The Minefield

Reciprocity, cooperation, kindness, turn-taking, forbearance, empathy, experimentation — can these counter the decidedly illiberal, impatient, anti-pluralistic, well-nigh apocalyptic energies that now seem resurgent in parts of the West?

During the pandemic, there was a sudden renewal of interest in Harold Ramis’s 1993 film “Groundhog Day” — especially its bleaker aspects. But this missed its sophistication and humanity, to say nothing of its acute depiction of moral growth.

Residents of Sydney have found themselves understandably overwhelmed by the compound traumas of two stabbing attacks in three days. How are we to make sense of the cycling-through of emotions in response to shocking public violence?

There has been an odd confluence of events over the past couple weeks that has managed to intensify the sense of a conflict between two of our most important democratic institutions: the law and the media.

Does the failure on the part of Israel to enable the provision of humanitarian aid or to do everything in its power to prevent civilian casualties suggest “a blameworthy indifference to Palestinian lives”?

It is important to remember that Thoreau’s motivation for withdrawing was neither escapism nor apolitical quietism. The fact that he departed on 4 July signals an invitation to discover a different way of living together.

If Thoreau regards withdrawal and solitude as means by which we learn to escape self-deception, then they may well be little more than preparation for the moral demands friends make of one another.

Solitude is neither alone-ness nor idleness. It is strenuous and takes practice. Solitude does not simply happen in the way that isolation or loneliness does — it must be inhabited.

Are periodic bouts of withdrawal from life’s urgent demands and heated debates necessary to regain a sense of our shared humanity, and to renew the commitments that sustain the moral life?