William O. Pate II
A Timeline of Irresponsibility: A Narrative
A timeline recounts nothing, writes scholar Byung-Chul Han in Psychopolitics. “It simply enumerates and adds up events or information.”[1]
Let me begin by adding one narrative — my own — to the preceding “Timeline of Irresponsibility” before more specifically addressing its creation and purpose.
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Prepandemic, when we were still mainly concerned with the Democratic presidential primaries, I was sitting on the porch at Epoch Coffee on North Loop in Austin, as I normally do, when I overheard Wilson, a rotund, gray-haired lawyer who walks with a cane and frequented the shop to play chess and express his Trump support to whomever he was opposing (often silent college-age guys who nodded and focused on the game while Wilson ranted), tell the woman sitting across from him (sans chessboard) that he didn’t want to hear moral reasons for universal health care.[2]
I was incredulous, to say the least. I thought, What else would he like to base it on? Efficiency? I mean, okay, we could do that — it is demonstrably more efficient and effective to have single-payer universal health care: it’s cheaper per capita and provides absolutely everyone with the care they need.[3] But, somehow, I’m rather certain Wilson wouldn’t be interested in those arguments either — people often justify their personal opinions by reference to cost, I’ve often found.[4]
So, I started to think about what might convince him. Say I were to one day actually engage in conversation with him — an event that would undoubtedly devolve into an argument[5] — how could I persuade him (assuming he’s reasonable and, thus, persuadable) that, if we agree we’re all equal (which is sorta a foundation upon which liberal legal[6] doctrine is based), we should all have equal access to the necessary medical treatments. To be clear, I don’t intend to ever actually have this conversation with him.[7]
Then, of course, the novel coronavirus, SARS-Cov-2, which can cause COVID-19, washed onto U.S. shores and unprepared hospitals began to be flooded with the fatally ill, which gave even greater impetus to my search.
I started pondering what quality it is we all — abso-fucking-lutely every single being — have in common that I might base an assumption of fundamental equality on for Wilson.[8]
Because, beyond my lockdown-aided imagined conversation, I was also already in search of an alternative to the existing, widespread neoliberal perspective based on the Cold War-era[9] methamphetamine-[10] and testosterone-induced[11] belief in the fictitious rational autonomous chooser, homo economicus, I want to go farther than just posit human equality. I want to be open to the possibility of an equality recognizing and respecting all beings.[12] The best thing I could come up with is vulnerability.[13]
So, the search became about more than merely human equality to deepening respect for all beings, which, in light of climate change seems equal