What moved this idea to a high level of intensity was my reading about the death of Michael Sorkin who was 71. Mobile, playful but serious thinker in architecture who contracted the COVID-l 9 and died a few days later. I am certainly among the most vulnerable in the population, 86, with prostate cancer and receiving chemo treatments, and with COVID-19 about to enter its most explosive episode of two or many more weeks. It brought me up short that he would succumb and so quickly. What is it to be vulnerable? To be open to attack without adequate means of defense; to be open to attack because of inadequate surveillance; to be open to attack because of weakness and the inability to defend oneself; to be resigned to the likelihood of attack and subsequent defeat; to be inclined toward self destruction.
It seems that intentionality has much to do with certain kinds of vulnerability. Misjudgment of the conditions one is in and of their nature or strength, but especially deliberate misjudgment of the conditions. The feeling of vulnerability derives from a sense of weakness with respect to some threat more powerful than you think you are. And it typically arises when one is on a path along which one believes the threat will become an actual attack, or realize itself in ways one can at least partly imagine. An example of the latter might be a rope bridge across a deep valley that shows torn or weak elements, or simply the path of getting older! Vulnerability can also be a posture that belies underlying strength and skill, as for example in wrestling where a feint can be turned against an opponent who would underestimate the strength or deftness of the move. Vulnerability can be analyzed as for example in football where uniforms are specifically deigned to address certain vulnerabilities and where certain kinds of contact are prohibited. But this is a game and the parameters and rules that govern its play have evolved over time to deal with empirically discovered vulnerabilities, and unlike nature these parameters can he adjusted to lessen the probability of damage. And both of these conditions imply some control over the external parameters. Not so with nature, or at least not so before the vaccine is developed. Strategies must be built out of a knowledge of the virus and its behavior and later of its elements and structure. Thus social distance takes account of the virus’ love of the proximity of people and how it spreads itself. Later, once the destructive behaviors of the virus itself are better understood and ways of parrying those behaviors are developed, like the football uniform and the rules governing opponents’ behavior, the damage can be minimized or eliminated. Here, the metaphor falls short, if ever it did not, because at this point the very game the virus plays would be eliminated rather than letting it play on with reduced damage.
Aaltoe's Blog 
April 25, 2020 at 9:40 pm |
If only we can figure out the rules of the game. I think that is the hardest part with Covid 19-what are the actual symptoms or result of infection? There are no consistent results, and no one it seems can tell us, so we dwell in a continuous state of vulnerability as we can only guess what path this is going to take. I heard something that helps me though, that courage can not exist without vulnerability. You wouldn’t need it! We are then all learning to have courage.