Sam Smith's stages of self-isolation stress. Credit: Instagram
A week ago this virus was fodder for beer-themed memes. Now it’s given us a proper kick in the pants. It has exposed a painful truth: our civilisation is not permanent, we are not untouchable, and we do not have as much power as we like to think.
Like any other civilisation we will disappear, and a few thousand years from now, there will be a new civilisation, and we will be thought of as a blip. A very stupid blip.
We have accomplished a lot. Perhaps too much. We have built a society so full of abundance that we have lost sight of what matters.
Some of us — those who view themselves as “political” — are relentlessly squabbling online, fighting for political purity rather than policy change. Others have made a decision to focus on their pronouns and sad selfies. By doing so they are signalling the opposite of that which they wish to convey; rather than suffering from a myriad of problems, trials and tribulations, and endless oppressions, they suffer nothing at all. They have so much privilege, they have been forced to invent problems, for the sole purpose of strong arming the world into paying attention to them.
Last week, “non-binary” singer Sam Smith posted a series of photos on Instagram, titled, “Stages of a quarantine meltdown”. The apparently distraught celebrity had staged a visual breakdown, having been contained to his mansion for four days. And what do we do in the midst of a global crisis, when there’s no opportunity to go out in ballgown and sparkly lip gloss? We fake cry, take a selfie, and post it on the internet for likes.
It turns out we have all been worrying about the wrong things all along. We are more likely to be taken out by the flu than a terrorist attack or, God forbid, an accidental “he-ing” of a “they.” This should be an opportunity for a community to take a good look at itself. There are a number of lessons we could learn from this pandemic. Yet based on my observations, to date, I suspect we will absorb none of it.
A key message is surely that we do not have as much control as we would like to think. We cannot control the circumstances of our lives (and death) in many ways. We can make good choices, try our best to take care of our health but, at the end of the day, the economy could crash, and you could lose everything; or a virus could jump from a bat to a human, wreaking havoc.
This is not to say that we should resort to hedonism — Well, we’re all going to die, we may as well devolve into a writhing orgy of narcissistic gluttony and depravity. It is only to suggest we stop trying to control the things we cannot and start to try to take hold of the things we can.
Here are some things that you cannot control: how others view you; how others treat you; how others behave around you; and what others think. Here are some things you can control: how you behave; how you treat others; how you respond to those around you; how you react; and how you analyse situations, systems, and people.
How do you respond to challenging times? Faced with isolation for a number of weeks? What choices do you make, knowing that they can have a major impact on all of our futures? What do you focus on, what do you prioritise, how do you treat those around you? What policies and actions are you supporting and advocating, with this new and frightening reality check? These are the important things, right now.
And here is what I’ve seen, in terms of human response to a global pandemic: swathes of financially privileged people buying up all of the groceries and toilet paper, leaving nothing for those who cannot afford to drop $400 on meat to store in a deep freezer they don’t own, because they also don’t own a house.
I see groups of people striding casually around my neighbourhood in Vancouver, in vast numbers, looking like amused tourists, thrilled at the image of themselves out on a Thursday afternoon (!!), in leggings (!!), carrying a badminton racquet (!!). Look at us! Drinking beers on our front lawns with the neighbours! How cute we are. #Quarantinelife.
“GO HOME, YOU FOOLS,” I want to shout at them. Three days into a state-ordered social distancing, and these people can’t manage to find ways to amuse themselves at home.
I’ve also heard endless whining about the challenges of working from home, as though the blessing of not having to put on pants and join the daily commute on a germ-ridden bus has gone completely over the heads of these unimaginative cogs.
Complaining that you have been released from the chain tying you to an office, five days a week, eight hours a day, and no longer have to suffer cubicle life is a privilege only the dull and mentally insufficient could manage. Meanwhile, countless people have no employment at all, with no future prospects, and no knowledge of how badly this situation will devastate their industries and opportunities for survival.
