A World Beyond Lockdown
I have some half-formed thoughts floating around my head about what this lockdown period means. I must firstly make some caveats. My experience of lockdown is an immensely privileged one. I live in a lovely little house with my lovely little family, in a safe, peaceful, loving environment. I have a garden and have a large green space close to my home. I have internet, plentiful food, craft supplies and tv subscriptions. All these things make lockdown far easier to bear for me and enable me to indulge the following thoughts.
That said, I feel like I need to record these thoughts. I need to remember how lockdown felt for me. Because in this moment, I feel like I can just glimpse, from the corner of my eye, another world, another way of being. One which takes my breath away.
Because this is the closest I have ever come to living outside capitalism.
Of course, it is a mirage, because Amazon continues to exploit and profit, we still need money to pay for things, some shops are still open, many people have to keep working in much more difficult and dangerous circumstances, and in the long run, we will all pay for the costs currently being incurred. But still, we are living in a time when the government is paying people not to work in order to keep them safe, paying businesses to survive even though they’re not making profits. Under other circumstances, this would be unthinkable.
I was born in 1979. I grew up under Margaret Thatcher, never knowing any other kind of world than a ruthlessly capitalist one. To me, Labour getting into power in 1997 was a moment of dizzying, radical possibility. Because late capitalism had such a hold, such a fierce grip on our minds and souls, the Third Way seemed the only way. That Blair turned out to be a psychopath broke my heart and left me cynical. When Jeremy Corbyn was selected, I was bitter, sceptical. I couldn’t believe that we could bring about a fairer world. And I still wish he’d been stronger, less stubborn, able to communicate his vision to the sceptics, not the converted. But I see now that we do have to dare to dream. Because if we don’t, we surrender to the idea that no other world apart from this cruel one is possible.
It has been said that we are living in unprecedented times. But we are also living a different kind of time.
Let me explain. I have an anxiety disorder. I never exist in the moment. I am either worrying about the future, or deconstructing the past. I do yoga, mindfulness and CBT to try to allay my constant sense of panic, but which I struggle to find effective. As I lay in stillness, at the end of a Youtube yoga session in lockdown last week, I was fidgeting, feeling intense guilt at staying still for FIVE minutes. “I should get up,” I told myself, as I usually do. “This is just being lazy. I have so much to do. I could be using this time so much more productively.”
And then I stopped. I paused. I reflected.
In lockdown, I didn’t have anywhere urgent to be. I had no meeting lined up that I would be late for. Anything I needed to do could wait for five minutes.
What kind of world do I live in, that remaining still for five minutes feels like a hopelessly unattainable luxury? Why do I live in a belief that every minute of my day has to be productive? Why can’t the act of being still also have value?
I live in late capitalist time, that is why. We are conditioned to think that each minute of our life has to be accounted for, monetised. Even time “off”. We pay for holidays. We pay for massages. We pay for Netflix and downtime. We pay to relax. Those of us who are “high achievers” can’t relax unless we’ve earnt enough to justify relaxing. We congratulate ourselves for this. “Oh, I’m a workaholic, I just can’t stop unless I force myself to,” we chuckle. If time is a product, then it is also always finite too. It is always limited. We do yoga to relax our stressed bodies and minds, but when it comes to end, to lying still, we skip that part of the practice, or if we do it, we can feel the clock ticking down the seconds. The clock is embedded in our bodies, our minds, our souls. There is no time outside of capitalist time.
Except now. Right now I am as close to being outside capitalist time as I can be. I can’t go to work. I can’t go to the shops very often. I can’t travel. I must be still, pause, crucially, even if I haven’t earnt the right.
And what does that silencing of my internal incessant clock of productivity produce? A chance to pause. A chance to breathe. To step off the hamster wheel of productivity-relaxation-increased-productivity. It produces, for me, a calmness I never normally feel. An appreciation of things and people around me. A gratitude for what I have.
Which is unusual for me. I normally feel restless, discontented, unhappy. Along with anxiety, I have experienced depression frequently since a young age. My life from 17 could also be read a history in the evolution of the SSRI: I have been on fluoxetine, amiptriptyline, lofepramine, citalopram, and currently I am on sertraline. But while the other drugs numbed and dulled me, I currently feel bright, alert, awake in a way I never feel, in the moment. It might be the sertraline. But it might also be this lockdown moment.
When not on antidepressants, this permanent discontent was something I have always medicated through consumption. I have always “treated myself” to feel better. I medicated with food, new clothes, makeup, jewellery, shoes, stationery. Things that in the current climate would be deemed as “non-essentials.” Each new purchase would bring me a little, giddy rush of joy. But it was fleeting. And then I would be searching for that rush again, scrolling through online shopping sites until I landed upon something I thought was “perfect.” A dress in a pattern I didn’t own, a cardigan in a colour missing from my wardrobe, a new lipstick that promised a longer lasting finish. Whatever “it” was, I would obsess over it, visualise owning it, how happy it would make me, how it would solve all my problems. I would rationalise its purchase — if it made me happy, it was important! Advertising would support this thinking: “this dress will make you feel confident”, “this lipstick will make you feel beautiful”, “these shoes will complete your wardrobe, and you.” I would click and then feel the thrill of anticipation as it winged its way to me. Then I would wear it for the first time and feel that all those promises had been fulfilled. But on the second wear, it would have vanished. And then I would search again. Over and over.
It feels terrible to write it down. But it is how I existed for decades, and I am not alone. “Treating yourself”, celebrating payday, manmade holidays such as Valentine’s Day — all these are products of the late capitalist paradigm. The rush of joy over a new thing is the logic that underpins capitalism. Because if I was happy in what I had already, why would I buy more? This is the logic behind “fashion”, behind “pop music”, behind “blockbuster films” — the mechanical reproduction of the same, but slightly tweaked, what Walter Benjamin described as “a plurality of copies”. This perverse logic necessitates that old things have to be discarded for new things even when they are still usable, in order to keep the cycle of production churning. If we stopped buying things we don’t need (as many of us have been forced to do) the whole system would collapse. As Matt Haig has written, “to be comfortable with our own messy, human selves would not be good for business.” And the business of the luxury and the treat is in crisis right now.
I have no money coming in right now, and don’t know when that will change. As a result, I cannot bring myself to justify non-essential purchases. If things truly made me happy, I should be existing in a desperate state of deprivation at this moment as a result. But I find myself uninterested in scrolling through clothes sites right now. I have been reading, painting, writing, doing yoga, planting seeds and bulbs. I have been combining my clothes in different ways, reusing and repurposing things, cooking frugally, stretching things out, saving, not wasting, growing, making.
And, for the first time, though I am stuck in my house, I feel free.
Free of the relentless rhythm of capital that means we can never be still, calm, or happy.
Can I at least sketch the shape of that world I can almost see? It is not lockdown — with its thousands of dead and dying, its minorities most at risk, its terror and uncertainty. It is not government which laughs in the face of death and lies to its terrified citizens. It is not where being at home means being more at risk of being hit or killed by your partner. It is none of the things lockdown is.
But it is some of things we thought were not possible before now. A slower world, where everyone has a safe home even if they can’t work for it. Where travel is considered, appreciated, and our localities become valued, treasured, cared for. Where people are supported with a basic wage to enable them to live, breathe, and be. Where those who provide the most essential services are most valued. Where consumption is simplified to need, not desire, and we eke out the things we have until their use value is gone. Where the air has been purified, the animals return, and balance seems possible again. Where communities support the most vulnerable, and privilege is used to flatten inequality.
Where all that was solid melts to air, and all that we could not dare to imagine comes into being.
