Endless questions with a few answers
Exploring post-capitalist ideology in the capitalist vortex black hole
I realize recently that I use writing to process things that I don’t understand, and while I’ll never run out of questions to ask, many of the big questions that I’ve spent the last few years uncovering – around capitalism and colonialism and racism and education, around food systems and sustainability and building a life with intention – well, maybe I’m satisfied with some of the answers that writing has afforded me, and I just don’t have as many questions to ask these days.
One would assume that when you have answers, you write about the answers. But whenever I try that approach, everything I write down feels self evident and boring. I sit down to write essay outlines when all I really want to do is dump the contents of my brain onto a page in disorderly fashions.
So in that vein, here are some answers that have helped for my worldview that I think are worth highlighting:
Capitalism is fucking horrible. What started as a fairly basic economic model in per-industrialized cultures has grown into a global cult that affects almost all facets of our society including (but not limited to) how we value ourselves, how we connect with each other, and how we model our lives. Paired with colonialism, we have the foundation for the western model of the cis hetero patriarchy that is now raping the planet and hurting all of it’s inhabitants.
Despite living during this latest phase of neo-liberal digital capitalism, amongst the horrors of oppression and genocidal wars and hatred inspired by governments perpetuating this harmful way of life, there is ENDLESS beauty in the world. There is this quote that cycles around the socials saying something like “the world is burning but all my friends are creating beautiful things” and I feel that every day.
When I try and bundle up all the beauty, I find another way of living there – one that is built on foundations of reciprocity and connection with each other and the world with which we are unquestioningly integrated. I like to think about these ways of living as something post-capitalist: not what comes after capitalism, but what is happening now, in the cracks, informed by the capitalist landscape in which we all live. These post-capitalist approaches often look very grassroots and community-led. Sometimes they evolve into something more structural and I like to think that these structures will start to build the institutional framework of a broader post-capitalist existence.
Assuming they don’t get sucked back into the capitalist vortex black hole of hell which has such a habit of destroying beautiful things in the name of profit-making.
When we start to pull the threads that weave together the fabric of our colonial capitalist cis hetero-patriarchal society apart, a lot of questions around normativity will necessarily follow. It’s actually kind of never ending, which is exhausting because there’s always more work to do, but kind of cool because there’s no boundaries when ideating and exploring the way that we might continue to reshape our lives after we’ve coming to terms that colonial capitalism isn’t going to cut it anymore.
We still need to pay rent, but maybe we could look at co-housing, or housing co-ops, or multi-generational living, or communes, or maybe we could start initiatives that look at cost sharing or lobby governments for more affordable house, or rent-controlled buildings in our towns and cities, or just plain squatting in abandoned spaces.
We need to eat but maybe rather than shopping at the big box grocery store for all our imported and pre-processed food, we explore alternatives like supporting local agriculture through a CSA share, or learn how to grow some of our food in a community garden, or we do meal sharing with friends to help cut down on costs, or learn how to process excess food, or even join an organization looking at circular food economies repurposing food waste into pay-what-you-want meals.
We need clothes but we might decide to just thrift everything or mend as a political statement, or join a mending circle with friends, or go to a clothing swap, or maybe even take a workshop at the local fabric store to learn how to sew our own clothes and then make all our friends cool tshirts out of repurposed bedsheets we got from Value Village, or even explore what kind of local fibres are easily producible for better quality.
I wrote all those paragraphs without even taking a breath. I have endless ideas on how we might explore post-capitalist living.
And the benchmark isn’t that we overthrow capitalism. I’m not waiting for a large-scale revolution that is unlikely to arrive. I’m interested in building new alternatives that co-exist within the shit because I’m not going to wait around for someone to tell me when it’s time to finally live with intention.
And when you reframe the intent of the actions, success looks really different. We’re not trying to beat capitalism. We’re trying to explore ways of living in the midst of this shit capitalist system that might help people thrive without destroying the world; without perpetuating oppression and bigotry; without succumbing to despair. Success might be people sharing a meal together. It might be getting to know your neighbour. It might be learning a new skill. It might be resisting the capitalist vortex black hole and the need to profit off of everything. It might not look like a big revolution but a million tiny, quiet revolutions that slowly tip the scales towards something better.
And so yes, some answers, but a million more questions. Here’s to giving ourselves permission to explore them all.