A brief summary of capitalism's logic, its consequences, and our need to build an alternative

Just for fun, I jotted down a brief summary of capitalism's logic, its consequences, and our need to build an alternative:

Socioeconomic inequality

1. Capitalism is an economic mode of production that, on the most basic level, functions as a circulatory process in which money is utilized to produce commodities (e.g., goods, services, etc.) that can be sold for a profit within markets of exchange: money -> commodity -> money + extra, repeat ad infinitum.

2. Living human labour expended in the production process adds/creates much of the additional value that forms the profit realized in the exchange process.

3. Due to private property rights, capitalists own and control the means of production (e.g., factories, equipment, land, etc.), as well as the products of the production process and any surplus value created. As such, labourers are forced to relinquish their rights to control over the production process, the product of their labour, and the added value incorporated into and created by the production process. Workers, in turn, generally receive the value of their labour power and little else in the form of wages, ultimately alienating them from their labour and its products, and limiting the choices available to them in the sphere of their socioeconomic environment, hindering them from fully realizing themselves or their potential.

4. Capitalism itself has its beginnings in violence, oppression, and theft as well as innovations and industriousness. Countries with emerging mercantile markets enclosed local common land; colonized other lands; stole land, wealth, and resources; and exploited slave labour in what Marx called the process of 'primitive accumulation.' Then after the industrial revolution, those in power further forced their own people off of communal land and into the cities to work in the factories under new social relations, one in which they were forced to sell their labour power to someone for a wage, not fully realizing that the person who now owns that labour power owns the products of that labour and all the extra value added by their labour, and pitting them against one another for the jobs needed for their survival and comfort.

5. We now live under a predominantly capitalist, worldwide socioeconomic system in which a small minority own and control the means of production and the majority must work for a wage to survive, pitting competing capitals and workers across the globe against one another forming tiers of exploitation, particularly among members of the working class and poor.

6. The logic of this process leads to capital accumulation (i.e., the accumulation of wealth) on the part of capital as opposed to labour due to the former's ownership of the means of production and finance and the value created in the production process, creating and sustaining inequality.

7. The logic of capitalism tends to favour owners in that it seeks to increase the amount of profit extracted by capital while at the same time keeping the amount of wages received by workers as low as possible, as well as by giving the owners control over the production process, conditions of labour, labour hours, etc. In addition, workers as producers and consumers give of themselves twice to capital—first as what's conventionally viewed as unpaid labour and second as wages for commodities (as well as things like rent, etc.).

8. Capitalism contains within itself multiple contradictions that lead to unequal social relations between capital and labour and causes cyclical economic crises. For example, the logic of capital accumulation tends to lead to cyclical crises of overaccumulation that effectively causes the economy to stall by stopping the circulation of capital and preventing it from ultimately realizing profit, i.e., capital's own self-interest (accumulation for accumulation's sake) destabilizes the economy and creates things like violent economic crises, social and political inequality, unemployment, etc.

9. The logic of capitalism also depends upon the drive to continuously grow and the consumerism needed to feed that growth — resulting in negative impacts to the environment and compelling capitals and capitalist states to compete for markets, resources, cheap pools of labour, etc., often at the expense of the environment and workers — while simultaneously creating artificial scarcity to maximize profits. This generates privation for the dispossessed and national conflicts over land, raw materials, markets, labour pools, etc.

Political inequality

10. Money, as a representation of value and medium of exchange, is a form of social power. As a form of social power, money is also a driving force in the political process and the shape of states, whose access to and control of markets is important for their geopolitical success.

11. The more money one possesses, the more influence one potentially has in this socioeconomic system. The capitalist class, then, logically has a disproportionate advantage within this system, especially when it comes to influencing and shaping society, than the working class and poor.

12. Those in positions of power make the rules (i.e., laws and loopholes) and tend to do so with a view to their own preservation and well-being. Their own preservation and well-being depends upon serving the interests of capital and finance, who fund them and control key areas of the economy. Democracy is also often limited to voting in occasional elections, with most working-class people priced out of running, and almost completely absent in the workplace.

13. Due to owning the means of production (material as well as mental), the capitalist class has the ability to shape the dominant ideas and ethics of society as well as its material shape and social relations. So not only do they have an enormous amount of control over the strings of political and economic power, they have an incredible amount of control over the ideas that we're exposed to and consume — which serves to influence our perceptions of the world we live in and even one another — ultimately helping to "manufacture our consent" for the status quo.

Implications/Addressing socioeconomic inequality

14. It follows, therefore, that substantive changes in the political-economic arena that benefits the working class and poor rather than capital and finance needs to come from the bottom up, not the top down because their interests are diametrically opposed.

15. This form of political-economic opposition requires the working class, poor, and marginalized to expand their class consciousness, unite in common cause, and use their superior numbers and indispensable place in the capitalist mode of production to offset the disproportionate and essentially undemocratic influence of monied interests.

16. The greater the solidarity amongst the working class and the dispossessed, the greater the potential opposition to the power of capital (this is the power of things like unions and strikes). And the greater the opposition, the greater the potential for substantive, systematic change that favours the majority of the citizenry rather than the wealthy, ruling elite.

17. Radical change, then, necessitates a coordinated, working-class mass movement, particularly one geared towards more fully democratizing our economic system and institutions. As such, anti-capitalists (e.g., socialists, communists, etc.) seek alternatives to this logic and fight for revolutionary changes that'll help lay the foundation for a more egalitarian society by critiquing capitalism, attempting to expand working people's understanding of capitalism, and organizing them to challenge the capitalist mode of production and its logical outcomes. There have been both successes and failures in this historical struggle, with plenty of painful lessons learned as a result. But many of these failures have at their root a concerted effort by capitalist states and those who benefit the most from capitalist social relations to prevent alternatives to capitalism from emerging, let alone succeeding, through military and economic violence. And we shouldn't let these missteps and setbacks prevent us from continuing to try and assert our political autonomy, democratize the economy, and create a world in which all that we produce belongs to everyone and we're capable of providing for the needs of all.

