By Astra Taylor (March 20, 2020)
If you know me, you know I love etymologically. I love the buried meanings of the word we use, their hidden resonance.
The word “crisis” comes from the ancient Greek. It means the turning point in an illness—death or recovery, two stark alternatives.
Someone just told me the root of “apocalypse is “to reveal” or ‘to uncover’
We’ve been saying we are in a crisis (or intersecting crises) for a long time. But now the term couldn’t be more apt. We are living through both a medical/biological crisis and a political one. Many people will die of coronavirus, no doubt, but how many who get sick will actually be perishing from preventable shortages/rising poverty/and our lack of a truly public and international healthcare system?
That is the truth this apocalyptic moment unveils. To truly cure ourselves we are going to need way more than a vaccine….
