disruption caused by the coronovirus, life will return to normal. Donald Trump is one of them and he plainly believes it will even be better. The appeal of his rhetoric is understandable Who wouldn't want to indulge the fantasy that those who lost their jobs will get better ones? The Hoover campaign of 1928 offered a chicken in every pot. Now it’s around $1200. But is it pessimistic to believe that the current pandemic will live up to its name with its effect being truly global? The United States economy will not simply pick up on its own since its interconnected with so many others which have taken terrific hits. If America gets up from the canvas, it’s hard to believe that the fighter will still not be sent staggering into the ropes after taking subsequent hits from failing economies elsewhere which suck out energy like a black hole (not to speak of the fact that the virus may strike back again). It’s great to hear the American economy will be even more robust and Trump's skyrocketing approval ratings reflect this. However, with as much as a possible 20% unemployment from the collapse of so many businesses, perhaps what’s called for is a new WPA. That's in essence what those like Governor Cuomo want when they're asking the Federal government to employ private industries--and by proxy millions of layed off workers--to get the job done.

The Final Solution: Rock Around the Clock

You may be one of those who have exulted in terminal uniqueness. You have tenaciously held onto the love of extraordinary people with larger than life personalities, who seem to be impervious, invulnerable and insouciant and who seem to have written the music for the march to the beat of that different drummer. Well, it seems like coronavirus has drained all the exquisite eccentricity out of the world. All the proto-Edwardian dandies, the Oscar Wilde clones, pundits and insouciant fops, the "Kubla Khan" loving Coleridge-wannabes with the world-weary views have all been displaced by EMS workers in their hazmat suits. How is it possible to be different and special when the world is falling apart? The whole bohemian rhapsody has been eradicated in the face of a disease. Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet? Down the tubes, at least for now. In the era of social distancing Verlaine and Rimbaud wouldn’t get close enough to have it out with each other. The dyspeptic Bob Dylan, with his whining complaint is an afterthought. No one is rocking around the clock. Do you really want to see Mick Jagger performing the social distant version "Gimme Shelter" wearing a mask in front of an empty seat bank? What about The Remembrance of Things Past in the time of coronavirus?

The Final Solution: Social Distancing

Social Distancing is a pithy little meme. If it weren’t being invoked to prevent the spread of a pandemic, it might be employed by a novelist and screenplay writer of manners like the late Nora Ephron or a playwright like Jules Feiffer. Social Distancing could stand next to Little Murders as a document of metrosexual life, the kind of thing Candice Bushnell might have written and that Larry David would have a starring role in. Social Distancing aka Curb Your Enthusiasm. It could also be the title of a porn film. Someone like La Cicciolina, the former wife of Jeff Koons, would be perfectly cast since she was a porn star who went on to have a career in politics. Obviously, the phrase was created as part of a health alert, but it could easily turn into a legacy of Coronavirus. Socially distancing is a far cry from social rising which was the theme of novels like Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy and Edith Wharton's House of Mirth. Or certainly from sexual liberation a la Portnoy’s Complaint or countercultural rebellion, the seeds of which constituted the plot of The Graduate. In its current iteration, social distancing has little to do with “plastics" or alienation from the culture of prosperity. It's a survival mechanism.

The Final Solution: The Lonely Crowd

"Let the chips fall where they may" goes the old saw. But what really will be legacy of the pandemic? One used to think of neutral countries as impervious to shifts of geopolitics, but in this world of interconnectivity, there’s literally no Switzerland —no place to use the words of the famous Hardy novel, Far From the Madding Crowd. The filibuster of the American economy has been dealt a staggering blow—say like Odysseus' men staggering Polyphemus by shooting an stake into the monster’s eye. But let’s get back to cosmopolitanism, metrosexuality or whatever soubriquet you may want to use for the social contract. With cities from Milan to San Francisco on lockdown, people first bemoan the loss of human contact, but the process is multivalent. It's developmental like the stages of mourning or dying. The dreaded isolation becomes a relief. The pandemic (for those who don't contract the disease) is regarded as an emetic, flushing out contacts that seemed superfluous and wasteful. Undoubtedly the fallout may be that while 20% of the population may be unemployed, another 20% will conclude that they didn’t like Bob, Alice, Ted and Carol anyway and have no need to resume social relationships which weren’t fulfilling in the first place. Some marriages will grow stronger as a result; others will implode due to the stress and for those who have chosen a totally solitary path, multiple personality disorder may be in the offing. But there's going to be a legacy of change on both macro and individual levels. If it turns out employees work as effectively from home as from the office, many business may ask, is the sense of community afforded by a workplace worth the price of rent? Downtown Detroit was dealt its death knell years ago, but many center cities may be threatened, with office towers becoming vacant. Canny real estate investors might better put their money into warehouses (which are potential shipping depots for Amazon) then into glitsy Towers of Babel. One change will be bought at the price of the next and who knows what Phoenix will rise from the ashes.

The Final Solution: Coronavirusville

Coronavirus (CDC)

Social distancing has become the lingua franca of human interchange, but most experts believe that once you've become infected with Coronavirus, you’re immune. And one wouldn’t be surprised to find some canny entrepreneur exploiting the population of those who have gotten the disease and recovered from it. Imagine a chain of Club Med type all-inclusive resorts limited to those who have already been infected. You might even have a Club Hedonism for those who walk on the wild side called Club Covid- 19. The resorts would spawn towns and even mini cities whose requirement for entry and condominium membership would be a certain level of wealth and naturally a certificate of infection. While the rest of the world went about their impoverished existences worrying about touching infected shopping cart handles, this new group of jet setters will constitute a permissive counterculture who'll thumb their noses at the rest of suffering humanity forced to recuse themselves from all the fun. Talk about gated communities. Within these guarded enclaves, it'll be be Woodstock all over again. After months and years of isolation, the inhabitants will frolic in nude hot tubs within communes loaded with, what else but that precious commodity, other people! La Corona might be the name of a three star Michelin restaurant in cities with names like Coronavirusville. You may have heard people talking about wanting to get infected, but it’s not only to get a head start on the disease, it’s because they want to have a good time.

The Final Solution: Is the Libido Right Wing?

If the inner life were political, what party would the libido belong to? Would it be the Democratic or Republican? Certainly, it wouldn’t be a member of the Green Party. And is the superego, a moralizing wishy-washy liberal perpetually appalled by displays of instinctual and selfish behavior? Is sexuality right wing? Now with the up and coming presidential election laying itself out as a Manichean struggle between good and evil, something that a Cecil B. DeMille or even Stanley Kubrick could have down justice to in his Path of Glory and Spartacus days, it feels like the struggles that really matter in the hearts of human beings have been consigned to an emotional Lilliput. For those who hate him, Trump has become a Satan of Miltonic dimensions who sucks the air out of any room.  On a practical level, the whole existence of Trump is a little akin to the relationship between the keyboard and cursive writing. The electorate have become so polarized and inflamed by the Trump phenomenon, together with Coronavirus they’ve lost the ability to partake in normal conversation about comparatively puny human interactions like who has a crush on whom.