While coronavirus forces us into isolation, many things may become apparent, which were previously supressed from the imagination.
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1 – Isolation-enforced de-growth may lead to an imagined and personally-planned de-growth, in which moneyless activities, far outweigh the moneyed. Natural pleasures may become more valued goals – than the old goals of pursuing money to buy manufactured pleasures.
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2 – The above will become acute (rather than chronically simmering) if our chronically unstable “economies” crash, leaving acute trauma. Moneyless activity may prove both more productive and more felicitous, than violent scrambles for money and limited supplies. Of course, that last may win out, but it is not irrational to dream that it won’t. In any case, if the current “economy” does not crash, our planet will very soon be uninhabitable. We must imagine and hope that it will crash. That tragedy is our best hope. We must choose tragedy. It is time to imagine tragedy as benign.
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3 – Enforced family and community rationing may lead to self-reliance in many other things too and to a mistrust of plainly inept governments and to their advocacy for amoral corporate supply – and also to their class-enforcing doctrines. For instance, in states, such as the UK, revulsion at its corrupt newspapers and radio/television channels, may lead to a new thirst for self-learning and to a delight in it. Similarly, expensive and time-wasting education, which teaches us to conform to the current status quo, may be seen for what it is. On the schooling ladder we must conform to pass exams and later, we will find it advantageous to seek, not peer-review, but career-review. Something is rotten in the sate of UK. Imagine a return to health – to good, honest, timeless decency. Imagine it.
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4 – The fantasy, which we so vociferously call, the bottom line, progress, enlightenment… may be seen as the fantasy that it is. Currently, we see climate heating as an abstract idea, and the lives, which cause it, as solid reality. For most of us, our lives will outweigh a mere idea.
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What if the scales fall from our eyes and we suddenly see, zero emissions by 2035 as an urgent reality, and our lives as dangerous fantasy?
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5 – Often, uncertainty brings fear, which brings thoughtlessness (denial), selfishness and both protective violence and violence towards scape-goats – the cornered human animal.
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