Conclusion

Capitalism has undoubtedly helped us reach a point of technological advancement and innovation sufficient to achieve material abundance. But to fully realize that abundance, we must transition to something new, something characterized by the maxim: "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need."

proletariat blues

Is it just me, or is our society grinding many of us into exhaustion, depression, and hopelessness while forcing us to find any sort of rest, pleasure, or distraction we can just to get us through the day and the next after that and the one after that, etc.? A society where workloads are too heavy because it's not profitable enough if we have enough people to do the job. A society with rents and mortgages many of us can't afford. A society where more of our taxes go to the military weapons of war to kill the workers and poor of other countries when we can't even house or feed those in need at home. A society where the rich are getting richer and shooting themselves into space while everyone else struggles more and more to make ends meet, making us fight each other for the scraps left over. A society where we wake up each day dreading the commute and having to spend the majority of our waking hours trying to earn a wage rather than spending them with our family and friends and enjoy the amazing world we're born into. Is it just me who wakes up every day tired, beaten, and wishing for something better for all of us but only has the time and energy to heat up dinner in the microwave and watch a couple of episodes of something mind-numbing before going to bed to do it all over again tomorrow? Am I the only one who truly believes it could be better than it is if we actually had a real voice and choice in how our society was shaped instead of it being shaped for us by those who benefit from it the most, sitting on their thrones of money, power, and privilege?

sex work is work, but is it revolutionary?

I've been thinking about sex worker lately from an anti-capitalist lens. I've known a number of sex workers in my life, and while I don't have anything inherently against sex work in the sense that I view sex work as real labour and believe those engaging in it should be able to do so freely and safely (as opposed to being pushed into the shadows, risking increased exposure to violence or criminal records), I do have reservations about the industry itself and the way capitalism has the tendency to commodify everything, including making human emotional and sexual relationships transactional, alienating labour, exploiting labourers, etc.

On the one hand, within the context of capitalism, we need sources of income to make a living and have access to necessities, not to mention luxuries and things generally needed for enjoying our free time, and sex workers perform emotional and sexual labour in order to acquire or supplement that income — labour which our society has made sordid and dangerous because of puritan taboos and patriarchal power dynamics — so I support the rights and safety of sex workers and the normalization of sex in general. The labour, autonomy, and humanity of sex workers all need to be respected, as with every other worker, and I feel like people (mainly men) in our society have been conditioned to not respect these things in women, sex workers, etc. So that obviously needs to change, and we should support sex workers as well as our own sexuality.

One the other hand, I find the expansion of capitalism and the omnipresent commodification and unequal social relations it engenders within all spheres of human life disturbing from a leftist point of view, and I wonder what the best way of balancing my support of sex workers with my desire to revolutionize capitalism and the ways it's shaped our world might be. The push to expand, protect, and normalize sex work in order for sex workers to make a living more safely is paradoxically a push to expand the commodification of our world and relationships and the general prostitution of labourers, thus making it that more difficult to create an alternative to the current state of capitalist wage labour and the exploitation inherent to it.

I find myself in the position, then, of supporting sex workers but not so much the industry they find themselves a part of, which transforms their bodies and emotions into the commodities being consumed. And not all sex workers choose to be sex workers, so they need to be taken into consideration too when discussing sex work in the aggregate. But obviously outlawing sex work isn't the answer since it'll still happen, just within an even more coercive and violent arena than that of the marketplace. So the question I'm pondering is, what's the middle way here? How can I best support sex workers while also seeking to dismantle the socio-economic system fuelling the commodification of people's bodies, attention, and labour-power?

I was curious if anyone else has had the same thoughts and has come up with a resolution to these antagonisms, so I mentioned this on a friend's FB page about sex work who's also involved in sex work hoping that someone in their large network might have some insights. And my friend's answer was essentially that sex workers are the foot soldiers of socialism:

You always approach everything from a "how do I destroy capitalism" standpoint: but you can't expect it to be destroyed from the bottom up. You can't expect the most marginalized classes to participate in the dismantling if they are simply trying to survive. The middle path here is to understand something important:

Sex workers are a major participant in the attack of capitalism from the grassroots; from the ground up. Support them as much as possible. Pump capital and fuel their work because they do something extremely important: They FUNNEL capital from the wealthiest and most privileged classes and, in general, fuel the economies of their own: they support each other, they support artists and revolutionaries and progressive politicians. They are an extremely efficient vehicle to funnel money from (generally wealthy, generally white) men into these marginalized areas. They are footsoldiers.

Definitely some provocative ideas that are worth considering. I'm certainly sympathetic to the idea of marginalized people making a living and not struggling. And I'm also sympathetic to the way that sex workers cooperate and help support themselves, other artists, etc. But I'm not convinced that the expansion of the sex industry under capitalism is necessarily good or revolutionary. For one, capitalist social relations are still in effect, even if not always directly, so the wealthy (often white men) are ultimately profiting off of it as much as (or even more) than the sex workers. Here, it can be anyone from the owners of content platforms like OnlyFans, ManyVids, etc. to sites like Twitter and Instagram where they advertise, owners of brothels and strip clubs, etc. So capital, landlords, etc. are taking their cut where they can even if many sex workers are independent performance artists with some level of personal control and freedom.

In addition, while web-based platforms have made it safer and easier for sex workers to work, that's just one subset of sex work. And creating larger markets for sex and sex work also helps to increase demand in the black market economy underlying capitalism that's also fuelled by the very same wealthy (generally white) men, which in turn finds support in other areas and side hustles, from the mild to the brutal/domineering (e..g., men working behind the scenes who are often not exposed; pimps and madams; sex traffickers; the concierge at the expensive hotel who knows where one may find a child prostitute, like the pedophile ring accidentally uncovered by Sasha Baron Cohen, etc.). Then there's the increased level of objectification and alienation of labour that sex work (and wage labour in general) entails, where the commodity being consumed is the person's body and emotions, and these are in some way divorced from the person, being sold to their consumer, not only normalizing and expanding sex work (which isn't inherently negative) but also transactional relationships and consumerism (which may not necessarily be good).

Essentially, I'm not entirely convinced sex work itself is a revolutionary form of labour that can instigate a transition away from capitalism and towards a more egalitarian and less exploitative alternative moreso than other forms of labour, nor am I convinced that the majority of sex workers are anti-capitalist and actively seeking to upend capitalism. In so far as expanding sex work can expand solidarity among different types of workers, I can see how it may contribute to this, as well as from the activity of radical sex workers. And I do think they have a current need and right to make a living. But on a broader, more theoretical level I still have issues with the appearance sex work takes under capitalism. I don't see how simply taking and redistributing money from the wealthy will do any more good than other means of wealth redistribution such as taxes, or how it's qualitatively different from other places the rich spend their cash. And my concern is still the same, that it's ultimately just making sex work more easily exploitable by capital while doing little to challenge current social relations and power dynamics.

