The predominant question about the humanitarian crises in the world; most of which you may have just woken up to.

A question I’ve been reading again and again over the past two months. Let me tell you how I think the upper crust and the most privileged will continue: As. Fucking. Usual.

They have never cared

The people in power today, as well as their ancestors, have never cared about other people’s suffering. Ever. And one by one, they convinced every last one of us that we cannot care for those suffering because they brought it on themselves and are now paying for the consequences. If they – by some miracle – haven’t brought it on themselves, it is inevitable because of their biology.

What you need to understand is that the well oiled machine of capitalism and therefore the patriarchy and therefore white supremacy has never fucking cared about you. Not even if you’re white and slim and have some sort of wealth that keeps you above the growing number of “the poor”.

Six degrees of separation?

First, they made us all believe that white people are somehow better than Black people. They drove a wedge between us, so they could create a hierarchy. Then they made us believe that men are somehow better than women. Another wedge. May have been the other way round, I’m no historian. Then obviously the white man is still better than the Black man and the white woman still better than the Black woman. Insert Indigenous people around the world. Another wedge. Trans and non-binary people (who have always existed), intersex people. Another wedge. Another wedge. Another wedge. Gay men. Still better when white, obviously. Another wedge. Lesbians. Great for a threesome, when appealing to the male gaze. Another wedge. Fat people. Another wedge. Disabled people. Another wedge. Poor people, “scroungers”. Another wedge. And witch forbid when you intersect several or all of these identities. A wedge big enough to let you “die in a ditch”.

They have separated us so much from each other by dehumanising group after group after group. One of the favourite groups seems to be refugees from areas of the world that they have made to be an unlivable hellhole. Unless they’re white, then we’ll let them in. Because we’re not inhumane, are we? All the others are animals! Need to be exterminated! They’re terrorists! Another wedge. Not the ones carpet bombing countries and killing off complete bloodlines, though. Those are defending themselves and just taking what they’re entitled to. Brainwashing. Another wedge.

Congratulations, you’ve woken up

I am TRYING not be a condescending cunt here because I’ve been an ignorant arsehole for almost two decades. But: WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN THE PAST FEW YEARS??? Where did you look instead of at the suffering of oppressed people(s) in the world? What consumed so much of your time and energy that you somehow didn’t see that this was coming?? WHAT IS WRO…

Wait. I know. Hold on.

The biases I described above and the systems underlying it all are so entrenched in our “Western” societies that we don’t see them. They’re invisible to us because they’re the fabric that holds us together. It’s a bit like your nose. Technically, you see it all the time, it’s right in the middle of your face. But you don’t see it, your brain blurs it out because it would be distracting from more essential things.

Now that you’ve discovered your nose, you can’t stop looking at it. You examine it from all sides and you’re astonished that you haven’t so much as recognised it as your nose. Looking closer and closer, you realise that it is attached to you and plays a major role in how you perceive the world around you. Everything has a smell and the lack of smell makes you suspicious. That either means that something is wrong with the thing or something is wrong with you.

Your nose, in this flawed scenario, is white supremacy. Underlying everything you come across, which are its subforms: Patriarchy, sexism, capitalism, racism (obviously), misogyny, misogynoir, colourism, ableism, healthism, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, hyperindividualism, heteronormativitiy, Sinophobia, anti Asian hate, antisemitism, Islamophobia, ageism, xenophobia, a hate for poor people, an adoration of rich people, classism and surely much more I’m forgetting here.

How does that show up in your daily life?

It shows up in your life by being so ingrained that it is with you from the moment you wake up until you go back to bed. And anything in between.

Your family

In “Western” societies, “civilised” societies 🙄, the nuclear family is the norm. It is put on a pedestal, the epitome of civilisation. Within the nuclear family, there have to be a cis man and a cis woman in a monogamous, heterosexual relationship and any children have to adhere to the same standards. And there HAVE TO be children because otherwise the couple’s life isn’t worth anything.

Despite great progress thanks to feminism, the woman – the mother – is still the main nurturer of the children and the family as a whole. She manages the family’s schedules, is the first point of call for the children and now also has to manage her own career on top of that. This is not a case against working mothers. This is a case against the systems, don’t fucking come for me.

The man – the father – is still expected to be the provider. Bring the money in (the bulk of it anyway) and be taken care of. He is celebrated when he “babysits” his own children. His mental health is neglected as much as his abusive behaviour is ignored for the sake of keeping the family together. #NotAllMen obviously. Break that thought pattern whenever it comes up reading this.

