If you are an intellectualist yourself and would like to sign the letter, please send a note to intellectualist.letter@gmail.com with your name and profession or institution
Pandemic crisis requires immediate inaction and abstinence from publishing political open letters
A letter from intellectualists
The coronavirus pandemic is first and foremost a health care emergency situation - however it also poses a significant burden on Polish and Hungarian intellectual life. In order to suppress the pace with which the infection spreads, it is necessary to engage in some meaningful intellectual conversation about our present and future. While the pandemic poses an existential threat on the masses, shallow and dull intellectual revelation is oftentimes just as poisonous with regard to the quality of our public life and the mental wellbeing of our elites.
While haughty and assuming open letters only connote a bearable amount of inconveniences in a peaceful and prosperous period, our desperate and uncertain times amplify the noise. Thus, maintaining tolerance and acceptance call for drastic measures. Individual moderation and sensibility are well needed to stop the dramatic surge of virtue signalling and to quarantine our innermost feelings of anxiety, narcissism, and messiah complex. Being renowned expert intellectualists ourselves, we deeply understand the structural and atmospheric elements of elite liberal life that might tempt even well-meaning young social scientists to participate in self-congratulatory rituals of instructing the public in the form of open letters and petitions on what and how should be done.
Amidst this current global crisis of economic life and public health it is imperative to take a step back and reflect on our precious role in society. There is no need to further stretch our resource-poor public life ecosystem through polluting open, wholehearted and stereotype-free conversation with egotistical nonsense and stereotypical bullying instead of sorting out the most pressing challenges in our way.
Signatories
(Signatures only represent the personal (what is of course political) opinion of signatories and are by no means indicative of the stance of their respective professions or institutions.)
If you are an intellectualist yourself and would like to sign the letter, please send a note to intellectualist.letter@gmail.com with your name and profession or institution