‘Normal’ Is the Last Thing We Should Wish For
Dismantling structural capitalism may be unrealistic, but there are practical ways to reframe our relationship to it
No matter how I face each of these strange days, something feels off. On days when I feel creative, lucid, and even thankful for some of the side effects of this great global pause — usually on weekends when I ignore the news — I also feel a twinge of guilt. I should be thinking about death counts, government failings, and wealth disparities instead of reading about ancient Indian breathing techniques or delighting in the scent of wisteria on my neighborhood walks, shouldn’t I?
And then, on the days when I’m despondent, low, and depressed, I chastise myself for feeling that way, when I have what so many others don’t: health, a supportive family, a job, food.
It’s an exhausting seesaw: There is the grief for all that we’ve lost and will lose, and there is the hope that this incredible, leveling event will bring about change to what was a very, very broken world before this. And a conviction is emerging: Going back to “normal” should not be our goal.
Since lockdown began, the shortcomings and inequalities of American capitalism have been revealed with stunning speed: People losing so-called stable jobs without warning or severance; gigantic corporations seeking government assistance; complex supply chains faltering, leaving supermarket shelves empty. Many have begun to ask: If the jobs we do all day can evaporate overnight, what does that say about the nature of those jobs, or the economic system they rely upon?
As climate change looms — promising more and more global disruptions — Covid-19 has acted as a kind of brutal foreshadowing. If climate change is a slow-moving emergency, coronavirus is a lighting-fast one, showing us the severe limitations of a globalized, growth-obsessed economy and begging us to change it before it’s too late.
In the ashes and rubble, a thirst to reimagine a world that’s better and more equal has emerged. Writers such as Rebecca Solnit, Arundhati Roy, and Naomi Klein have called for people to use this crisis to animate the forces that have historically created radical social change and more progressive and compassionate societies — from the European welfare state to the New Deal.
On the other hand there is, of course, an understandable desire for capitalism to snap back into place, to stem the economic devastation and go back to the systems that existed before, imperfect as they may be. For those who have lost jobs or are dealing with illness or death, imagining an alternative economic future may be the last thing on their minds, and rightly so.
But for those of us with the privilege to breathe in the wisteria fragrance for a moment and imagine what might come next, this “great pause” also feels like an extraordinary moment to reassess. As Julio Vincent Gambuto wrote in the follow-up to his viral Forge essay: “This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to unsubscribe so that you can resubscribe to a life you actually want.”
Large-scale change comes in many ways — voting being a big one, of course. But this crisis is not just global and structural; it’s personal too. Dismantling the machine of capitalism may be unrealistic, but there are practical ways we might reframe our relationship to it.
And those practical shifts may be relatively small. They’re quiet and gentle and they start, quite literally, outside our front door. In many ways, the pandemic has shown us what’s possible.
Don’t be a martyr for capitalism
When I recently asked on social media how people’s relationship to capitalism has been altered by the crisis, one friend who lost a job said she had noticed how much money she used to waste on on Ubers, coffees, fast fashion, and dry cleaning — the conveniences she relied upon while she was busy working. Another appreciated how much more nourished she feels from cooking and eating with housemates, rather than each individually buying convenience foods and takeout.
These small things point to a much larger thing. We have unwittingly become martyrs to this economic system, failing to see the ways that capitalism not only fails to serve us, but often hurts us too. Capitalism tells us that all of our worth lies in our productivity, which translates to our ability to use our time effectively to earn money. It’s an ingenious trick, heralding personal ambition and, in the process, coaxing us to work ourselves to death (literally!) in service of a system that benefits very few.
And it’s no wonder we have this blind spot. The spoils of capitalism — with its smartphones and Photoshopped glamour and sushi delivered to your door — are incredibly alluring to our base-level brains.
But as many people have found during this pandemic, ditching the addiction to immediacy, convenience, and novelty allows us to rediscover the pleasures that come from everyday and elemental tasks, like baking a loaf of bread or stopping to chat with a neighbor (from a safe distance) during a morning walk.
And perhaps most profoundly, people have been forced to notice how the inner landscape changes when our routines of productivity and rubrics for evaluating achievement are taken away.
Build local resilience
Of course, resisting capitalism’s dominance isn’t just about home-cooking and the meditative qualities of kneading dough. It requires radically re-framing how we think about our role as consumers, citizens, and community members.
Even though collectively traumatic events have historically led to societally progressive changes, there’s no guarantee any great change will come of this pandemic. We have to actively ensure that it does.