Hyper individualism

Outside of the nuclear family unit (and to a strong degree inside of it, too), it is the individual over everything. Through school, through puberty, through university and other higher education, through working placements and first jobs, through your career, through grief, through illnesses, through marriages, through divorces, through friendship breakups, through pandemics, through literally everything we’re expected to get alone. On our own. Asking for help or support is a sign of weakness.

With a lack of community, with a complete reliance on ourselves as individuals, where do we turn? To capitalism. So the machine gets the oil it needs and we keep feeding it by passing on these beliefs to the generations to come. No matter whether or not you are a parent, you are passing things on to the next generation. And the cycle continues. Money will fix our problems for us, so we need to work harder, several jobs to make more and more money and if we get ill doing that, we chuck some more money at the problem to go back and work some more.

On this whole individual vs connection topic, I can highly recommend a post on Instagram, by @psychethelic:

A post shared by @psychethelic

The work week and the work day

The “modern” work week – as much as its cousin, the average work day – is completely arbitrary. Five days, or four, were determined out of the blue. When moving from an agriculture focus to one on industrialisation, we could have decided that three days and four hours per day would bring the highest levels of productivity, which is what the whole spiel is about. But we didn’t. There are arguments for making the most of daylight (don’t get me started on clocks changing, that’s a whole bunch of nonsense as well), which seems weird with the evolution of electricity. Making the most of it for whom anyway? Because the majority of working people sure doesn’t get a lot of daylight in winter. Overall, it is to take up as much space in people’s diaries as possible.

Coming with slogans like “If you work hard, you’ll get rich.” and “The early bird catches the worm.”, they’ve conditioned us into believing that we must work ourselves into the ground. That not getting up early to “rise and grind” means we’re lazy and therefore unworthy of wealth, which is equated with a good life. An easy life. Which everyone wants to have… when exactly? If you worked hard all your life, how can you enjoy your retired years with a body and mind that have given up on you years ago? (I’m not talking about disabilities, I’m talking about work induced exhaustion and injuries.)

Of course, working 9 to 5 is a privilege in and of itself that you only get when you do “skilled” work, provide “skilled” labour in an office. If you’re out there in the retail trenches or in hospitals? Prepare to work 12 hours or even 24. How much life is left at the end of that?

Mental illnesses

Before you try and come for me for what I’m about to say: My family has a long history of mental illnesses. I have depression and anxiety and a whole lot of trauma that I’m sure will soon be diagnosed as CPTSD; I also have ADHD and autism. This and my family’s experience is the angle I’m coming from. My opinions are my own and I don’t have any degree in psychology (thanks to classism) or psychotherapy.

Given the pressures, financial and societal, we all experience on a daily basis, I truly believe that a lot of cases of depression and anxiety are human made. If we had true community support and nobody had any financial hardship ever, some people’s anxiety and depression would vanish completely. Other people’s would decrease significantly to the point – if they are taking it – they would no longer need any medication.

On that same note, I do not think that in a society based on community values where we do not have to constantly be productive all the time to simply survive, ADHD would not have to be medicated and autism would not have to be “managed”. Neurodivergence (diverging from what exactly?) is just another way for a brain to function. Unless you live in what we call modern society, any kind of brain function can be accommodated. Taking this even further, any kind of disability can be accommodated because any infrastructure would always be built with the most vulnerable people and those who have the most needs in mind. See how I didn’t use the phrase “special needs” there? It is so easy. Why are we not all doing it?!

Healthcare

If you had a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, how would that make you feel? If that doesn’t make you feel any particular way, you’re one of the lucky ones. Potentially a straight sized cis white man who just needs something checked out.

But the moment you have a womb, you’re already fucked. Fat on top of that? Gosh, no, you’ve really lost in the lottery of life. Black on top of that? Oh oh, it’s getting more and more life threatening as we speak. Trans as well? Disabled? You may as well dig your own grave already.

I WISH I was joking. From my personal perspective as a fat, disabled cis woman, it is a nightmare having to go to the doctor. I am constantly dismissed, fobbed off with a line about weight management or basically told I’m lying, although not in these words. If that is my experience, I can only vaguely imagine how much worse it would be with more marginalisations. The doctor’s office for us is not a safe space. It is a space we need to brace ourselves for. Heck, I’ve even taken a six week course to prepare for consultations.

Likewise, hospitals are not a safe space for us. We will face discrimination, gaslighting, fatphobia, ableism as well as racism, transphobia, homophobia and so many other prejudices. On top of it all, the vast majority of doctors, unfortunately, will always “know better” what is going on in our very own bodies. Go figure. Oh, wait, one more, and this one still baffles me: The main goal in modern medicine – and this goes for both physical and mental health – is to eliminate the symptoms, so we can get back to the big old capitalist machine. The source of the issue? Irrelevant. Unless it serves them, mostly monetarily.