Consequently, I support the decriminalization of sex work, as well as the bodily autonomy of sex workers, since it does no good to penalize people who are often already marginalized and struggling (although middle-class women are a growing demographic, as well) from making a living that doesn't harm anyone. And I support normalizing it in the sense of removing the stigma and shame of being a sex worker or enjoying sex, allowing them to be more open about it and utilize community resources, modern technology, and their social circles to advertise and work rather than seedier and more exploitative options. Hence, I'm cautiously optimistic about it improving from what it once was. But I'm not yet comfortable idealizing sex work as an inherently revolutionary occupation, nor one free from danger and exploitation. Just as the relative comfort and security of workers in more developed countries like the US is dependent upon more oppressive and exploitative conditions of labour in less developed countries, effectively subsidizing our higher wages and standard of living despite our own inequalities, the relative comfort and security of some sex workers likely comes at the cost of others who are less fortunate and more marginalized.

engaged spirituality retreat

I had a pretty good time yesterday at the engaged spirituality retreat hosted by the Benedictine Sisters at Queen of Angels Monastery, which focused on the similarities between Thomas Merton and Thich Nhat Hanh and how an inner spiritual life can help to fuel social engagement. I got an early start and arrived in Mt. Angel, OR at about 7:30am in the hopes of catching the 8am mass at Mount Angel Abbey. It was my first time there, and I was curious how it compared to Our Lady of Guadalupe. It's a bit larger, and there are at least triple the monks at Mount Angel. The monastery has a seminary as well as a brewery, and it seems to attract a fair number of people. During mass, they welcomed three new oblates, members of the community (usually lay people) who wish to deepen their spiritual practice in the tradition of the monastery they officially associate themselves with. There are no vows per se, but there are promises that are made publicly during mass. It was my first time witnessing that particular ritual, after which the oblates were given Benedictine medals blessed by the abbot.

I left mass right after communion because the retreat itself was close to starting. Luckily the convent where the retreat was taking place was only about 5 minutes away. I arrived right on time. The retreat was run by Peggy Lindquist and Terry Moe. Peggy is a member of Thich Nhat Hanh's Order of Interbeing, and Terry is a Lutheran pastor and community organizer. Terry is also the author of the book Pastor Robyn gave to me, The Bush Still Burns, written about Terry's journey from pastor to organizer and how that changed both him and the community he was leading. The retreat began with one question, what does engaged spirituality mean to me? We were encouraged to keep that in mind as we progressed through the day, which was divided into five parts.

Part one was focused on a meditation practice from Hanh that combined mindfulness with visualizations to help promote stability, serenity, insight, and joy. Everyone was given four stones to hold as a tangible way to help remain mindful. And with each stone we held, we were encouraged to breath in and out mindfully while visualizing and embodying four separate qualities. For the first, breathing in, we saw ourselves as a flower and breathing out we felt fresh, energized, joyful. For the second, breathing in we saw ourselves as a mountain and breathing out we felt solid, stable, grounded. For the third, breathing in we saw ourselves as still water and breathing out we reflected all that is, mindful of things as they are without the ripples that our minds tend to create. And for the fourth, breathing in we saw ourselves as space and breathing out we felt free, expansive, open. And she read a couple of passages from Hanh, one of which stood out for me:

There are two ways to wash the dishes. The first is to wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes and the second is to wash the dishes to wash the dishes. If, while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not "washing the dishes to wash the dishes." What's more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes. In fact, we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink. If we can't wash the dishes, the chances are we won't be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus we are sucked away into the future—and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life. (The Miracle of Mindfulness)

If we're not mindful and simply running on autopilot or else doing something with the thought of getting or doing something else, we're not truly present. We're missing out on that moment and the very act of living itself, because living only takes place in the present. And so much of what we accept as reality and hold to be real and solid is actually an illusion or distortion and the product of the stories we tell ourselves rather than things as they truly are. In the suttas, for example, the Buddha used similes like a glob of foam floating on the river, the hollow core of a banana tree for someone seeking heartwood, and a magic trick—the point being that often what we see lacks the substance we imbue it with (SN 22.95). And in the bible, a similar idea can be seen in places like Ecclesiastes 11:9-12:8, which coincidentally happened to be the first reading during mass:

Rejoice, O youth, while you are young
and let your heart be glad in the days of your youth.
Follow the ways of your heart,
the vision of your eyes;
Yet understand regarding all this
that God will bring you to judgment.
Banish misery from your heart
and remove pain from your body,
for youth and black hair are fleeting.

Remember your Creator in the days of your youth,
before the evil days come
And the years approach of which you will say,
"I have no pleasure in them";
Before the sun is darkened
and the light and the moon and the stars
and the clouds return after the rain;
When the guardians of the house tremble,
and the strong men are bent;
When the women who grind are idle because they are few,
and those who look through the windows grow blind;
When the doors to the street are shut,
and the sound of the mill is low;
When one rises at the call of a bird,
and all the daughters of song are quiet;
When one is afraid of heights,
and perils in the street;
When the almond tree blooms,
and the locust grows sluggish
and the caper berry is without effect,
Because mortals go to their lasting home,
and mourners go about the streets;
Before the silver cord is snapped
and the golden bowl is broken,
And the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
and the pulley is broken at the well,
And the dust returns to the earth as it once was,
and the life breath returns to God who gave it.
Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth,
all things are vanity!

Mindfulness, then, can be a tool to help ground us and centre ourselves in the present moment. And it can also help us become free of the influence of the three poisons of greed, aversion, and delusion, as well as our clinging to what isn't real or important. The Buddha calls the habitual stories and false perceptions we create papanca, "mental proliferations," and much of our suffering in life comes from believing in them. But true peace comes from letting them go and seeking out and resting within what's true and real. For the Buddha and Hanh, this is nirvana, realization of the unconditioned, the cessation of suffering created by our misunderstandings and wrong perceptions. And for Merton, this is God, the unconditioned, the ground of being. It is all an ineffable oneness. So rather than taking refuge in fleeting moments and indulging in misunderstandings and wrong perceptions, we're invited to be aware, be awake, and to truly live in the present moment.

The second session was about the brotherhood between Merton and Hanh. Although they only met in person once in 1966, they shared a lot in common and admired each other greatly. They both were monks. They both grew up in the midst of war. They both were led by their spiritual practice to be engaged with the world and speak out against injustice and war, even when doing so was difficult and came at a cost. They both wrote very similar things about the role that nature played in their spirituality. They were both writers and poets. They had been monks for about the same amount of time. And they both shared an understanding of spirituality that was ultimately nondual in nature. But even though they shared a number of similarities, they shared differences as well, e.g., Merton was an adult then he entered monastic life whereas Hanh was a teen; Merton was constrained by his monastic traditions and cloistered life while Hanh was much freer and eventually started his own order; Merton found himself drawn every deeper to solitude while Hanh was very active and establish a number of monasteries and retreat centres. Nevertheless, they both stood against war and injustice and each did what they could to address these issues and inspire others to do the same, primarily through their writings.

