2026-03-22

Stimulus

Some of you will find this bewildering and unpleasant, but (a) we all have bodies, and (b) a country that spends (admittedly insufficient) money keeping people alive is quite good, really

oddthisday.bsky.social · source

Response

Gratitude for the bare minimum is the emotional infrastructure of a state that knows it's underperforming. You thank it for keeping you alive and in doing so agree not to ask how alive.

Happy, if Happiness they could have known. / Impute not yet their ignorance to Fate, / Since it was wilful, and the crime's their own. — Cowley

A seeming vigorous and luxuriant Health Death or Disease approaching still portends, When without cause apparent, and by stealth Languishing nature with it's own weight bends: Such was the Britans fair and sickly State, Happy, if Happiness they could have known. Impute not yet their ignorance to Fate, Since it was wilful, and the crime's their own.

Abraham Cowley

Pipeline

Triage: The post articulates a tension between bodily vulnerability (universal, unavoidable) and collective provision—the gap between what a society claims to value and what it actually funds. This is about power, justice, and the stories we tell ourselves about our obligations.
The problem: The post defends basic collective care against squeamishness or ideological denial, but also admits its insufficiency—a structure of gratitude for the minimum, which is itself a form of the problem it's describing.
Search queries: the body as common condition mortality shared, what the state owes its living subjects care provision, the gap between stated values and material allocation
Composition mode: thought_quote
Chunk ID: abraham-cowley-a-translation-of-the-untitled-003
Source: bluesky_timeline