Blogging From A Distance

But, what is unreal is how much money we as a planet spent on defense equipment in the last 102 years since the last pandemic. What is also unreal is that money is unreal–it is a fiction of the power that we all believe in.

What is also unreal is what we call “work” and the work that the world agrees to pay for doing . In the last 100 years the work that men did became professional work and the work that women used to do became a vocation (i.e, we can get them to do it for free). Thus arose the divide whereby men felt like kings, patriarchs, owners of the world, responsible leaders. Now women do lots of things that men used to do. That is emancipation.

Service professions such as education, human services, social work, something that women do very well don’t pay very well. Oh! and motherhood, the darndest most difficult thing in the world, that is free. First you birth them. Then you nurture them. Then you educate them. Hoping that you can stay home and nurture them and still be considered in the workforce or recognized for your effort in raising human beings who can exist as functioning adults. There’s the hope that one day somebody notices that you did something. Then, just when you start to need them, they walk out on you. And you stand there being a post modern, independent mother, waving goodbye as if you are fine that they stop being /your child/. Even though you know this was the goal of your role. They never told you about the ending scene. You older, wrinkled, sadder. They young, strong, confident. The mirror flipped on you. It is time to walk down that hill you spent most of your life climbing. And they can barely wait for you to give up your Don Quixote quest and settle down in your room like a good older lady to find meaning elsewhere instead of them. In your knitting, your embroidery, your blog for heavens sake or that pottery making class you loved. Hey and what about yoga? Yeah. That yoga you often cancelled because they hadn’t finished their homework. That date, that you never went on because you weren’t sure if they’d be able to handle it. That time, that job that you never could take because it would consume you, with nothing left for your child. That time that can never ever come back. That time that you gave, but the other parent never gave. The other parent who left after promising everything. Your mind calculates the spreadsheet deficit, that you know has to be written off, because wasn’t unconditional love your lesson for this life? You do this, because you don’t want them to have the life of sacrifice you had at 25. Abandoned, alone, duped, abused, fucked over. You want them to have the youth, that you never did. You have heard of women who marry the second time and justify it. But you just couldn’t bring home a person who may never treat your kids as his own.

You were that strange person who couldn’t compromise on standards. For this high mindedness and ‘ego’ there was no income, because it wasn’t called ‘work’. But many found men who would support them. They weren’t feminist. Not being a feminist means, that a woman has given all power to the man. Therefore she is okay to be a liability, to be as it were an extended self of another.  She has no ego and therefore had the queenly existence of a woman who doesn’t have to get a job to live at the price of a shattering of her sense of self.  Even though the Earth is dying, few fight the unjust economic system that is behind it. The ones who do see it and dare to say don’t get any kudos for being brave. Instead they are seen as feminists suggesting ‘difficult’, ‘socially minded’, ‘guilt provoking’ or ‘angry’. Feminism is probably the most disenfranchising term in the world…perhaps worse than ‘black’ or ‘fat’.  As a result, women’s empowerment now has a brand new meaning. It often means training in how to manipulate. In the meanwhile the true meaning of feminine is lost, because it just doesn’t pay.

Let’s take the example of Donald Trump. An embarrassing excuse of a man. What valuable work does he do? does this man do anything that adds value?. Perhaps the world could create a fund for Shutting Down Donald Trump: I bet people will give a lot to America. Yet, despite his nuisance value he makes far more money than a feminist blogger writing about body shame. What has happened to the world? where is our sense of proportion about what matters. 

It is terrible, but ethics is the least of our issues, even though I point it out above. The issue is an economic one.

You see, people are no longer paid for doing work. They are paid for disrupting work. (UBER, AMAZON, BANKING and many many examples). So work, actual work does NOT pay. What works to get paid more is to not work. Every millineal has figured this out. That’s why they were out partying during the Corona crisis, because their jobs were taken and their work was taken. And in the next couple of decades their current jobs will be taken by robots. The best they can do is party in the madness that arose from consumerism. Because you, my friends did nothing. You were far too obedient to that button called, ‘buy now.’

What is unreal is how fast viruses spread and how difficult it is to control such a thing, because it mutates fast. Yet, the people responsible for its spread are blissfully free of any liability. Then we come to the interesting question for a society that appears to thrive on individual responsibility, however is completely controlled by the price of things. Justin Trudeau’s passionate reaction to scenes of people walking around partying outdoors today can be summed up as:

“IF YOU COULD HAVE HAD THE CORONA VIRUS, WHAT WERE YOU DOING DRINKING WITH BUDDIES BY THE BEACH AT 7PM??”

Given the way dating apps are going, I can also imagine a Corona virus policing figure frowning behind their mask:

“WHAT MADE YOU DATE A NURSE THAT NIGHT?? ”

We are all very very sick. But our sickness started long before COVID-19. It was a sickness of accepting extreme materialism at the cost of human and environmental well being. When we accepted this, we at once felled thousands of miles of rainforest and became okay with it.

Meanwhile, an insistent voice in my head says:

DO I HAVE THE VIRUS? is it right now replicating in the soft folds of my soft moist layers of skin inside my lungs? DO I feel sick? is that headache lack of sleep, or an early warning from my immunity.

I must get something to BOOOST my immunity. Yes. Vitamin C? no? Amla? No! MUSHROOMS!! chagas, reishi!! this brand that is 100% organic, or that one?

Should we Order online or check out the organic store?

Our minds are controlled by the finely conditioned response of decades of marketing manipulation, whereby like Pavlov’s dogs we salivate at the sight of the BUY NOW button to solve our perceived problem. To have money is to have the same excitement as dating a brand new person who doesn’t know that we leave our dirty socks under the bed and our last attempt at a relationship ended when we found out that we were the 5th option in a series of fuck buddies.

What are we living for exactly? consuming Reishi mushrooms?

“To die, to sleep —
To sleep – perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil…” (Someone we all think we know).

Kingsway was empty. There were 3 cars in the space of 5 minutes today at 1pm. A road that never sleeps. Kingsway was sleeping.

My business? is sleeping. Probably dead. A faint pulse.

And what am I doing?

I am doing the only thing that is real for me.

Writing about it.