It feels like we're in a suspended state. It seems odd that we still need to go grocery shopping, or to follow up on an Amazon order that didn't arrive. So much big stuff is happening right now that it seems as if we should just press the collective Cosmic Pause Button so our thinking brains can catch up with our hearts.
It also feels that we have an opportunity to learn, that we have been presented with multiple opportunities to learn things that must be learned. How do we manage to not simply return to Things As Usua?
I continue to try to digest what's happening, what's coming toward us, how we're moving forward. I'm absorbing a lot of videos, poems, podcasts, writings; talking, texting, emailing with various people about various ideas. I have questions, embryonic thoughts, and impressions:
*A recent episode of This American Life looked at the philosophy of Afrofuturism. I had heard the term, but knew nothing about it. One idea that the episode's narrator shared: The institutions on which our modern western life rests—government, policing, museums, education—were all designed and developed to silence, exclude, disallow, or displace black people. I see that clearly with policing and government. My understanding of museums is that they were originally a way for "explorers" to bring back and display spoils from far-flung colonies—so a direct result of imperialism; that tracks as well. My understanding of our "educational" system: It was imported to the United States from Prussia by early capitalists and industrialists who wanted a way to homogenize the burgeoning, diverse, and heterogeneous immigrant population. It offered a way to literally school participants in obedient behavior and obsequiousness to authority. Those early businessmen wanted a population that would stand up and move to the next room when the bell rang, no questions asked.
I remember a poster that I first saw in the 1990s. It pictured a couple of interconnected cogs, labeled with this phrase: "If you liked school, you'll love work." That's what those early industrialists wanted for the vast unwashed, while their own children went to elite schools or studied with private tutors, learning a very different curriculum that trained them to become, instead of cogs, masters of the universe.
If this is the legacy we live with, and these institutions carry this residue of diminishment and erasure and a certain species of compliance, let's admit that these institutions do not serve the goals most people desire. Let's start over again and do it better.
*How can we have law enforcement that's more social work and less militarized force?
*As if we needed another reminder so soon after the 2008 recession, we have further stark evidence of the chasm between haves and have nots. Cash-rich hospitals received beaucoup $$ in government bailout funds (that's your money, my money), while furloughing employees or pressuring them to accept pay cuts or freezes and while paying administrators millions. This is one example of many. I am so heartsick reading these accounts. There is so much not-rightness; we all know this. How do we make it right? Government, much of mainstream media, the rich and ultra-rich share an agenda that the rest of us, the majority, do not. How do we "deprive them of oxygen"? I continue to believe in sortition as one viable way forward.
*So there's the income gap, the money gap. Here are other gaps and gaping holes: job security; housing security; basic safety and security security; health care access and quality.
*The government is siphoning off our taxpayer funds to bail out hospitals that are not using it to help their lowest-paid workers, but to reward already overcompensated administrators (see above). And now we have to sit by as the CARES Act distributes money in about a 3.5 to 1 ratio, big banks and large corporations receiving the 3.5 part, the American people receiving the 1 part. How do we short-circuit this persistent corporate welfare that directly undermines the ability of Americans to remain in their homes; to live without the constant stress of money pressures; to live without food insecurity and other basics that should be guaranteed to all in the richest country in the world?
*Can we say that the work-centric lives we've constructed are absurd? That it's probably a good thing for people to be able to spend more time with their families, friends, and favorite pastimes, less time commuting? (I acknowledge that some people are experiencing extreme isolation during Sheltering In Place. My point here is about the way we've organized our work lives.) Who does this serve? When you keep livestock and grow plants, one of the first things you learn is that the best way to keep all those beings healthy is to minimize stress. Make sure the animals are fed and watered, and that you properly protect them from predators. Similarly, keep the plants fed and watered so they don't experience the stress that results when they're not. How could the basic importance of minimizing stress not be true for humans as well? Decades and decades of research on human stress make clear that constant worrying about money or racing against the clock or striving to please a capricious boss makes us sick. Why don’t we heed this? Why don't we implement changes that acknowledge this research in order to make all lives better? We know about the positive impacts of nature exposure—and yet many, many poor people live with barely a tree let alone access to greenspace. We know that far too many people live in food deserts. We can do way better here.
*Traditional peoples—and our own ancestors three or so centuries ago--worked four or so hours a day to secure food and water, and produce clothing, shelter, and necessary tools. The work was done in the company of others, all of whom had a direct stake in the work being done well and attentively.
*Injustice, violence, and cruelty leave a residue that affects everyone, though clearly some suffer more immediately and directly than others. It doesn't matter when our ancestors arrived to North America or whether they were already here; whether they were slaves or slaveholders or none of the above. The wealth in our country derives from the blood, sweat, loss, tears, and misery of Native Americans, Africans, and African Americans. That reality has to be acknowledged and reckoned with. We have to try to make amends. We can mobilize more than a trillion dollars for a bailout that disproportionately favors corporations and banks. Why can't we pay reparations to African Americans and Native Americans? We use eminent domain to seize lands when government and big business decide it suits their aims to do so. Why can't we use eminent domain to seize lands that treaties—written, extant documents--identify as belonging to Native Americans and return those lands?
*Anna Deavere Smith delivered the sermon for the online Grace Cathedral service last Sunday. In it, she quoted Rabbi David Wolpe. Wolpe told a story about a person who said, "I’m only making a hole in my side of the boat." Uh oh. We're all in the same boat, of course.
*How do we not squander the opportunities inherent in this incredible moment?