Of all of this, the under-40s have been the worst. A stream of mental-health-themed posts have flooded my social media feeds: how to cope with “symptoms of cabin fever”? What of my anxiety?! How can I fill my time, now that an external force is no longer dictating the parameters of my life? The lack of self-sufficiency astounds me, as someone who spends every day alone in her small apartment, trying to learn as much as I can, produce quality work, and take care of my health — physical, emotional, and mental.
I feel blessed, every day, by my freedom, despite not owning a home or having any savings or financial security to speak of. Why are so many unable to manage being alone with their own selves and minds? Why are capable human beings so incapable of productivity, when left to their own devices? The panic in the face of a little adversity troubles me.
I do understand that many, many people will suffer terribly from this outbreak. And that many of us are actually, really, alone. We are social creatures, so this is nothing to scoff at. But my point is that it is also impermanent, and it is something we will get through.
What the world will look like when we recover from this will depend so much on the choices we make as individuals, right now — as well as the decisions made by our government. And instead of doing the bleeding obvious — staying home, strictly distancing ourselves from others, and thinking of the community beyond our own families and desires — we are hanging out at the park with our friends and their kids, and behaving as though the true threat to our lives lies on our couches, as if to re-watch The Sopranos or read a book will send us into a pit of depression, so dark we cannot reemerge.
On Friday’s episode of “Making Sense,” Sam Harris explained that “this is an emergency in which the most effective contribution you can make, to your own wellbeing and the wellbeing of others, is to stay home”. And those of us who can — who are privileged to be able to work from home; who are not the grocery store clerks, the healthcare workers, the bus drivers — are not. Those of us in a position to be considerate of others, are choosing not to be.
Humans, for all their genius and capability, appear to be rather useless, unable to take direction, unwilling to make rational choices, and unfit for a level of hardship that is nothing compared to what their ancestors suffered. “Stay home,” should not be a hard ask. Do not hoard food, toilet paper or hand sanitiser, as it is unnecessary and harmful, should not be either.
“Be mindful, be grateful, be considerate, be strong and be creative” are some other achievable asks I would add.
If you can’t count your blessings during a time like this, perhaps you don’t deserve those blessings at all. And if you cannot view this pandemic as a reminder of what is valuable and important in life, and an opportunity to consider a better social and economic model, perhaps you don’t deserve those things either.
We are lucky to be such over-privileged narcissists, but that luck is wasted on us: the greedy, self-interested masses, clinging to things that are not real, material only until they slip away, and you are left with nothing but a weak and uninspired mind; a fake anxiety disorder (resolvable not through lengthy self-indulgent social media posts, but by going for a walk) and a closet full of toilet paper.
Meghan Murphy is a Canadian writer, host of the Same Drugs podcast and People’s Party of Canada candidate in Vancouver East.
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SubscribeI have to tell you that you have missed the major obstacle, most of the rental properties are owned by ministers, counsellors and the elite, they do not want anyone to be able to afford to buy because they are raking it in. Taxes pay those who cannot afford rents, in the form of benefits, and those that can afford it need to keep paying, preventing any means of saving. In addition they are reluctant to keep rental housing in a liveable condition, rendering most private rented housing damp and expensive to heat
“publicly-owned ‘community land banks’ taking control “
But that’s Communism! How could such an idea get past the Daily Mail?
Good article, you’ve identified the real problem of high prices of LAND. There are other non-communistic ways of solving this problem. Site Value Rating anyone? But how are you going to sell falling house prices to today’s owner-occupier?
This seems a hugely complicated solution to the problem, and also fraught with all the usual inefficiency and moral hazard that occurs when governments take over chunks of industry. Surely, the simplest answer is a land tax? Builders wouldn’t hang on to land banks if they had to pay significant tax on them and it would regulate house prices, especially in sought after areas.
So what rate per acre given no other taxes?
Yes. The simple solutions are often the best. So why hasn’t it happened, and why is there no realistic option of it happening (in the UK, in the foreseeable future)? Because the vested interests of capital would never allow their employees – the ‘opinion formers’ and the mainstream media – to present the idea as a realistic and sensible option.
The only sustainable way to solve the housing crisis is to stabilise the population at current levels. This means close to zero net immigration and adjusting the benefits system to discourage large families.
