“Aristotle said that only two living entities are capable of complete solitude and complete separateness: God and beast. Because of this the most acute form of suffering for human beings is loneliness.”
― Chris Hedges, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning

Now in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we face fundamental political questions.

Has our enforced solitude reasserted the loneliness our species dreads, which makes war more likely as  a reset on the other side (if there is one) of the pandemic?

Has the decadence of the last two decades made those civilian and epicurean appetites of our gilded age a more centralizing force than it was in Hedges’ heyday?

Or is there a middle way?