It is through flexibility and flow that we can obtain wellbeing. Bianca Cassell provides a framework for the discussion of loss, trauma, and grief as it relates to the individual and collective.
The ideas about what makes us human are essentially transformation and grief. If we think of Spinoza's idea of univocity of being, my body and my mind are literally one and experienced through non-dual consciousness one has access to one’s personal form of universality or God.
Duality is where we begin to think, but as we arrive at non-dual consciousness, experience takes on a different, multi-dimensional and non-binary form. Non-duality is a form of movement and experience then, but I argue that non-duality is not much without using opportunities to move without situating oneself on binaries, intellectually. This is how I transform, by continually coming back to the non-dual, acting, learning, reflecting and making conscious decisions about what to do next.
Arundhati Roy proposes the idea that the pandemic is a portal, i.e. that there is this anger rising in the people who are not at work or cannot be from their homes. People who know exactly what they want to do about their plight because they have the time to think now, without being able to get distracted by work or other outside tasks. How do we harness that power for the social when the people are allowed to leave their homes again, or will we waste the opportunity for the people to express their various needs as the new social order sets in. However it does.
What makes us human during a time of transition is remaining connected to the social, the economic and the political. What is the value of lockdown versus Sweden's approach of favouring herd immunity, and freedom by leaving the country open. Where does the line between measures based on disaster management around COVID-19 and measures of dictatorial state control start and end.
This all feels very utopian to me and no matter how much I think of or consider people in slums, squatter camps, high density accommodation, the homeless and pretty much most of the country; I am not them and therefore while I strive for healing and well-being in my connections with my family and friends, I argue that that does not make me human. What makes me human is considering how people will be kept from understanding their own plight by being told news that is disconnected to the plights they experience in their community.
This transformation is a process of grief, of losing the old, grieving it as the new takes shape. How much will we lose? How much loss will we accept before the narrative that Cyril’s lockdown and that lockdowns around the world are about valuing human life are actually illogical. How much life will there be if those who didn’t die from COVID-19 are unemployed, homeless and confused. I argue that while we are grieving, we need to stand up to weigh 2 hardships against one another. A lockdown of the economy and strict and precise regulations about who gets to do what determined by small groups of people or to remain open and free and to make decisions on the ground and for ourselves about what we are willing to do based on the information that health professionals and the Department Health provide.
What keeps us human are practices of self-care and connection. What makes us human is to identify that even now when we are supposedly acting to care for the disadvantaged, it is an opportunity for those who are deemed essential services to thrive and those who are not, to yet again be driven underground.
Compassion for that is few and far between. We only need to consider the prohibition of alcohol, the decriminalisation/legalisation of marijuana and the war on drugs to understand how people are demonised for the consequences of a behaviour that is really not given any support for people to act in more dignified ways.
The people who supply non-essential services are outlawed if they operate their businesses. Peoples' livelihoods are most certainly at stake if we simply continue with lockdown for much longer and those who happen to provide essential services get to carry on. Is that luck or a maintenance of the status quo? The businesses that were successful before lockdown are likely to close and new ones may emerge.
However, this process of re-emergence can either be left to those with opportunity to fill the space, i.e. those fortunate few who respond to the challenge. This is most certainly slanted towards those who are financially and socially privileged.
Also, those who are able to maintain psychological well-being by having personal space, employment and families that are able to support each other will likely be those who fill the spaces that are left open in the economy as it opens up to the outside again.
What will freedom look like? What will it mean to go outside? I think we have to consider that this will be something new and I would urge people not to pre-empt what it will look like, what rules we accept or reject, or harken back to the past.
Now more than ever, I think we have the opportunity, as Arundhati's suggests through the portal, if we keep the focus that we have now in our homes, shacks, flats and communes; huts, farm houses and villages - we can bring what we know now with us into how we read the world around us.
It is also about how much we look for the unbiased facts about what decisions were made about the lockdown rules and regulations, by whom and for what reason. We need to understand why we are being kept at home and for example why the cigarette ban was re-instated. Was it really Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, or is she the spokesperson for her political allies. After all, Cyril appointed her as Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs and she has become the unofficial spokesperson for the application of the Disaster Management Act. What is the consequence of alliances between opposing political factions at a time when the country should come before politics.
As we transform ourselves, grieve the old world and align ourselves with the new - are we psychologically well while doing it or are we in essence brewing up an awareness of what simply has to change in the isolation and confines of where we are. How do we move with the times and read the news for political intent, while understanding what we can do to minimise the risk of being a vector for infecting someone with coronavirus. All the while, doing what we can to find healthy ways of life in this new world that was hastily thrust upon us.
Essentially, the resources each of us has at our disposal in terms of online communication and reliable information in a world where real information is interspersed with fake news, will determine how each of us use the level of physical, psychological, social and spiritual health or illness that we are each individually capable of, at our places of residence (in our contexts) to foster connection with society at large to continue being or to become an agent of the human cause of ecological wellbeing rather than to be played as pawns in economists’, politicians’ and community leaders' missions.
Finally, it is important to note that I do not suggest ill-intent by all leaders, however the impact of all leadership in any vertical system does not always reach the people in an equal manner. How each of us responds to those in power and those in privileged positions, people who may approve of lockdown because of personal benefit is key if we are to ensure that we do not widen the gap between those who benefit from the system we have now and those who are more likely to benefit from the system that is being created, during this period of social transformation.
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