Sustainable is the key word. The size of the country isn’t increasing, so a continually growing population means competing for a reducing stock of land. Prices must always increase. This is aside from the continuing decrease in available farmland, and the increase in energy use and waste produced. We need to bring an abrupt halt to population growth and invest in the training and education of the people already here.
A problem you don’t mention is the increase in single person households. Couples used to buy a house together when they got married, now everyone wants their own place.
Single people often lived in digs, there would be houses with several lodgers and the landlady all living together, or bigger houses divided up into bedsits. Now everyone wants their own place!
Virtually all house building at the moment is in the hands of the big 4 and they don’t build what people need, they build what is most profitable for themselves. Building more houses that are too big and that people can’t afford to buy is not going to solve the housing shortage.
Finally, as long as property sells it will be built and a fair bit of property is being built and sold as an investment, and is never lived in!
The free market will not deliver the homes people need and the government needs to intervene to ensure that all housing needs are being met and that brownfield land is used first.
There is a huge amount of people renting out one or more house they own due to high salaries or inheritance fortune. Their are also a lot of elderly blocking up family homes with longer life expectancy and not wishing to move whilst the property deteriorates. This reduces the available stock a lot.
With future generations earning less and possibly with less work available I would suggest a big building programme of affordable council housing as either flats or small family homes. I whole-heartedly agree people need a secure home to have a stake in their community and society. It should be government priority for either party, definitley a vote winner from the young I would imagine.
So get rid of stamp duty, a tax on moving.
The solution sounds very much like a rehash of Henry George’s proposal in “Progress and Poverty.” He argued that changes in the value of unimproved land were not the result of anything the owner did, and so the proceeds of any such changes should be appropriated for the common good. He proposed a very heavy tax on land, so that the price you paid for a plot was only the value of the improvements on it (the water/sewage/power pipes/wires, and then the building). Only drawback – the tax was an annual event, so, if the land became more valuable (because of a school or shopping centre being built nearby) then the occupier would have to pay more tax.
Problem is very simple. When Over 20% of your income is redistributed to pay the socialist pension debts, you accrue no wealth. You just get further and further into debt. Those debts are taken out in your name and the debt is hidden off the books.
When you bring in millions of low paid workers, those starting out don’t get the low paid jobs to get experience, They are forced on to the dole or on to low wages. Even the better off are impoverished because they are forced to subsidise the low paid migrants.
There is no easy solution, just pain
What the author is suggesting is effectively expropriation of land. How else would one ban the owner of farmland from selling at a price that includes the value that comes from the ability to build on that land? In an arm’s length transaction, the buyer and the seller would both see that value and would be willing to share it. I cannot see how “abolishing hope value” is supposed to be achieved. The author does not explain it.
According to Halligan ‘Home Truths’ (a must read) the original TCPA envisaged compulsory purchase at agricultural use-value. A 1961 overturned that and ‘hope-value’ was re-instated.
One project which slipped through was Milton Keynes, where land was cheaply bought and vested in the Development Corp
Expropriation worked in Singapore!
There’s lots of empty land in Scotland. It’s bog, plagued by midges, but build thousands of homes there.
How to rescue generation rent:-
1. Build more homes.
2. Control immigration.
A partial solution.
Abolish the tax on moving, stamp duty.
Abolish inheritance tax.
Allow them to invest their NI for their old age and for a deposit on a house.
Thanks, yes, those are important too.
This is all summed up in Liam Halligan’s book Home Truths, which I found tedious and repetitive, but does give all the information that one needs to understand the problem
All the many articles such as this fail to mention the huge amounts of property wealth that will pass down to the Millennials and Gen Z etc.
But at what point in the lives of these generations will that wealth transfer? It will hardly be a life defining experience for people to become home owners in their late 50s and 60s.
Having control over your own home and the sense of security and accomplishment that brings is good for the individual, for their families and for society as a whole.
But people are living longer than they used to… My parents are due to retire in the next few years, but I still have grandparents on both sides. How old will I, as a mid-millennial, be when I eventually inherit?
You could always do what your parents did.