Session three was "walking with monks in nature." They shared a couple of passages from each monk on their ideas about and experiences in nature, about how nature called them to deeply spiritual experiences and insights. Nature was very much a meditative canvas on which both monks painted poetic pictures that nourished them and gave them an appreciation of the greater whole. And with their words and some brief instructions, those of us that were able were invited outside to practice walking meditation around the convent. We took slow, mindful, deliberate steps. And with each ring of the small bell, we were encouraged to stop and take careful notice of our surroundings and anything we saw, heard, felt. I ended up alone and on the train tracks that ran behind the convent and noticed that I had a lot in common with Merton, which is why I was so drawn to him and his writing. I took in the sun and the breeze and tried to be fully myself while being aware that I felt more at home and more comfortable in solitude. I felt like just following the tracks to wherever they led, leaving everyone and the retreat behind. Not out of aversion towards them, but because of the peace I felt in that moment. As much as I am a social creature and like to have social interactions, I feel a distance between me and others and have a hard time bridging the gap. And often in solitude, I feel something deeper.

We all eventually returned to the retreat centre and were encouraged to discuss our experiences with each other. Peggy stopped by our table and mentioned how she noticed the difference between the wet, green, well-kept grass and the drier, brown, scratchy grass and how we're often drawn towards comfort and creating comfortable surroundings and circumstances but mused "what do we lose by going got comfort rather than reality?" It was an interesting question.

The fourth session focused on engaged spirituality. Much of this was about the response of Merton and Hanh to war, specifically the American war in Vietnam. And we were asked to think about how our spirituality engages with the big issues of today (e.g., climate change, violence, poverty, racism, etc.). A big theme was how a deep spirituality helped these two monks address these kinds of issues, both by nurturing a deep wellspring of compassion and empathy for the suffering of others and by helping to provide the mental and physical strength needed to endure difficult times. There were readings from each monk, as well as a discussion of the ways they spoke out and the difficulties they faced. Merton addressed these issues mostly in his writing, as he wasn't free to leave his monastery and be more physically present. Hanh, on the other had, spoke out against the war vocally and helped victims by creating an organization of volunteers to help rebuild rural school and establish medical centres, but he was eventually exiled from his homeland for 39 years for speaking out against the war, in which time he continued to speak out against a host of issues and established a number of monasteries and retreat centres. Hanh was convinced that if you create peace in yourself, you create peace in the world. There is no clear separation between self and other, individual and world. If you are full of anger, the world just has that much more anger in it. And if you act out of hate and anger, then you will be planting seeds for future hate and anger and suffering. As for Merton, it was noted that, at the time of his death, he'd found himself in the midst of an interfaith journey to Asia in a dialogue with Buddhists but has also found himself craving more and more solitude. And just a week before his death in 1968, Merton recorded a mystical awakening experience prompted by the reclining Buddhas in Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka:

Looking at these figures I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tied vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious. The queer evidence of the reclining figure, the smile, the sad smile of Ananda standing with arms folded (much more 'imperative' than Da Vinci's Mona Lisa because completely simple and straightforward). The thing about all this is that there is no puzzle, no problem, and really no 'mystery.' All problems are resolved and everything is clear, simply because what matters is clear. The rock, all matter, all life, is charged with dharmakaya . . . everything is emptiness and everything is compassion. I don't know when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty and spiritual validity running together in one aesthetic illumination. Surely, with Mahabalipuram and Polonnaruwa my Asian pilgrimage has come clear and purified itself. I mean, I know and have seen what I was obscurely looking for. I don't know what else remains but I have now seen and have pierced through the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the disguise.

And that kind of internal, unifying experience, when cultivated and matured, leads back outwards, as illustrated by Hanh in Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet:

If you see the suffering in the world but you haven't changed your way of living yet, it means the awakening isn't strong enough. You haven't really woken up. In Zen, sometimes a teacher will shout, or hit you, so you can wake up—they'll do whatever it takes. The Zen master's shout is like a crash of spring thunder. It wakes you up and, with the rains that follow, grasses and flowers will bloom.

The fifth and final section was pointed back towards us: how do you envision an engaged spirituality? At some point, Terry made the point about the importance of this nondual way of seeing and of and/both: action and contemplation, in breath and out breath, world and spirit, mindfulness and engagement, on the cushion and off the cushion, etc. In essence, they complement each other. It's not just one or the other, both are important and needed. We were invited to think about the question and to name an intention for ourselves for our spiritual engagement going forwards. My intention was to give more hope to the world and make it a better place than I found it, even if just a little. Part of that is trying to be a better person and not causing as much harm. And another is to be engaged with a spiritual community that's also engaged with social justice to help with that because I can't do it alone. I've felt demoralized and discouraged, and I need some motivation as well as guidance on ways to be involved, which is one of the things I'm hoping Spirit of Grace can help me with.

I've found through my own personal experience that, if you dig deep into yourself and find a well of love, compassion, and peace, there's often an urge to share that with others. And one of the ways to do that is to try and address and relieve the suffering of others as much as possible. To cease doing harm when you're the one causing it. To acknowledge and take a stand against injustice and with the victim of that injustice. And that's not easy. The roots of our own suffering and unskillful actions run deep. And the problems of the world have complex and often omnipresent causes that will take great effort and a lot of time to fix. So we need to find ways to renew our strength and motivation (fresh flower). We need patience and solid footing (mountain). We need to see clearly, to find ways of doing it effectively (still water). We need to be open to new ideas and people and ways of doing things (space). And we need to know what we can offer. I don't entirely know what I can offer at this stage in my life, but I have a few ideas. One thing I'm doing is trying to fight for an enlightened religion that's based on love, compassion, and peace. I'm trying to offer what empathy and healing I can at work. I want to dedicate some of my time and money to good causes with the right direction. And perhaps someday, offer something to the world with my writing as well.

After the retreat, I stopped at Mount Angel Abbey's Benedictine Brewery to pick up a couple of beers for my friend for his birthday and happened to have a chance to talk to the brewmaster, Fr. Martin. I asked him about some of the beers and which ones were from his recipes, as well as about his journey to the monastery. He was an engineer at Honeywell making really good money before someone suggested he visit the monastery, and something about the place and the life of a monk called to him. He said that the decision to become a monk wasn't necessarily an easy one, but he knew that it was the right one once he was there. I mentioned my own interest in monasticism and experiences at various monasteries and how I felt called to monastic life yet wasn't sure if it was the right thing for me, and he invited me to contact Fr. Odo if I was interested in attending one of their discernment retreats. It's definitely something I'll consider.

