Roger Peet, ‘Solidarity Sunflowers’, 2018SourceThe spread of the coronavirus has put an
Roger Peet, ‘Solidarity Sunflowers’, 2018SourceThe spread of the coronavirus has put an incredible amount of stress on the world’s economic and health care systems. In the United States, the coronavirus has drastically highlighted the problems that people in positions of political and economic power have tried to ignore and/or actively suppress. The cracks and fissures that advocates for change have longed recognized are now more apparent to our fellows who either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, acknowledge them. This might be a politically educative moment. Not a desirable one but a potential one nevertheless. This moment could be a step towards a general recognition that the current socio-political situation we collectively share is untenable and requires amending. It’s a possibility. Nothing is meant to exist permanently. All things, even systems, eventually face dissolution. It’ll happen to America as a country at some point just as surely as it’ll happen to you as an individual. This is probably not that time. No matter how panicked people feel or how bad the stock market is doing or how empty the shelves at the grocery store are, this probablyisn’t the end. I know that the media and the general sense of unease other people exhibit don’t help assuage fear, they just compound that impression that everything is falling apart. It’s not. And it is. What ultimately happens depends on us, how we choose to react, the choices we make in relation to each other. We have to acknowledge that we are dependent animals, that we need one another in order to exist. The idea that we can secure our own survival at the expense of the people around us isn’t viable and is actively dangerous. What we are facing is a social problem and it can only be addressed socially. My problems are your problems and your problems are mine. While the current order of things struggles to maintain itself, there is the possibility of a different order, one that doesn’t leave each of us feeling alone, afraid, and hostile towards one another. But, that new set of social relations can only come about through our own activity and our mutual support of one another. Every possible end also happens to be a possible beginning. We live in a moment of possibility. What shape that possibility takes is dependent on us. We’re going to need each other in the coming days. We’re all we’ve got. -- source link
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