As we emerge in and out of different levels of crisis, including the ones we were already in before the virus, I am questioning the attitudes, habits, practices, assumptions and taken-for-granted realities of the everyday.
I’ve become more and more suspicious of most things, including my own aspirations – the virus has only sped up these suspicions. I am not referring to conspiracy theories, but rather, questions around forms of production, the politics of living and dying, class disparities, relationships to Earthly living systems and the drive to live through vertical ascent. Individualism has become the altar where personal accumulations of capital are central. Resources are used at any cost for certain individuals to prosper.
Of course this is not everyone: I am referring to the affluent classes. There have been many populations and communities in the past and present that are in forced isolation and crisis, where resources and freedoms are limited and controlled. Not to mention the ongoing crisis for Indigenous communities locally and abroad.
The individual extends and is embedded within complex webs of human exceptionalism, and the military-industrial-political-capital entanglement. As a lucky one – who is part of the educated class but situated within immigrant working class stories – I have recently been upgraded from unemployed student to dole bludger/JobSeeker: what should really be called ‘Life Keeper’. Now that the elite, upper and middle classes are affected by global disparities and bio-political implications, some of the vulnerable and unemployed are considered worthy of living right on the poverty line, instead of below it… but for how long will this act of social service last and what happens to those who are not receiving these benefits?