Monday, June 29, 2020

Inequality of life during the pandemic today: a Dostoyevskian society!


This Easter there was media coverage in Chile about the quarantine of the Covid pandemic not being the same for everyone, with millionaires leaving high scale neighborhood Vitacura by helicopter for their summer mansions on the coast. A bit of what is also happening in other countries like the US, China, UK, France...
That Easter Friday’s afternoon, I was reading Dostoyevsky’s "White Nights". This short novel (about 60 pages) right on page 3 has a scene that looks like today’s image of inequality. The narrator is a middle-class young man in Saint Petersburg that enjoys strolling around the wealthy and beautiful mansions. An early spring weekend he realizes that all the wealthy left town for their country houses or the nearby islands. Then he describes quite well the exodus of the privileged: the men carry flowers next to their wives in an elegant carriage, while behind go servants with wagons full of things or even a second carriage with all the furniture and kitchen items. But the richest of all send their things by boat over the Neva river!

Therefore we live in a Dostoyevskian society! No Czars in power, but quite a few oligarchs enjoying their country mansions!