'the dark religions are departed and sweet science reigns'

Just finished reading Dan Brown's Origin, and two passages near the end caught my eye.

The first appears in a discussion between Robert Langdon and Ambra Vidal and the difference between patterns and codes. Langdon explains that patterns are "any distinctly organized system" and "occur everywhere in nature," whereas codes "must carry information" and "do more than simply form a pattern—codes must transmit data and convey meaning" (pg. 602) The implication being that patterns can be found in nature and form independently from the laws of nature while an intelligence must be behind codes. The discussion then turns towards DNA, which Langdon says is the paradox—is DNA just a pattern naturally found in nature or a code? Because DNA carries genetic data, Ambra excitedly offers, "You think DNA was created by an intelligence!" But Langdon's response offers a cautious yet meaningful disclaimer that I feel reflects my own personal feelings and point of view on the matter:

Langdon held up a hand in mock self-defense. "Easy tiger!" he said. "You're treading on dangerous ground. Let me just say this. Ever since I was a child, I've had the gut sense that there's a consciousness behind the universe. When I witness the precision of mathematics, the reliability of physics, and the symmetrics of the cosmos, I don't feel like I'm observing cold science; I feel as if I'm seeing a living footprint...the shadow of some greater force that is just beyond our grasp." (pg. 603)

The second occurs in a conversation between Langdon and Fr. Bena, a priest in charge of Sagrada Familia, while discussing a major new scientific discovery of sorts and the historical conflict between science and religion, which again reflects my own personal feelings and point of view on the matter:

"It is very obvious to me," Bena said as they walked, "that there is only one way Christianity will survive the coming age of science. We must stop denouncing provable facts. We must become a spiritual partner of science, using our vast experience—millennia of philosophy, personal inquiry, meditation, soul-searching—to help humanity build a moral framework and ensure that the coming technologies will unify, illuminate, and raise us up...rather than destroy us." (pg. 630)

At the end of this exchange, in discussing the concluding line from William Blake's work Vala, or The Four Zoas, "The dark religions are departed and sweet science reigns," which Fr. Bena has some trepidations displaying prominently in one of the most famous basilicas in the world, Langdon reassuringly suggests that the line could "just as easily say: 'Sweet science will banish the dark religions...so the enlightened religions can flourish'" (pg. 631). And I find myself holding onto the same hope.

For example, it brings to mind Stephen Hawking's answer to a question about technological advancements and 'technological unemployment':

If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.

In contrast, my heart burns for justice and equality, and recalls for inspiration and nourishment the words and actions of others whose hearts burn with the same fire, from labour organizers and socialists like Eugene Debs to spiritual teachers like Jesus, who, reading a scroll from the prophet Isaiah, summarized his own spiritual mission thusly:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord." (Luke 4:18-19)

As well as the words of the apostle James, Jesus' younger brother:

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure during the last days. Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you. (James 5:1-6)

But only a mature and rational yet mystical (i.e., contemplative) religion has a chance to be this kind of voice, this 'spiritual partner' to science. And if it isn't, or can't evolve to be, then it's empty, hollow, and surely doomed to die, Christian or otherwise.

eco-socialism or barbarism

Just saw this article from the BBC:

Climate change: 'Rising chance' of exceeding 1.5C global target:

There have been a lot of dire articles like this lately, and I find it truly frightening. The ruling class and capital are essentially driving us full speed off a cliff. Working people are the only ones that can slam on the brakes, but our means of subsistence is tied to the car going full speed, making that a difficult choice to make in the short-term while we figure out how to design a whole new car. The car represents the economy, and the brakes are any means of pressuring systemic change needed to slow or stop the rise of CO2 levels, electoral pressure, strikes, slow downs, etc. And the car has to be divested of fossil fuels and not be dependent upon perpetual growth without stalling (crises).

As Frederick Engels observes in Anti-Duhring, "both the productive forces created by the modern capitalist mode of production and the system of distribution of goods established by it have come into crying contradiction with that mode of production itself [including everything from cyclical economic crises and inequality to environmental degradation and accelerated climate change], and in fact to such a degree that, if the whole of modern society is not to perish, a revolution in the mode of production and distribution must take place." And so, like Karl Kautsky warns in The Class Struggle, "As things stand today capitalist civilization cannot continue; we must either move forward into socialism or fall back into barbarism."

Coincidentally, I was also listening to NPR today and the subject of the TED Radio hour happened to be "A Century of Money," starting with Kathleen Day's "What Can The 1929 Crash Teach Us About The 2020's Economic Crisis?" and ending with Abigail Disney's "How Can Corporations Treat Their Lowest-Paid Employees Better?" And the frustrating part was that they get so tantalizingly close to the reality and the required solutions, but then they fall way short. For example, near the end of Abigail's TED talk, the host asks, "[W]e've had now a century of these lessons. Do you think we need another moment where we have a reckoning and say, you know, we need to fix the system; let's set up a better way of doing this?" And Abigail's answer is, "What I say is they're humans working in your company, human beings. They have all the same needs and desires that you have. You have to treat them with the dignity you would want to be treated with yourself. Like, that's just the starting point. Then go make all the profit you want to make. But if your business plan starts with exploitation and you can't make - get to profitability without doing that, then you need to go get another business plan."

One problem with this is that the logic of capitalism doesn't work that way, and in fact, it often works better precisely due to increased exploitation of labour, giving the capitalist class more profits to accumulate, more to share with shareholders, and more to speculate with and transform into more money. And this logic also gives them a greater say in the political sphere due to the superior social power their wealth and economic influence grants them, meaning laws and taxes and legal enforcement through the judicial system often favour the employer over the employee, the rich over the poor, etc. And the morality that capitalism engenders, in turn, favours the employers and the wealthy as the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class. So if you're rich, it's because you work hard and make good decisions and have earned it, while if you're poor it's due to your laziness and bad decisions. Or think of the disparity in the way wealth is redistributed and how we treat the recipients—one example being the way corporate subsidies are relatively easy to get and not questioned in the same way as social welfare, whereas government welfare for individuals (e.g., SNAP benefits, Section 8 vouchers, etc.) is looked down upon and often difficult for people to get.