That need is incredibly urgent, and it has to start with a kind of excavation of our inner worlds. We’ll need to find the strength to face our fears and the challenges ahead. As the meditation teacher and psychologist Tara Brach put it:
Right at this juncture in time, if you’re intentional [about] how you want to move through this, the suffering that arises can turn you towards your deepest resources. We kind of get backed into it. Into our bravery, into our wisdom, and our love
The full talk is worth a listen. Brach goes on to discuss the role that fear plays in this pandemic. Rather than thinking of this fear as something to immediately try to get rid of when it arises within us, she urges us to examine its usefulness: “In many ways… we haven’t been awake and scared enough to do what we needed to do to prevent as much loss as what’s coming. Fear is an intelligent part of us.”
We actually should be afraid of things going back to normal. Scared in a way many of us weren’t before. That fear is trying to tell us something.
Because we are more than workers and consumers. We’re neighbors, friends, teachers, parents, caretakers, and healers. We’re gardeners, bakers, sewers, carpenters, artists, writers, and makers. Once we accept that our intrinsic worth and value lies in more than just our economic output, we can begin to fully inhabit these roles that have nothing to do with earning an income.
In doing so, we can also embrace the idea of becoming more reliant on each other. We can trade produce with friends who have gardens, or barter a handmade mask for a loaf of bread; we can share childcare services and coordinate neighborhood cleanups and get-out-the-vote efforts. We can volunteer to help those who are struggling, and accept help ourselves when we need it. Then, we may find ourselves slightly less reliant on a paycheck and precarious global supply chain that, we now know, can falter at any moment.
Simply buying less is an act of resistance itself, and locally based “Buy Nothing” groups on Facebook and other sites offer ways to get what you need from the people who live around you. Creating skill-shares and exchanges in your community can also be ways to benefit from the resources around you, and offer something in return — be it childcare, excess fruit from your backyard, or yoga lessons.
It’s no coincidence that as the pandemic took hold and our economic systems began to crack, many found themselves getting to know the people around them for the first time, and the rise of so-called “mutual aid groups” became the way many people are surviving.
Reason to hope
I know what you’re thinking. Sure, sharing tomato seedlings and supporting local businesses and buying a CSA box are all nice — but they ain’t going to upend capitalism. There is a valid critique of the conscious consumption movement, that’s it’s just capitalism dressed up in green clothing to assuage liberal guilt.
And yes, capitalism’s failings are structural. Farmers markets and friendly neighbors are not going to bring us socialized health care — and we shouldn’t limit our civic engagement to our choices in personal consumption.
I’m aware, too, of the discourse suggesting that if you’re finding this time generative, hopeful, or spiritually productive, then you must be a privileged person who can only feel such things because you have a garden and a salary. That might be true. Optimism at a time like this may indeed be misguided.
But I also haven’t heard anyone suggest a viable alternative. Is it better to wallow in our misery, not daring to imagine how the world or ourselves might be different afterwards, lest we sound like privileged snowflakes? I think I’ll instead risk being the target of someone’s ire on Twitter.
When we pessimistically assume that the system will snap back to the way it was, we forget we have a role to play in that happening. If, instead, we choose to wage some form of resistance — by becoming more dependent on each other and less on the validation that capitalism provides — we also get the added benefit of making our lives richer and better.
You might even find your desire to shop — that panacea Americans have been offered in every crisis for almost a century — reduced, as Anne Helen Petersen recently wrote for BuzzFeed. Americans are spending less and borrowing less, she points out, not just because unemployment is up and shopping is logistically difficult, but also because they are discovering other ways to live.
“What if we decided that things didn’t have to be the way they were before all of this happened?” she asks. “Part of that shift would involve taxing the rich and disarticulating health care from employment; it would involve forming and protecting unions and focusing on reimplementing regulatory systems, decentralizing production, and restoring the supply chain. And it could also mean disabusing ourselves of the idea that buying things is a solution to our problems.”
It’s a hopeful vision, and there’s some reason for that hope. If you think people are too self-interested to ever consider spending their time on anything besides amassing and displaying wealth, consider this: A massive proportion of the world’s population has stayed home — at great personal cost — to prevent others from getting sick. Several months ago, we would not have been able to even contemplate such large-scale self-sacrifice. While the pandemic has shown many ugly sides of our society, this is one aspect that can surely fuel optimism.
Before the virus, I would sometimes spend days in a kind of contemplative fug, sad about our way of life ending due to climate change, and wondering what the future world would look like. I didn’t know that the moment of truth would come so soon. And yet here we are.
Things are not going to go “back to normal,” and that’s okay. Your job now is to find the role you’ll play in creating the world we need next. It’s to hold both the grief and the hope at once, and to ask: What is this crisis drawing out of you?
Finding the answer is urgent. But at least we’ve got time on our hands.
