The Post-Coronavirus World is Oscar Wilde’s Socialist Utopia
The arts are flourishing. I’ve written an article and failed to knit a pair of socks. Is this the fall of Rome or the New Renaissance?
We’re working from home and the coffee runs free.
Who would have thought that our world could function with so many people working from home? Fellow freelancers will smugly note that the crisis has brought nothing new in their working lives, except the fact that we now confine ourselves to our home offices and kitchen tables instead of frequenting the usual cafés and libraries.
I’m saving an unspeakable weekly sum on coffee. It’s basically free at home. Tastes like piss though.
Greta’s dream is coming true.
I have friends who are accountants and marketing executives, and they report surprising ease in working away from the office. Those who correspond with domestic and international clients now happily video-call in the absence of face-to-face meetings. These meetings are just as effective, they tell me.
When the world emerges from this crisis, international business travel will be seen more and more as an unnecessary expense, particularly after a semi-functioning business world existed without it for a period. I know one kind and thoughtful Swedish girl who will be very grateful for such a change of heart.
Before this crisis, we were living in the world of dizzying capitalism, where we’re encouraged to see unproductivity — that is, failure to acquire capital — as the worst of sins. Part of that residual fear is why many of us are still busily working from home. Who would bother to write an article like this so they don’t feel like they’re wasting their time? Pathetic, I know.
But, in light of the recent financial support packages we’ve seen on both sides of the Atlantic — $2tn in the US and £60bn in the UK — we’re going to be living in a benevolent Socialist state until the economic relief dries up.
Good news for the Artists.
Oscar Wilde got close to the bone on this in The Soul of Man Under Socialism, and though what he calls Socialism more closely resembles Anarchy, there is some truth in it:
“People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all.”
By emancipating our time, allowing the individual economic relief, the artist is allowed to pursue his art, and not worry about the frivolity of feeding oneself.
Free healthcare.
In fact, in the UK, all the money being poured into the NHS recently is going to make any reversal of policy look like an austere funding cut, which anyone who knows UK politics will understand is very politically damaging. For most Britons, cutting NHS funding is what banning the constitutional right to bear arms is to redneck Americans.
Kryptonite. Privatisation. Legalising gay marriage and abortion. You get the picture. It will make the politicians very unpopular.
Medium is inundated with articles.
I’m sure some of you will have tried your hand at some old or new artistic endeavour over the past week or so: there has been a proliferation of variety and complexity of my partner’s cooking. It’s delicious (as dictated from over my shoulder). Medium has probably seen a massive surge in articles published. Less delicious. I made a futile attempt at knitting a pair of socks. Vile.