So when Abigail gives her earlier moral appeal to CEOs like Bezos when she says, "So what I want to see happen is if I'm a CEO and I know that some of my workers are on food stamps or going to food pantries, I want to be ashamed of myself. I want other people to feel shame on my behalf. The fact that that's not happening says that the CEO considers himself to be of a class and even a species different and distinct from the people who do the hardest work at the company," she's close to the mark as they ARE a distinct class from working people. However, it falls short because moral appeals carry little weight in the face of the immense influence of the logic of capitalism on behaviour and social relations. This logic not only gives rise to these class distinctions and socioeconomic inequality [conditioning capital to accumulate wealth and exploit labour], but also views the success of the wealthy as a moral good. And no amount of shame on the behalf of a single person can overcome the determination of the logic of the entire system, the desire of shareholders, or the effects of cyclical economic crises that are created but contradictions internal to the way capitalism functions.

In essence, people at least see and understand that there's a problem and that people are suffering immensely between these periods of prosperity, and some even within them. And during the Depression, the changes that took place, including things like the legalization of unions and collective bargaining, banking deposit protections, and the New Deal works projects, were a direct result of the growing rise of labour activism, strikes, unions, and the organization or working people and the poor by socialists and communists. Things were so dire, the ruling class and corporate leaders were afraid of a political and economic revolution. And these measures, along with the destruction of both Asian and European means of production and a thinning of the working class during WWII, allowed the American working class to prosper like never before. Except those measure were a temporary fix to a problem that arises from contradictions inherent to the system itself, i.e., capital's need to exploit labour to produce profit, the need for continual growth to avoid economic downturns, the coercive pressures for capital to accumulate (creating inequality and the tendency towards monopolization), the tendency of the rate of profit to fall over time due to increases in technology and productivity, cyclical crises caused by things like overproduction and the inability of capital to function as capital, the contradiction between use value and exchange value, etc. And this doesn't even touch upon the ways the need for perpetual growth and the political power of capital has irreparably harmed our environment.

Altogether, the way capitalism functions can be tweaked to make things slightly better (at least temporarily), and things like higher taxes on the wealthy, regulations, and other government policies can help stem some of the gross inequality that we see, as New Deal programs and policies show. However, they can't fundamentally change the way that capitalism functions, nor can that put working people on equal footing with employers and capital, because the latter always has the final say. Capitalist property rights give capital the final say over the workplace and the share of the fruits of the labour that the labourer themselves actually receive (wages) because capital owns the means of production, the labourer's labour-time, and everything that it produces.

Until we devise an economic system that isn't forced to operate on a model of continual growth and that gives working people real ownership of their own labour and its fruits, along with truly democratic institutions of decision-making, we will be forced to endure at least this gross level of socioeconomic inequality, recurrent economic crises, a distant and disinterested ruling class, and the worst case scenario of a looming climate catastrophe. And no amount of moral shaming will change that. (Plus, it's hard to shame a person who has the ability to do whatever they want and even fly themselves into space at a whim.) But time is running out, and I think the Spanish Minister of Consumer Affairs, Alberto Garzón, is absolutely correct when he writes in his conclusion to "The limits to growth: eco-socialism or barbarism" that:

Taking up these challenges will not be a matter of simple political prescription. Once again, nor will it be a question of winning arguments. Rather, it will be to do with the ability to put together broad social and political alliances able to prepare the ground for a whole historical and social block to emerge. Local initiatives and global proposals, classical traditions, and new ways of thinking, along with social and institutional action, must play a part in this broad community, in an exercise to build a social fabric feeding on imagery and looking towards a horizon of peace, justice, equality and social rights within the planetary boundaries.

In the past, the idea of an alternative – socialism or barbarism – was popularized by Rosa Luxemburg against the bellicose backdrop of the First World War. The traditional Marxist conception of the time theorized that capitalism was at such an advanced stage of development – in its imperialist phase – that the only thing that could come out of it was international socialist revolution or the destruction of every trace of civilization under the yoke of the war and its consequences. In a way, there were indeed revolutions and a lot of destruction. Not only Europe but the whole world was devastated by two World Wars and totalitarian regimes, while those turbulent times swept away millions of human beings, including Rosa Luxemburg herself, assassinated in 1919 during the Spartacist uprising.

Presently, that alternative is perfectly valid. Human civilization, any civilization, can only build horizons of justice and well-being if it can find a way to do so within the planetary boundaries. Fitting within or readjusting to those boundaries, if we may put it like that, can happen in either an organized or a chaotic manner, the worst-case scenario being ecological collapse. Any of the intermediate scenarios will in any event oblige us to reorganize ourselves through other rules. But we must not forget that the politics striving hardest to prevail in these situations of emergency and collapse is that of authoritarianism, discrimination, inequality, and militarism. It is, once again, barbarism. To avoid it, we must open an alternative road based on other principles and values, democracy, human rights and social justice. This is the route towards eco-socialism. It is therefore a matter of choosing between eco-socialism or barbarism.

capitalism is bad for our mental health

Depression and anxiety are increasingly becoming an issue, with more and more people struggling, taking their own lives, or reaching out for help. And while healthcare professionals can often provide care in the form of medications and therapy techniques like cognitive behavioral therapy that can be life changing, I think there are some deep-seated causes that have gone unaddressed and continue to feed into people's depression and anxiety—most of them being the external stressors weighing heavily on people stemming from the ways we organize our society. Most people have to work for a wage to survive, or else hustle one way or the other, sometimes both. People often have to spend a great deal of time at work (the majority of our waking hours in fact) and commuting to and from work, keeping us away from friends and family and limiting the free time we need to exercise or relax and recharge. Workloads themselves are often full of stress. On top of that, wages for many aren't enough to do more than pay for rent, food, and other bills, and people feel like they're living to work. They don't call it "the rat race" for nothing. As if that weren't enough, even more pressures come from trying to make due with what you get, forcing us to make tough financial choices between things like paying for food, rent, and utilities vs. healthcare, childcare, and car repairs. Over half of Americans alone live paycheck to paycheck in a state of perpetual precarity and the threat of unemployment and ruin around every corner. And if you want to gamble, you can put yourself into a lifetime of debt to get a higher education and piece of paper that might get you a little extra cheese, but there are no guarantees. It's also difficult to relax when at least five days are full of going full speed to make someone else rich and two days are left for you to try and do all your personal errands, spend time with friends and family, and do something enjoyable and meaningful. And when we don't have the time or money for that, we often find it easier to self medicate with drugs or alcohol or reality TV or whatever helps us through the day. And the broader socioeconomic atmosphere across the globe isn't much better, often full of violence and uncertainty, from wars and food shortages to volatile stock markets and imperialist competition between nation states. Combined that with the ability to have constant stimulation from news and social commentary on TV, social media, etc., it's little wonder that people are suffering from depression and anxiety more than ever before. Certainly not every mental health issue is caused by these material conditions, but a large number are, and the majority almost definitely exacerbated by them. If we want to truly address this growing mental health crisis, we must not only expand access to and normalize mental healthcare, but also address the omnipresent material conditions giving rise to and exacerbating them. We need more free time. We need to have our basic needs met without having to work ourselves to death. We need more access to the things that make life worthwhile and enjoyable. And we need to share all of that with everyone instead of a system where a few profit disproportionately off of the labour of the many, while the many in turn benefit from the oppression and exploitation of the poor and marginalized. Capitalism is a pyramid of inequality, and the further down you are, the heavier your burden and its negative impacts.

happy pride

Happy Pride!

