This text is written 04:24 in the morning. I hope you will enjoy.
Completely impossible to sleep. I am so excited. As new thoughts have entered my mind. Forbidden thoughts about the coronapocalyps. Its not making any sense. Today police broke up people in the park, gatherings of more than 2 people. It feels like suddenly living inside some dictatorship, except for the lazy non aggressive tone of the cops, and the fact that it is done with mass consent and public fear. Oh wait. Really., all my alarm bells are ringing. Why didn’t I see it before?
And now I am concerned on other levels. And motivated.
Its like I got the missing piece of the puzzle. The main anxiety creator. The fundamental feeling that something is really wack right now. And I feel alone in it. The realization that everyone might be wrong, and this is really also a huge contributing factor to my anxiety – because the idea of questioning the belief that has been regarded as fact, not only by people that I normally don’t agree with but also within my anarchistic peers. That creates anxiety because I basically put part of my identity within this group, and my safe space is within this angry against capitalism, patriarchy and fascism scene – and I don’t want to loose my friends. Which creates a major dilemma, cause my friends are my family, and I deliberately chose to be around people where I don’t have to question if we stand on the same ground because I assume we do. But maybe this is also a way to learn to check it, and realize social behavior on a much deeper and personal level. I believe my deep anxiety was rooted in a feeling of disagreeing with not only the rest of the world but also people I rely on. That is it. This made me unable to be true to myself, and also for me, what I see as being true to reason. And not just acting in fear.
For now, it feels like the intense anxiety I had for five days is being replaced with a great energy force within, raising to create mayhem. I want to rest, but I just cant, my mind is racing and I see so many ideas and feelings arise with almost every thought, and more thoughts spring from that first thought. Like a wave of sparks.
I felt so alone the last days. Not only because I literally was alone, but also because I have been feeling mentally and emotionally alone. It has completely triggered my feeling of being abandoned, and left alone. Raising a lot of dark feelings inside. Feelings of not being understood, and feeling greatly misunderstood. That has actually been a major healing experience for me to learn from, these feelings arising, leading me to feel that this time really is a healing time, but for all kinds of reasons that one can not anticipate. The time of yin, of experiencing my repressed introverted side and learning to express myself and speak my mind as well as listen to unwanted truth.
And here it comes: looks like the world is going through a major trauma response based on fear. This does not make sense as a ground for making political decisions. I long ago stopped trusting most governments way of dealing with almost anything; with refugees, with gentrification, with the environment, with housing, with distribution of goods, with inequality, the rights of humans, animals, and plants, and basically anything!! Why would it then suddenly make sense what they are doing? Why would their actions in a time of great fear suddenly by reasonable?
Under the cold war, or other times of critical world tension, big leaders and nations walked in front making decisions that had absolutely no sense, and people stood behind them, mainly because of fear. Why would this be different now? In a time of major crises, why would big nations for (almost) the first time in world history make reasonable decisions? In the cold war there was great fear about communism and the soviet, and the capitalist won, but where did that took us? The fear makes one run towards something else, and we need to question where we are running and why.
Every event in the history of the world is followed by another event, what is right and what is wrong is up for debate in every situation. Most people would agree that war is bad. Yet most people would agree that the decision by the allies and Russia to go to war to fight the Nazis doing ww2 was a good thing. That was a response. And action and a reaction that was necessary to free the world from the evil that was the Nazi empire. What followed was the division between ideologies, the division of the world, creating a glorification of the west and a taboo on the east (winner writes history). In that time the constant threat of nuclear war was a reality, this was the norm. This was terrifying. This was great nations! Putting everyone in a state of fear, pushing forward that the other group was the enemy one needed to be protected from. One evil followed with another one, because this is how hierarchical structures of domination works. Like shit
Now we stand here. In a global pandemic, and where is the enemy? The same place it always was. Within the human condition. The constant creation of “an outside enemy”, and fear, is nothing new. Now the outside enemy is everyone that is not within our household – I know it is not really our enemy, people are kind and express solidarity with one another and they don’t see everyone else is an enemy, but there is a fear rising in connection to human contact and gathering. I find this disturbing, in my deep gut feeling, something tells me its wrong. Yet I know this is not a well made argument, what it is is the feeling inside that lead me to think critically and question the reality. Something that is a good thing.
We live in capitalism, and capitalism doesn’t care about the people in Lesvos, being trapped 22.000 people in a refugee camp with no access to proper medical care and no chance of quarantines. Capitalism still doesn’t care about the people living on the street. Capitalism still doesn’t care about all the normal people, with normal jobs, now not able to pay their rents, food, and lives. Capitalism doesn’t care about the people in the risk group. Capitalism doesn’t care. It never did and it still doesn’t. Who is in close contact with capitalism? The government, a government and democracy shaped by capitalistic interests and fueled with the mentality of colony America as the main propaganda source since the cold war ended. Solidarity came out of fashion, as it got washed away with the communists and the socialists it was no longer hip. Guess what? Solidarity is back. People are helping one another, because that is what people do. People are relating to each other as fellows in a shared struggle, on the same side. This is wonderful. More empathy, more connection. I really salute this. This I feel in my heart is right and good. This is what we need. Yet my thought is that this must be the big rehearsal, for the real show, which is called global freaking warming, and (hopefully) the fall of capitalism, where we are gonna need the skills of community and empathy to get through to the other side.
