The world is ending, and now we must find out who we are

The target demographic of this article is privileged, low-risk people. The voice, perspective and value system that I understand enough to occupy is unfortunately and fundamentally one of remoteness and security. Perhaps this is a tone-deaf and siloed hot take nobody asked for, but I believe it is worth examining the moral and philosophical context I am living with. To reiterate: I hope at no point do my thoughts suggest an ableist, classist or casteist attitude. 

It is seductively easy to get caught up in living life. There are older relatives, books, social conventions and an entire genre of films reassuring me that there is a relatively well-defined path ahead of me with motions of school, college, working and other absurd norms that form the blueprint of how we think about our time in this world. Ever so rarely, though, there comes a rupture that snatches us out of our uncritical acceptance of reality that exposes how insane this Chinese-walled blueprint really is. Said realisations of incredulity at the state of affairs may emerge at different points for different people – some are born into it, others invested in movements of resistance and justice have almost certainly had several episodes of utter disbelief at people’s ignorance, apathy or cruelty (most recently, the government’s pogrom and police brutality ravaged my grasp on life). But the current pandemic has wrought even the generally insulated elite into a public consciousness that must reconcile with the elaborate fragility of our society.

The 9-5 work day with a gym session after is reckless The intricate system of semester, break, semester, graduation is over. Sending kids to school and then watching a movie at a theatre is impossible. (A lesser person might joke about how what was once “virtually impossible” is now perhaps only “virtually” possible). These pretty institutions and social norms that are so ingrained in us – educational entities, employment at an office of some sort, regulated social interactions and unregulated markets –are suddenly no longer compatible with a world in crisis. To stick a cliché on this: the ground from underneath us has been pulled. And now we must find out who we are.

It is evident that this virus affects people disproportionately, like any crisis naturally does. Non-exhaustively, poor minorities, displaced women, the elderly, immunocompromised, or disabled individuals are being systematically failed by their states. There is asymmetric access to healthcare and social security, and the extent of government intervention differs across the board, which means the support and care people are receiving is an unfair and arbitrary product of the intersectionalities of their identity like class, geographical presence, race, gender and religion. My privilege keeps a large part of the panic away. When Delhi was engulfed in toxic smog, my private college could afford air purifiers. Now, when an infection colonises a continent, I can afford sanitiser, reliable testing and “social distancing.”

Therefore, more personally, the advent of COVID-19 announced itself through the suspension of college, effectively annihilating the defining pillars of my day-to-day existence. When would class resume? I had learning left to do, I had a plan that included internships, semesters abroad and graduating early. Suddenly, there was all of this animagus time – time to do everything I was complaining I didn’t have time to do –  I could read that book, go for that protest, take that course online, reply to that long message sent to me by Man With Opinions…why, then, was my first instinct post-outbreak to scramble to re-establish a simulacrum of the very institutional confinement that for so long, has restricted me? The shapelessness of each 24 hours was liberating and unsettling – sure, there was basic hygiene to maintain and social distancing to be practice (which, of course, does not apply to reunions with long-distance friends), but within reason, I could fill the day with whatever I wanted to. Why didn’t I know what to do? Why was I feeling paralysed by the freedom to intellectually pursue whichever ideas I was interested in, while also punishing myself for not being “productive enough” during a literal pandemic?

The answer is a complicated one. First, as an individual, I need to feel productive by constant stimulation, whether it’s attending class, not doing readings, or participating in DU debates from hell, all of which is honestly just an internalised glorification of labour and ‘human capital.’ Next, my ambitions are conceived and limited by a neoliberal reality that has been indoctrinated in the public imagination as the only way of life, never mind that it is socially, politically, economically, environmentally oppressing 99%, or at least, 95% of the world. Lastly, I think of the world in transactional terms. In a global crisis, my insistence on structure and institutions is born out both a fear of getting ‘set-back’ in the dehumanising rat race of degrees and dream jobs and also an inability to conceive a life without neoliberalism’s markers of success. My aspirations, both personal and academic, are manufactured by a society that is at once acutely conscious of the failures of neoliberal capitalism (crumbling democracy, marginalisation of backward castes, disenfranchisement of indigenous people, and imminent environmental destruction to name just a few failures) but also, is entirely disaffected when it comes to materialising change in these spheres. Social and cultural theorist McGuigan calls this “cool capitalism,” describing how:

“neoliberal capitalism has constructed popular legitimacy of such a resilient kind that it goes beyond management ideology and propaganda into the texture and common sense of everyday life in spite of severe and recurrent economic crisis; and, indeed, worsening ecological conditions in the world today – all of which directly affects people’s lives.”

Yet today’s rupture calls into question cool capitalism’s “resilient” “popular legitimacy” in a very real way. The outbreak has exposed capitalism’s ugly skeleton. We can see the world ending. Adam Smith’s free hand cannot provide enough hand sanitisers and toilet paper for everyone. The rich are hoarding food and resources they will undoubtedly trash as soon as the virus is contained (assuming that it will be contained). Ben Shapiro is tweeting about how there must be a vaccine, and it must be available to everyone. The governmental measures that have been taken have been premised on a privileging of humanity over profit, but it took tangible threat to the elite, capital-owning class for the threat to be taken seriously at all. My takeaway from this is that it is possible for our society to operate with the hope of collective benefit through collective action with policies like universal healthcare, paid sick leave, and a need for government intervention, i.e., policies that are the bedrock of democratic socialism. So perhaps, what we’re seeing right now, is not the end of the world, but the beginning of the end of cool capitalism.

In the coming days, the choices we make, matter. Buying that extra bottle of sanitizer that you know you don’t need is not a whimsical cultural moment, it is systematically disadvantaging people with less resources and contributing to panic. And yes, of course, what this time is really about is listening to what epidemiologists and healthcare workers have to say, to put public safety over personal privilege. But it is also a time to think about what a rupture like this shows us. Our preciously-constructed lives give us purpose and direction, but they also dominate our every waking moment. For a lot of people my age, this virus feels both like a domino and the precipitation of an apocalypse that’s been years in the making. A pandemic, a class war, a political dystopia and an environmental hell – what’s next? After this virus is contained are we all expected to go back to our lives unfractured? I don’t know. For now, the best I can do is laugh at Corona tweets, ensure that I am minimizing the harm I pose in economic, health-related and political ways, and figure out what my priorities are.

The title of this article isn’t to produce panic, rather, to reflect it critically. How I choose to spend my time and use my privilege will show me how pronounced a rupture this has been for my reality. As I struggle to reconfigure what the landscape of being a college student in 2020 looks like, I can only hope that moving forward, it doesn’t take pure fear from the elite class to mobilise for welfare and collective action. Orders to “practice social distancing” litter social media and her bhakt uncle, Whatsapp University. At the point at which even social distancing is coloured by class, I want to contend with superstructures that made the inequality and competition that we take for granted possible in the first place. That is to say, I hope to better understand how this outbreak lays bare the hollow political legitimacy that has sustained neoliberal capitalism when it hurts so many.

The most important thing I will spend my time doing  (besides playing drinking games on Zoom) is meaningfully engaging with the revolution of the oppressed not as a distant Marxist utopia, but an idea that has real merit and possibility. Although it might not happen by rapidly seizing the means of production, it might happen through systemic political revolution, personal accountability and students outside classrooms with bubbles burst, at long last free to think about the world around them.