Andray Domise: Regardless of headlines continuously blaring that our way of life is ever growing, social stressors gnaw away on the foundations of our collective psyche
In 2011, British author and cultural theorist Mark Fisher penned an essay entitled The Privatisation of Stress, completely capturing the connection between melancholy, social situations underneath capitalism and growing alienation within the post-Reagan/Thatcherite years.
“It’s hardly stunning that individuals who dwell in such situations—the place their hours and pay can all the time be elevated or decreased, and their phrases of employment are extraordinarily tenuous—ought to expertise nervousness, melancholy,” Fisher wrote. “However . . . this privatization of stress has grow to be only one extra taken-for-granted dimension of a seemingly depoliticized world.”
I consider Fisher and his writings usually. I frequently reread his most well-known work, Capitalist Realism, and have all the time admired his potential to not solely write by means of melancholy and nervousness however to attach social situations with our ever-worsening psychological well being. Regardless of headlines continuously blaring that our way of life is ever growing and our collective wealth is extra ample than ever, social stressors gnaw away on the foundations of our collective psyche.
The demise of tradition and artwork, for instance, evident within the infinite manufacturing of music algorithmically designed to evoke feeling however by no means provoke emotion. Literature circumscribed to attraction to the infinite adolescence of an arrested readership. Tent-pole superhero movies which have lengthy since ossified and crumbled throughout the vaults of Disney and Warner Bros. The demise of fulfilling labour, the place the gig financial system has pushed the idea of “work” into utter absurdity (no pensions, no advantages, usually no pay!), and the demise of social establishments, together with the church (which eternally haunts us with its most damaging remnants, resembling dogmatism and puritanism, even in essentially the most liberal social scenes).
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And, in fact, a political tradition that abides no realities, prospects, no faint hopes outdoors of the neo-liberal consensus. Nowhere is the demise of higher issues extra evident than with the newly minted Joe Biden administration.
From a much-feted Inauguration Day poem by 22-year-old youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman calling for nationwide therapeutic (but drawing water from the shallow and poisonous pool of American exceptionalism that is still completely tainted by its historical past of chauvinism, hypocrisy and genocide), to the collective meltdown over Bernie Sanders’ frumpy winter apparel (considered by many apoplectic liberals as an offensive gesture to the pageantry of the inauguration; these folks can’t even be joyful after they get what they need), to a trillion-dollar stimulus package deal that can as soon as once more ship the products to giant firms whereas handing out sparse change to working Individuals (and but once more denying them common well being care, even throughout a lethal pandemic), the state of American politics is yet one more handshake within the satan’s cut price that’s capitalism.
Regardless of the COVID epidemic and infinite political urgings for all of us to tug collectively, Black folks proceed to die by the hands of police. Youngsters stay separated from their mother and father and sleep on chilly flooring behind ICE fencing. Wall Road hedge funds clamour for bailouts as a result of investor pushback on their long-time market manipulations managed to explode their plans. Suicide hotlines are overworked; polling of Canadians and Individuals present we’re considering suicidal ideation at heretofore unseen ranges.
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I’ve seen too many individuals thrown out of their properties, shed tears with too many individuals who’ve misplaced family members to a pandemic exacerbated by our compromised and incompetent political class. I usually marvel what Fisher would make of our present actuality, haunted by the ghosts of final century’s optimism and infinite fictional prospects that had been quietly snuffed out by the infinite existential crises—neglect a pandemic, we’re nonetheless staring down the barrel of catastrophic local weather change—led to by the various violences of now.
Too many doorways of chance have been slammed in our faces.
In fact, Fisher can’t provide any commentary on this actuality; he died by suicide in 2017. However I’m wondering if the insurgency of direct motion that’s nonetheless ongoing within the streets, on social media, and even when this new type of shareholder activism in opposition to large hedge funds might need impressed him to contemplate that an alternate is certainly potential in any case.
This text seems in print within the March 2021 situation of Maclean’s journal with the headline, “The demise of higher issues.” Subscribe to the month-to-month print journal right here.
