Staying Inside: Solidarity from Solitude

Posted on by Jimmy

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone“ — Blaise Pascal

Day X of lockdown, quarantine, self-isolation, etc. Any word I use is lacking. The Spanish government has extended the confinement period until 12 April, past Semana Santa. I knew this was coming. Frankly, I think it’ll extend past this. The epicenters of the coronavirus crisis in Spain are brutal and the numbers of positive cases (to say nothing of unconfirmed cases or people thinking they have symptoms but cannot receive a test) are rising. Doctors are in tears on social networks lamenting the difficult decisions to pull elderly patients off respirators to give them to younger patients and begging us to stay inside to flatten the curve and stop the spread.

Outside of the Spain and other affected countries like Italy, I see the rumblings of the governments of the United Kingdom and the Unitedl States; simultaneously lying to the population about its preparedness, how deadly this can be, and prioritizing their economies over human lives. It breaks me a little bit. It breaks me, someone far away and relatively safe, because people look for leadership in times of crises. And those leaders are already diluting their advice to stay inside by suggesting we might need to stop that for the sake of the economy. I’ll say it a thousand times more and I’ll say it everyday. The capitalist class does not give a fuck about you.

People of the Occident have become so alienated and atomized from their fellows that to ask us to stay inside, to practice social distancing, to think of the more vulnerable in our society is beyond many.

Twitter isn’t a good measuring stick, but I see people being reckless about our current situation. They say we’re hyperventilating, they try to compare numbers of other illnesses and their mortality rates to for some good ol’ whataboutism, etc. How about we listen to doctors and nurses instead of people who received an email from their cousin who lives in his parents’ basement and crunched some numbers one night?

Look, there are many people who cannot stay inside; the unhoused, service sector workers, medical staff. I get that. But for the rest. The ones who can work from home, self-isolate. By all means, go for a walk alone, but don’t half-ass this. You could be responsible for saving lives just by being at home.

Have some solidarity. If we do this right, we could avoid much harm. Then we can start reorganizing this society to be more coherent and human-centered.

Belief and Dogma in These Times

Posted on by Jimmy

An small anecdote. An eminent conservative traditionalist scholar of Islam from a certain country tweeted about their country’s mosques re: the coronavirus pandemic. In it, he stated that those coming to prayer must have gloves, a rug of their own, must not shake hands, and that it is not necessary to line up shoulder-to-shoulder. I glanced down and saw a reply:

May Allah reward you well…would you kindly provide evidence that “the worshipers do not have to line up and do not converge” in this case?

In this new era, where everyone will have to adapt in order to protect each other, someone is asking for evidence. Is there a precedent, I imagine a hadith, that is attributed to the Prophet Muhammad that confirms this change in the prayer in extraordinary circumstances?

Here is an example, one but not unique, of the line of thinking that leads to dogmatic (and perhaps fatalistic) religious worldviews that secular people rightly cannot understand. I’m sure this person was being sincere, so maybe I’m making a mountain out of a mole hill. And I do not mean to paint with such a broad brush, but it is a sample of the conversations and experiences I’ve also experience in Muslim communities. I see this and worry a bit. Do we need evidence to keep our distance in practicing our faith without the worry or threat of contagion, endangering not just the men standing next to you but their families and anyone they come into contact with as well?

Belief doesn’t need to rely on looking back to old world thinking or an over-reliance on others. For me (because I always only speak for myself) it is an opening up to possibilities beyond the material and should aid in our progress towards an appropriate mission, caring for the material and spiritual needs of all creation. It brings confirmation that the human journey is much longer and deeper than what we experience it, not as some deviation from a more pious past.

Another anecdote. A different scholar, American, but no less traditionalist, tweeted regarding mosque closures in other countries. This is in response to someone sharing a link about why UK mosques have remained open:

In other times, it’s an amusement at best or a nuisance at worst to see ill-trained students from madrasahs try to flex their literalist muscles against critical thinking and common sense. Right now, this attitude will inevitably cause deaths and cannot be tolerated. Avoid socializing!

More rational, yet quite a few pushed back on and felt scholars and their institutions were being attacked.

This is why I have chosen to ‘self-quarantine’ myself from orthodoxy. This is why I have to look more closely and critically into the history, the power relations, the primary and spurious secondary sources of my adopted belief system much more than following personalities, also swayed by their education, yes, but by their own histories, reactions, and opinions to the times.

And this is what belief brings me. It brings me some sense of serenity (some, I say) to prepare for the oncoming of what the troika of crises (coronavirus, climate, capitalism) will bring about. It is spiritually lonely, I admit. But it squares with my reality much more than arguing about mosque closures. Talk to some Muslim women who have been boxed out of the mosque explicitly or otherwise for their entire lives and pray at home.

