The World is Darkening
US novelist Jonathan Franzen wrote in “What If We Stopped Pretending?” (The New Yorker, 2019): “If you’re younger than sixty, you have a good chance of witnessing the radical destabilization of life on earth - massive crop failures, apocalyptic fires, imploding economies, epic flooding, hundreds of millions of refugees fleeing regions made uninhabitable by extreme heat or permanent drought.”
In his book “On Time and Water,” Icelandic author Andri Magnason asks: If we are sensitive creatures and we know where we are heading, why don’t we stop?
Instead of us finding an answer to his question, a virus stole our attention. Thomas L. Friedmann, an op columnist for the New York Times, wrote recently that “COVID-19 was supposed to be China’s Chernobyl. It’s ended up looking more like the West’s Waterloo.”
The world is darkening - and I am afraid.
