📑 Now Is the Time to Overreact
Sometimes we do things even though they don’t make sense, or even because they don’t make sense, because our tiny minds have proven unable to grasp their consequences. In this case, Americans are not conducting this grand social experiment to make ourselves feel comfortable. We are doing it in the hope that later, and maybe even soon, we will look back and find it unreasonable. In the best-case scenario, as with Y2K, we might even look back and mock it for its excess. The point of overreacting, it turns out, is to overreact: to react excessively, but with reason. If you feel at least a little foolish right now, then you’re doing something right.
Ian Bogost reflects on the response by many Americans. Although encouraged to engage in social distancing, many are still congregating in close groups. He explains that although isolating ourselves might seem extreme, such measures can only be appreciated in the future and must be embraced in faith and hope. This is similar to the arguments of Nassim Nicholas Taleb.