Pride month means a lot to me for various reasons. One is, my current relationship officially began during Pride, when both my girlfriend and I volunteered to help canvas for NARAL Pro-Choice and run their booth at the 2016 Portland Pride Festival and Parade. The Orlando nightclub shooting happened just the week before, and all the other volunteers bailed, likely because they were scared of something similar happening at openly LGBTQIA+ events and locations. But we were happy to help, collecting signatures for a measure supporting full range of reproductive rights for everyone, handing out swag, marching in that Saturday's trans parade, etc. At the end, Sunday the 19th, the organizer took us both out for a beer, and we ended up expressing our feelings for one another and have been together ever since. Pride is literally or anniversary.

In addition, I've had my own journey towards undoing the societal conditioning against LGBTQIA+ individuals and lifestyles I was exposed to growing up in the media and others around me, and exploring my own gender and sexuality. While my mom was as open as a boomer could be, my step-dad and peers were definitely not, and I absorbed negative ideas and stereotypes about LGBTQIA+ people even when I didn't understand what words like gay, bi, or trans meant. I was just conditioned to think they were bad and something you didn't want to be because it was gross, unnatural, etc. Fast-forward to my late teens, and I was hanging out with a diverse group of people, wearing goth makeup and women's clothes and occasionally making out with hot guys because why not? And while I can (and usually do) easily pass for a cis, straight white dude, I'm definitely somewhere along the queer spectrum. I find certain men attractive, and I have loved people of the same sex. I also identify with more feminine roles and people and styles even though I also feel pressure to fit in as "one of the guys." I've never felt body dysmorphia or the need to transition, and pretty much most of my relationships have been with women, so I don't feel the need to claim any labels, like queer or bi or anything else, because I don't want to take attention away from others who have struggled a whole lot more in their lives for the right and ability to be open about who they are and it's not a large part of my own amorphous identity. But I also understand the need to normalize these things despite it not being a large part of my identity, so I'm definitely open about my opinions of gender and sexuality being a spectrum and my own place on that spectrum to anyone curious and being vocal about my support for people being free to express their gender and sexuality and ending all the violence and discrimination inflicted upon LGBTQIA+ individuals who fall outside of the various socially-imposed, traditionally accepted, cis-normative categories.

As a species, we have to capacity to enjoy a rich spectrum of emotional and sexual relationships. Part of the reason I think this isn't more obvious to many people is that we've been conditioned by social, religious, and cultural norms to identify with a single 'orientation' and, more importantly, to find only one specific orientation socially, morally, and culturally acceptable. We're just now reaching a point where it's becoming somewhat acceptable to be open about being attracted to the same sex and to be in a same-sex relationship, which is good. Unfortunately, we're still trapped culturally into identifying as one or the other (gay, straight, etc.), which doesn't even begin to address the limitations of our views about gender. And scientifically, we're trapped by an ideology of genetic sexual determinism to do the same thing. So it's going to take a bit longer for people to fully realize the possible diversity in human sexuality and that it's not only possible to be attracted to people for who they are regardless of sex or gender, but that it's OK to be attracted to someone for who they are regardless of sex or gender.

And even though my social and political activism isn't what it was 5 or 10 years ago, I still try hard to continue to advocate for LGBTQIA+ people and for things that would benefit them, from marriage equality to guaranteed reproductive rights, as well as to connect those struggles to struggles for gender equality, racial equality, and socioeconomic equality. Because all of these struggles are intertwined, and if one of us isn't free, none of us truly are. We just benefit from a temporary privilege at the expense of someone else, which is both harmful and morally repugnant; and social structures and cultural norms that support these unequal systems of oppression must ultimately be torn down.

It's a long, difficult process. And I know that many people would prefer slower, more moderate solutions. Things like 'tearing down' oppressive structures sounds destructive, violent even. But some foundations can't be salvaged before something new is built. And Pride itself began as a riot against the enforcement of that oppression, and even though police today like to ride in Pride parades and corporations like to throw rainbows all over their tweets and ads this month, the police are often used to uphold systems of oppression and many of those same companies financially support politicians and organizations dedicated to restricting and reversing hard won rights. Quick to cash in on a growing market, but just as quick to stab them in the back if it appeases another. And our society, while arguably changing for the better, still finds it publicly acceptable to ridicule and demonize people simply trying to exist, as all the recent anti-trans laws and comedy specials illustrate. And I definitely think we need the same active, revolutionary spirit of Stonewall for the fights ahead. Because these structures and those who support and benefit them, will not be transformed without hard battles and a militant willingness to dismantle oppressive institutions.

I love Pride because it has a very deep and very sentimental place in my heart. It's one of the places where I learned how to be brave, and where I found love. But I also love it because it's as much about celebrating oneself and the diversity we find in one another as it is an openly rebellious challenge to outdated modes of thinking and long-standing systems of discrimination, dehumanization, and psychological and physical damage. And part of celebrating Pride is being brave and standing up for others and building something better, which sometimes requires getting our hands a little dirty.

got the covid shame blues

Having COVID, I'm feeling a lot of things. Tiredness is the main thing I'm feeling at the moment. But I'm also feeling things like guilt and shame over managing to get myself sick. Not because of anything said to me directly so much as things seen and heard in the background. Due in part to the divide between people who took the pandemic seriously and those who didn't, there seems to be a fair amount of social stigma and scorn, however passive, directed towards those who eventually become infected. People often assume they are unvaccinated or anti-mask or irresponsible and not doing what they can to avoid catching and spreading it. I've seen multiple examples of people making a point to note that they haven't caught it yet, wearing it as a badge of honour and distancing themselves from the rabble who have, pointing out that they're FULLY vaccinated and ALWAYS wear their masks and NEVER go anywhere, with the implications towards those who have it being obvious.

