Uncertainty Update

In physical isolation, the conditions of disconnectedness that led me to start this project are even more obtrusive. While I have more time to read and think, I'm cut off from the most meaningful expression Outside the Internet.

I began staying-at-home with enough creative momentum to be writing a little every day, but with repetitive news and lack of motivation, I stopped. A few of the things I was working on I deleted because the self-deprecating perfectionist inner voice that makes it hard to share work normally is only amplified when all I have is time to work.

Self-care rhetoric seems to have endless ferocity and the introduction of even more free time in lockdown (*for workers deemed inessential and those who can work-from-home) only fueled it. We must try to take advantage of this 'extra' time (Read! Yoga! Cooking! New hobby? I love that these suggestions are transparently directed at women). But! We must not pressure ourselves too much, expect ourselves to produce too much, not beat ourselves up when inevitably we cannot. Isn't it dizzying, a million instructions for how to feel the freest? Worst, it's hard to avoid if you're on the Internet even a minimal amount.

These discussions about extremes and moderations ('productivity'-derived self-worth being capitalistic vs. 'self-care' not ?), etc. are seriously tedious. Isn't it ridiculous to even have a quarantine goal at all, even if it's learning how to poach an egg? But even if I try to ignore these arguments and just focus on what I want I come up with something decidedly nestled within them like: produce work while balancing my mental health, maintaining relationships, and building an organizational plan for the future.

Maybe it's good I made no strict promises to myself about this time of not having a job. On the other, maybe it's why I eventually gave up on daily routines and failed to produce much. Maybe I fear that succumbing to my natural feeling that I should use the time wisely means that I've succumbed to a normalization of my condition overall.

I've been in my house for over a month. I received no compensation from a job that fired me, I haven't heard back from the unemployment office, and I have yet to receive my $1200 stimulus check. Even with these factors which place me in a common boat with most of my peers, I'm in a good short-term position with a safe, stable living situation and no immediate financial danger. Most of my personal challenges in isolation are existential and emotional: feeling lonely, feeling hopeless, feeling uncertain.

Today writer Ashley C. Ford tweeted: 'You are watching people go through withdrawal from the emotional addiction to the myth of certainty.' While she means (I think) a personal emotional dependency I've been thinking about a broader dependency on the idea of normalcy, on things going 'back to normal,' on the impossibility of massive structural changes -- the structural changes that have already occurred (IMO denying these changes is an issue of the media narrative, lack of information, and delusion). Posters in this thread reasonably pointed out that this 'addiction to certainty' is largely a privilege many poor and/or mentally ill people never had or have long abandoned; the dependency on normalcy has a mass and timeless stronghold on cultural consciousness.

Donald Trump's election in 2016 is often cited as a huge moment for many people's radicalization: realizing that his election is a natural progression of and not the antithetical disruption to modern politics in the US. The pandemic will be another of these radicalizing 'moments'. For many whose lives were virtually unchanged by Trump's presidency even if they opposed it, the pandemic is a real interruption. In whatever capacity, the dependency on the 'myth of certainty' does seem to be breaking down for some of these people.

The hope is that this economic devastation (the death of neoliberalism, some have argued) will lead to 'change.' My crisis of certainty is that I'm not sure it will or can. I've been on a mission to deconstruct my myths about historical normalcy for a while, but I did have other beliefs I'm no longer certain of in the wake of the pandemic.

Discussion surrounding Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee, in particular, disappointed me the past few weeks. Jeremy Scahill published a piece on Joe Biden on The Intercept today, where he lays out what he says are morally sound positions for voting for Joe, and for not.

The problem with his framing (essentially a simple pro/con argument walkthrough that more than once emphasizes the preference of a Biden Presidency) is that it ignores broader trends and agendas outside of this election cycle. I have no delusions about the destructive dangers of a Trump second term but it's important to discuss what's going to happen afterward in both cases. For me, a major strategic point of withholding my vote from Biden is to discourage and hopefully disable the abhorrent tactics which 'allowed' Biden to become the nominee at all.

It's not that I expect Jeremy to be radical. Only that I know he's aware of what he's irresponsibly omitted in this piece, an omission that highlights recent warming up to Biden from formerly outspoken Bernie supporters that's concerning and seems premature. The unification of the left on a higher organizational level is finally becoming a bigger talking point, but again I'm uncertain about its potential for success in the next year, especially during the pandemic. The scope of strategy must be longer-term.

Of course, in-person protesting and organizing is ironically stunted by the physical danger of the virus. It isn't stopping some from being on the street - the thousands of people protesting Netanyahu in Tel Aviv yesterday for one - but in America, the #ReOpenAmerica protests against coronavirus restrictions are getting more coverage than any of the protesting over wages or rent. It doesn't help that independent media just got a huge kick while it was down.

If there's anything I want to commit to as I personally enter my second month of sheltering in place its to get back to writing and re-commit to the local organizing we can do. I don't have any answers. I just wanted to commiserate and vent. The causes and crises that caused these conditions will never be 'over,' but this particular period in time will be 'over' someday and then I hope things are far from normal.