Diet culture

Diet culture affects absolutely everybody in our “modern” societies. It starts with the message that our bodies, our looks are the most important thing about us. They’re – quite literally – our capital. And we need to control our bodies, come what may. We need to have a certain hair type, a certain skin colour, a certain height and a certain weight. Deviating from the perfect body ostracises us.

And the fear of that ostracisation makes us want to adhere to those arbitrary rules. We want to belong and we want to be loved. The way there? The next diet and a strict exercise regime. Because nothing worth having comes without a hefty price tag. This then – more often than not – leads to disordered eating and eventually to an eating disorder. The world is so fucked up in this regard that fat people are advised BY DOCTORS to engage in behaviour that they would classify as an eating disorder in thin people. Make it make sense.

The sense is money. The diet industry is HUGE. Why is it huge? Because it doesn’t work. Diets don’t work. That’s why the industry is still alive and kicking. If you want to learn a lot more about this and see what fat positive nutrition looks like, I can highly recommend The Mindset Nutritionist’s Substack and Instagram. I have worked with Jeanette as well, so this recommendation comes with all my heart and from experience.

Poverty

On top of everything else, there is one group of people (other than foreigners, but they may intersect) that is used as a scapegoat for all the rest of it: Poor people. Those on benefits, often disabled and otherwise at least doubly marginalised. Some of them living in destitution. If you want to get an idea of where the poverty thresholds lie in London (UK), here’s a handy site for that:  https://trustforlondon.org.uk/data/poverty-thresholds.

Most people on benefits in the UK live in poverty. Sure, we all have our own sets of priviliges, but the poverty is palpable and in its own way disabling. If you’re poor, you’re automatically ostracised from society because all you can really do is buy the cheapest food and stay home all the time. Leaving the house for anything other than something in walking distance costs money. So, very often, this system in and of itself keeps people from finding work again. And no, they don’t just hand out money for you to get to job interviews and buy those clothes you need to look professional. On paper, sure, in reality you will have lost the opportunity by the time that money may be granted and then hit your account.

As if that wasn’t harrowing enough, benefits recipients are portrayed as scroungers, leeches to society. A waste of public resources where basically ALL the taxpayers’ money goes. So instead of the working class, a whole part of which also lives in poverty or even destitution, coming together with people on benefits to change the system for the better, they have found a group they can be superior to; enabled by the middle and upper class. This continues through all classes below the most wealthy, so that we can all wonderfully be at each other’s throats and never even think of coming together in community. To take care of each other and come for the upper class or, in fact, for all classes that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

The audacity

Social (-economic) classes should not exist. All they do is tear us apart. And what we need is come together. By now, you will see where I stand. Firmly on anarchist ground.

Just think about the concept of property, especially “real estate”. The phrase alone makes me want to vomit. How arrogant of us humans to think we could “own” land on Earth. And then hire it out. What is WRONG with us?! Paying for shelter, food, electricity, water (!), heating, healthcare and even an internet connection shouldn’t be a thing. These aren’t things we should “earn”. There should not BE a COST of living, let alone a crisis where more and more people fall below the poverty threshold.

How DO we continue, though?

When you go through all of the above and turn away from the suffering in the world because you need to attend to your own suffering, at some point you will simply continue to live your life. Or maybe you haven’t even stopped to live “as normal” because you have no choice. If you don’t keep the machine running, it will kick you off and leave you to die. Literally.

But we must break the cycle. So when I hear you ask, “How do we continue life *after* this?” I’m telling you we don’t. Because going back to how things used to be doesn’t work, as we have seen plainly from what happened after lockdown. When we go back to ignoring the systems of oppression that we live in and that make genocides possible, we have lost our humanity. We may just as well raise Hitler from the dead. Although the likes of Netanyahu are doing a pretty magnificent job to imitate what he did.

So, what do we need to do? The things we did in lockdown. Find community in our neighbourhoods, in our immediate environments as well as online. Come together. Be ready to help each other and step in with the most practical support. Create a “neighbourhood watch” without the police involved. Make it a scheme where you actually help, not tell on, each other.

Pluto in Aquarius is bringing the revolution to our doorsteps and into our homes, onto our screens. Make sure you’re on the right side of history. And, you know, if you want to find that online community, you can now join my Discord server where we’re building just that.

Stay magnificent. Stay witchy.