And I get it. It's been a real struggle to get people to take this virus seriously and take all the necessary precautions they can. Working in healthcare, I saw just how bad things could get and it terrified me. For two years, I've been upset at the mediocre government response and have tried to convince people I know who were on the fence to get vaccinated, including patients who were hesitant and asked me about it. But I couldn't run from it forever, and it finally caught up to me. And now I'm one of 'them.' And while I'm lucky that most of the people I know are supportive of me personally, I'm still seeing many say critical things of others who have gotten sick, or make it a point to announce yet again that they haven't gotten COVID for the hundredth time. And it's hard not to take some of that a little personally.

I feel judged to a certain degree. I feel ashamed. I feel unclean. I feel like I'm outside of the community in some way. It's definitely a struggle not to feel bad about myself for something that, in many ways, is beyond my control. My luck simply ran out. Yet it feels like more than that and that it's my sinfulness of some sort that's being punished. Moreover, few who champion their negative status seem to include in those declarations of viral purity any sort of acknowledgement of the luck and privilege that's assisted them, things like the ability to work from home and limit their exposure, living in a house rather than an apartment complex, having personal transportation rather than relying on public transit, not having family members who must go out and risk daily potential exposure (e.g., kids that have to go to school, partners that can't work from home, etc.), the money to order tests and the best masks and constantly have food and groceries delivered for the last two years so that they don't have the leave the house (and does anybody think about the poor people delivering these things?), etc. There's a whole lot of often overlooked luck and privilege involved in staying negative.

That said, I can't entirely begrudge the people who cling to their negative status. Our government has basically taken a personal responsibility approach rather than a systemic, coordinated effort to provide people with supplies; the financial ability to stay home; enact and enforce masking and vaccination mandates, social distancing, and quarantine measures; limit gathering, etc. For the most part, we've been forced to fend off infection during a global pandemic on our own, so there's a lot of pride to be had in not becoming infected, and our culture certainly enforces that. We're conditioned to see everything through the prisms of individualism and self-reliance; and if we've made it in life by getting the perfect job or have managed not to catch a contagious virus, we're made to feel that it's because we deserve it and have done what's required. We put in the hard work. We believed the right things. We have the intelligence and drive necessary for success. The world helps those who help themselves and pull themselves up by their bootstraps (and protect themselves with the boxes of N95s they had delivered from Amazon). And we're all susceptible to this narrative to some extent, and the more we have and the luckier we are, the more susceptible we tend to become.

It reminds me of the biblical Pharisees, who clung to their status of purity and distanced themselves from those they found to be impure, from lepers to the lowly peasants with low-paying and unsavory jobs that nevertheless made the society they lived in possible, quarantining themselves in their temples and wanting for little. They believed in their own righteousness and purity and used their 'cleanliness' both as proof of their own worthiness and as a hammer to strike against the worthiness of others, putting them in their place. It wasn't out of ill-will that they did so, though. It was out of fear of losing what they had and becoming contaminated by the impurities of the world they thought they could outrun, neither seeing how their luck and privilege gave them an advantage, nor how the unlcean were suffering because they were pushed to the margins of society (or even outside of it). It was a defense mechanism, one that appears to come more naturally to those who find themselves part of the 'haves' than the 'have nots.'

And we're not much different. I spent the last two years afraid of catching COVID, both because I was afraid of how sick it would make me and those around me if I spread it, and because I was afraid of being marked as unclean and judged for all the things I probably did wrong to get it. I wasn't as privileged as the Pharisees per se, but I considered myself one of the faithful and held to my negative status as something special, sacred even. And now that I've lost that, I'm somewhat relieved because the fear of getting it is no longer weighing upon me as it once was (although the fear of lasting effects still is), but I'm also struggling with my own feelings of loss and being impure and wondering if we'll ever create a society that manages to welcome, comfort, and care for everyone equally, regardless of their circumstances. And this isn't just about COVID, but any potential divisions we can use to uplift and malign ourselves and others.

it's all about the people

This Twitter thread is a great observation. The text is as follows:

It’s interesting to consider, re. supply-chain shortages, that COVID doesn’t infect machinery or transport; just people. So every time you can’t find something, that’s a sick person. Every missing item, that’s a sick person. (People, really, but it’s hard to imagine “people” in the abstract, and what COVID makes visible is that the supply chain is human beings.) I was thinking last night that we’ve been talking about supply-chain problems as a result of an epidemic, but ultimately they’re both the result of the same thing: the fact that we’re all connected to each other, despite what we might insist or wish. It's quite true that things like clogged ports and semiconductor shortages are real factors, and it requires a little bit of imagination to understand what this has to do with sick people. + But consider: physically, the ports are fine. The ships are fine. Why can't they be unloaded faster? Similarly, the raw materials for (e.g.) semiconductors exist, or we wouldn't be able to make them at all. Why can't we increase production to meet the need?

The pandemic is at least helping to unobscure some of the social relations normally hidden by the logic and functioning of capitalism. This is essentially the reality behind what Marx termed fetishism, i.e., "the way in which a situation hides what the real significance is" (David Harvey).

As Marx explains in relation to commodities in Capital vol. 1:

A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour. This is the reason why the products of labour become commodities, social things whose qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses. In the same way the light from an object is perceived by us not as the subjective excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective form of something outside the eye itself. But, in the act of seeing, there is at all events, an actual passage of light from one thing to another, from the external object to the eye. There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities. There, the existence of the things quâ commodities, and the value relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands. This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.

And some of that mystification is removed when we start to view things in the way Miriam Posner does, i.e., that "[E]very time you can’t find something, that’s a sick person. Every missing item, that’s a sick person. (People, really, but it’s hard to imagine 'people' in the abstract, and what COVID makes visible is that the supply chain is human beings.)"

While this may seem like commonsense, I don't think we naturally see it that way because our ingrained focus is primarily on the commodity and its price, availability, etc., while our relationship to it is generally through the commodity itself and its point of purchase, not all the human social labour behind it and embodied within it. Due to our societal habitus, we often have to make a conscious effort to reframe our perspective, which can have radical consequences. And in this case, it helps to rehumanize the labour we're conditioned by capitalist social relations to view in the abstract. And this, of course, is a small step towards increasing worker solidarity.

We can only challenge and effectively combat the social forces and institutions that exploit and oppress working people together. And that fight begins with an illumined consciousness (seeing how the system alienates and exploits us) and a sense of solidarity with other workers and groups of marginalized individuals who, ultimately, depend on each other for their collective emancipation.