Heroes Not Zombies

It might be Spring time in the Northern Hemisphere but this pandemic has the feel of autumn to me.

One way I think of the cycle of seasons is – Spring is the time of life emerging anew, Summer is the time of flourishing and growth, Autumn is the time of harvesting and paring down, and Winter is the time of conservation and hibernation.

Oh, sure, there is SO much more I could say about the seasons and that wee synopsis is only one particular perspective, but it’s the one which comes to my mind when I look at this photo.

This is clearly an autumn photo. You can tell that from the browned and fallen leaves. It’s late autumn, I’d say, because some of the leaves are pared right back to their skeletons.

This skeleton leaf intrigues me. You’ll have read my thoughts on the two basic structures which Deleuze and Guattari describe – the “arboreal”, or “tree-like” branching kind, and the “rhizomal”, or networking, web like kind. Well, this little skeleton leaf reveals both. The larger fibres are clearly arboreal, branching into ever thinner, smaller strands. But between them, the smaller fibres make webs. If you look carefully you can see that. The smallest fibres create networks with multiple connections and nodes.

“And not or” – my favourite moto.

The underlying structures of Nature are both.

That’s what caught my attention when I looked at this photo, but that led on to thinking about this time in our world when it seems to me everything has been pared back. This paring back has revealed something – the underlying structures and frameworks of our societies.

I wonder if you see the same thing? What has this closing down, this minimising, this paring back, revealed to you?

Here are two of the things it has revealed to me.

1. The importance of the Feminine. Now, when I’ve talked about this before I’ve been at pains to be clear I’m not talking about gender. I’m talking about the two great flows of reality to which we attach our myths of the Masculine and the Feminine. What do I mean by that? Simply, and concisely, for now, I mean the “Provide/Protect” energies and the “Nourish/Nurture” ones. I’m going to push this simplistic thought a step further – we have seen a shift in focus from Production to Care. I know this is too simplistic and that there is also a huge emphasis on “protection” too just now. I also know that a lot of what we call “production” isn’t really very productive (I’m looking at you, you people who drive the financialisation of everything, producing wealth from wealth in computers and papers, rather than from the soil, and the physical reality of the world). But bear with me for a moment……this crisis is revealing what every society needs to function, and who the people are who do that work….and I want to focus on the feminine here, because it’s mainly women who are carers, nurses, teachers, cashiers and cleaners – most of whom are vastly under-recognised, and poorly paid. (Yes, I know there are lots of important, even “essential” jobs which men do – including all the ones above, but also ones where men seem more prevalent than women – delivery drivers, power workers, waste and water workers etc). But none of that takes away from the main point I want to make which is I hope what has been revealed will lead to real change – change which values people and relationships more than consumption, change which values women more, change which values caring more, change which values “essential workers” more. “And not or”, for me, means we need both of these flows – the Masculine and the Feminine, the Provide/Protect AND the Nourish/Nurture, but we need to shift the balance.
2. The failure of neo-liberalism. The idea that we are all selfish individuals ready to fight everyone else to grab the biggest share of everything for ourselves and “the market” is “self-regulating” which will, if left unregulated, deliver the best of all societies, has, I believe, been found wanting. None of our countries have entered this pandemic prepared. Hospitals have been closed, Public services have been cut massively, and the poor and vulnerable have been forced into ever more precarious lives. So, there’s my second hope – that a new economics and new politics will emerge – a more sustainable, healthy one. I hope we’ll see a shift away from mindless growth for growth’s sake, to choosing to grow better ways of living together in our one, small, shared planet.
3. Thirdly, I’d like to see a shift in emphasis away from hierarchies and “arboreal” centralised systems to more networked, “rhizomal” communities of relationships. It seems the centralised, command and control, “just in time” structures have been found wanting – despite claims they are the “most efficient”, and that ordinary people and communities adopting personal hygiene and physical distancing behaviours have shown their strengths. My third hope, then is for a resurgence of community, local, devolved, and diverse structures of society. “And not or”, remember, I think we need both. We just need to shift our balance.