So I don’t believe that the global quarantine is the best possible reaction to a global pandemic. I don’t believe that the “leaders” creating FRONTEX, and engaging happily in the weapon industries are suddenly able to make logical decisions regarding all of societies health. I believe it does what it needs in order to protect the privileged and the wealthy, like its mostly been doing for the last decades. So, what other proper responses are there to the current pandemic? I don’t know, I honestly don’t have a solution right now – and this is where some people will say – How can you criticize without having a better option? To that I say, are we only allowed to think critical if we already have a better solution in mind? If we encourage free thinking, instead of condemning it, this text would not be provocative because we would live in a society where we welcome different ideas and criticism because we want to create the best possible solution for our problem. The best possible solution would be created by people analyzing and thinking together about the problems within a structure, and jamming ideas of how it could be better. That’s also why I say – its not necessarily a problem that the world has reacted like this, but I believe its time to a call for action instead of just a reaction. Protesting against this violence. Because this is state violence, violence of human rights. Again I will say- it is one thing to encourage people to stay inside, but to uphold this by law, and making the law into action by people in uniforms with weapons, is scary. It was always scary and it is still scary. I was never told by the police I could not play freesbee in the park in the sunlight before, until today, because we were three people. Where is the logic? And the police was literally in a group of 15 or something, all gathering together (not even walking two and two) – where is the logic? Thinking about other options, there is of course still the option to make a basic income, so people don’t HAVE to go to work, making it possible for a lot of people to stay at home -no problem. If we lived in a more social way, the people that were healthy would work in food production and healthcare, and many people could easily help because it would be an innate part of the system to help each other. About the dangers of the virus, I don’t see why people cant gather in groups of 5 and less, instead of 2 and less. It makes sense to cancel all big events, but not to be able to meet in small groups? The people in those groups will meet anyway one on one, which result now in a total lock down where no one goes out anymore. How many people are suffering severely under this? EVERYONE. But some are much more hit. People in abusive relationships, on the street, and in many other people. Children cant play with each other or go to playground no more, I am sure both parents and children are suffering under this – and the parents are STILL EXPECTED TO WORK AT HOME.
An idea for a solution I heard about is focusing the energy on all the people in the risk group (infected or not) and making it possible for them to isolate, while not everyone else has to isolate. Making it clear that all elder people, people with weaker immune systems, and other people in the riskgroup have delivered food, medicine, and healthy things to strengthen their immune system so they don’t have to go outside.
Btw. what about all of us strengthening our immune system? I know that that doesn’t apply to everyone, not everyone can just do that. Yet generally, because of prices and society, it is more expensive to buy organic food instead of food with pesticide, it is more easy, accessible and affordable to decide to eat things that weaken our bodies instead of strengthen them – with a virus exactly like the covid19, it seems like our health and eating habits actually can have an effect on weather our bodies can handle the virus by itself.
I am not claiming this is the end solution, I am just jamming ideas. Also we have overworked hospitals and under worked people in their homes, maybe there is a way to equalize this as well, and make it possible to help and support solidarily in the healthcare? First of all the people working so hard in this field should have a raise and better work conditions right now, besides that more people could participate in the health sector to ease the load and make it less risky for people to work with infected people. Another problem with the pandemic is the lack of space and health resources/materials can occur, what about collectively remaking some buildings to make more space, and people going to work in production of the materials needed. If we lived in a different societal structure, it would not be so problematic for people to work in a sector they are not used to, and if they did it for the reason of helping instead of money because everyone would have basic income.
With a collective effort we wouldn’t maybe have to have most people stay inside doing nothing, and a few people working their asses off in food production and healthcare. With a more decentralized system, people could all just go on the down low for a while. No big gatherings, concerts and events. Schools, bars, restaurants and such could still close, but encourage people to meet in smaller groups and take care, while staying out under open sky (Yet not enforced by authorities with uniforms and weapons – never enforced by authorities with uniforms and weapons).
So after writing these personally deeply liberating thoughts exploding out of my mind, I might be able to calm down and rest. I finally feel like I start to understand my own point of view on this situation. And all it took for me to break through to the other side was a day out with two friends that generally also felt like this, getting harassed by the police for being together outside, going through mental exchanges with each other based on this experience, remembering how it feels to play music together (jamming has not occurred since the pandemic started), listening to reggae for half a day, and lastly smoke a joint and drink a few beers with a shot of schnapps on the side. Get loose, let go, and you never know what kind of things will occur to you. Ah the smell of freedom, the smell of anarchism. Fuck the rules. ACAB.