They don't want us calm…
Pic: Rachel Biffin sleeping in the throes of Long Covid
These words started spilling out of me a few hours before Tricia Hersey’s book Rest Is Resistance arrived in the post.
Her thesis says the crux of what I write below a whole lot more powerfully. But I’ve decided to keep my writing and share it with you as a way of showing I’m in solidarity, I’m joining the liberatory movement of regaining rest, comfort, and calm. I would encourage you to do the same.
They don't want us calm…Being calm, to me, means there is mental space to act efficiently, to make good decisions, to grant ourselves space. Having a sense of calm lets the light in to us. It lets in the breath.
But for women and marginalized identities, calm can feel just out of reach. It can feel like a rarity, it can feel expensive and unattainable. As Hersey says, it can feel like a privilege.
This feeling is a product of the patriarchy and white supremacy. (Here’s a link to White Supremacy Culture - From Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups, by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun, ChangeWork, 2001).
Being calm means you're more likely to have access to your inner voice, an 'inner knowing'. Having access to that knowing means you may have a better chance of picking up on danger, a red flag, or that it’s good to go!
This is bad for capitalism. Capitalism’s scarcity wants to dig into your flesh with manipulative messages saying, no, you’re voice is wrong, listen to me instead. I’ll tell you how to survive.
Being calm gives us the capacity to hold multiple concepts at one time. It means we’re in a position to pick up on the details, the nuance. Calm gives you the best chance of being orientated in space, to pick up on context cues, and make informed decisions.
But this world wants us discombobulated, confused, and uncertain. That way it can sell you (temporary) solutions that make a tonne of money for someone else.
Being calm, you have time to 'feel' yourself and to get a read of the people and contexts around you. We can be present to our needs and the needs of others. It’s the fuel for both autonomy and collective agency. We can self organise.
But a capitalist world wants us not to trust ourselves and instead look externally, scatter, dissipate and purchase solutions per an individualist and siloed life.
Calm and rest and generative spaces mean we have a better chance of realising we are enough, we have resources and and can enjoy a good life.
But a capitalist world wants anything but a calm population and so little is done to champion calm and promote calm and calm spaces. Drama and strife sell better. Strife arises from anxious people and perpetuates anxious populations.
Anxiety causes exhaustion and exhausted people are more controllable, more permeable, more malleable. Anxious people have their spidey senses on high alert. News and dopamine rich social feeds are right their to say it will be ok and here’s how you can circumvent the threat…just buy this, or do this.
But, as both Hersey and Sonya Renee Taylor write, this is not real. The anxiety inducing patriarchy is a construct. And so, they write, we can imagine another one. One where we own our bodies, our time, our rest, our calm.
Till next week,
Rachel
