Eventual Disturbance

“Often spreading voraciously through popular social media channels such as Facebook and WhatsApp, COVID-19-related misinformation has helped facilitate the widespread use of scientifically unproven and potentially lethal remedies.”

— Even as my students and I acknowledge the widespread mistrust in science, we are still bewildered at how random information in social networks is considered “trustworthy”.

— Right.

— Even though we know that there is a given favorable predisposition to the content of a message, based on the person’s interests, values, political preferences, cultural environment, and ‘psychology’.

— Even though.

— Even if we perceived this moment in time as an eventual disturbance.

— Even if.

— Yes, but remember that when there are no objective criteria, operationally defined, anything goes.

— Yes, because for many, it’s uncomfortable that science does not have absolute certainties.

— And that it continuously evolves.

— An eventual disturbance, indeed.

— In the eye of the beholder.

“There are two kinds of original modes of life. There are those which are stabilized in new constants but whose stability will not keep them from being eventually transcended again. These are normal constants with propulsive value. They are truly normal by virtue of their normativity.

And there are those which will be stabilized in the form of constants, which the living being’s every anxious effort will tend to preserve from every eventual disturbance.”

• Digital collage by Aydasara Ortega Torres.