The Qur’an, the starting point and end point of Islam, is dynamic, filled with signs and admonitions to reflect upon. But it will only remain so in the hearts of dynamic, open-minded individuals who choose to prioritize it over the whims and opinions, however educated, of other humans. The times are strange and filled with uncertainty and disinformation.

Beyond Bernie: Assessing the New Politics by the Collective Power Network

Posted on by Jimmy

Collective Power Network, a Democratic Socialists of America caucus “focused on realizing DSA’s potential to become a mass political organization of the working class”, wrote a statement in their publication The Organizer about the crossroads the left finds itself in with the Bernie campaign winding down and the global pandemic ratcheting up:

Even though we are in the midst of a crisis, it would be a serious mistake to believe that left politics are off the table or to resort to doomerism. Democratic socialist demands, which eight years ago were the fringe of the fringe, have gone mainstream, with demands like Medicare for All polling with incredibly high favorability and “socialism” polling at 47% in states like Tennessee. This is a jaw dropping shift in consciousness in the U.S., one likely to be heightened by the exigencies of widespread public health and economic crisis. While both right-ward and left-ward shifts are possible neither are by any means certain. […]

These campaigns are especially powerful when DSA acts within an alliance of organizations raising common demands. At a moment when elected officials and neoliberal institutions are scrambling for solutions, forceful demands from broad coalitions have an opportunity to shift official responses towards meaningful social-democratic reforms, simply by reacting quickly and being loud.

It’s also important that such campaigns do not remain confined to the local level, and that we take advantage of our capacity as a national organization to apply local campaign lessons across chapters and regions. The recovery from the immediate effects of the pandemic and the ensuing economic fallout will be a sustained national political issue. This creates an opening for socialists to advocate for lasting social democratic reforms on a national scale.

Lockdown: Day VI Reading List

Posted on by Jimmy

The three intertwined and colliding global crises of COVID-19, climate change, and capitalism overwhelm us with so many challenges it’s almost impossible to think straight. But soon, for those not in precarity, not on the frontlines of a war against an invisible enemy everywhere in the public sphere, we must shine a light on this chaos, and ourselves at home, to see that the moment presents us with sink-or-swim opportunities for all of us. To hold this tension within ourselves will be very difficult, but it’s our only way. A better world and system is possible. Here are some of the things I’ve been reading and listening to.

  • We’re Not Going Back to Normal: “We all want things to go back to normal quickly. But what most of us have probably not yet realized—yet will soon—is that things won’t go back to normal after a few weeks, or even a few months. Some things never will.”
  • The Only Treatment for Coronavirus Is Solidarity: “The new coronavirus makes vivid the logic of a world that combines a material reality of intense interdependence with moral and political systems that leave people to look out for themselves. Because we are linked — at work, on the bus and subway, at school, at the grocery store, with the Fresh Direct delivery system — we are contagious, and vulnerable. Because we are morally isolated, told to look out for ourselves and our own, we are becoming survivalists house by house, apartment by apartment, stocking enough that’s canned and frozen, grabbing enough cold meds and disinfectant, to cut ties and go out on our own.”
  • After the Quarantine, the Flood: “In what ways are we numerous, enumerated, counted, uncounted, dividuated, enmassed, and divided? In what ways have we chosen to live this way, and in what ways is it chosen for us In whose interests are lives thus organized; which powers does this serve? And what, indeed, is the meaning of our modes of numerosity? I apply these questions again now, from a warm apartment, with ample food and the ability to support myself materially as I type. In this moment, we have been asked to mitigate being numerous together. Solidarity in the pandemic, for those in my position, is situated in not making things worse; this we can choose.”
  • Come On, You Live in a Society: “American politicians long ago shifted the burden of safeguarding the public from the government to individuals. Call it personal responsibility, call it deficit reduction, call it whatever you want; the consequences are the same no matter which label we use. The absence of any seriously developed health-care infrastructure abandons people to muddle through on their own. The absence of major labor protections forces people to work sick and will financially ruin anyone whose employers don’t offer paid leave. The preeminent message coming out of D.C. — and this is not a new trend; it is far older than the Trump presidency — tells people that they’re ultimately responsible for themselves. We are conditioned to think of ourselves as individual consumers first and as interconnected members of society second. Movements that hold the opposite view tend to be ruthlessly broken down and suppressed at worst, or at best, dismissed as the fantastical longings of childish adults.

Podcasts

Time to educate ourselves, create meaningful or whimsical things, to share, to hurt, and to find each other. An injury to one is an injury to all.