#2: A Boring Dystopia
Hello to my beautiful fellow humans! Welcome back to my second edition of Love & Other Drugs. If you’re reading this it means I did indeed manage to pull through all that writers’ block and actually put out something I’m decently happy with. That’s gotta mean something for sure.
This newsletter comes at a weird time. I know this whole year has been a weird time, and everyone’s been saying it so much that you’re probably tired of being reminded of it. (I know I am.) Still, I think the recent photos that have surfaced comparing San Francisco skies to Blade Runner 2049 have left me feeling even more uncomfortable and displaced, if that is at all possible.
We’re going in pretty heavy this week, tbh. A lot of my thoughts have been revolving around the dystopia that we’re literally living in. Specifically one with a late stage capitalist economy that relies on constant, infinite growth in a world with finite resources. One that literally profits off creating insecurities in order to sell us something we don’t need to soothe and remedy that insecurity. (AKA a large chunk of the beauty industry.) One in which an individual (I’m looking at you, Jeff Bezos) could literally have enough money to end world hunger for the foreseeable future, and choose not to do so.
In addition to that, the unavoidable, ever-increasing, pervasive presence of technology, especially as college classes all move online, has been on my mind a lot. I probably spend at least 50% (or more) of my waking hours facing a screen, and that’s only going to increase. My generation grew up on the internet, but it doesn’t mean that virtual interactions are any substitute for real life interaction. Of course it helps to be able to talk to anyone, anywhere, and even see their faces in real time, a luxury we wouldn’t be afforded a mere twenty years ago. But even Zoom calls come with their own set of intricate problems, and we’ve even come up with a name for that : Zoom fatigue. (On a side note, it’s incredibly interesting how we’ve developed a unique set of words and language for new experiences that, if presented to someone a mere year ago, would probably be confusing and mean absolutely nothing.)
I think I almost miss that time in April when everyone (or so it seemed) was genuinely in quarantine, people were baking and making Dalgona coffees, and we were all adapting to the new measures that were being doled out. Bella Hadid was posting these fucking amazing selfies and socialites were staying home and memes about mother earth healing were still circulating and it felt like the world, as a whole, was genuinely on pause. For lack of better word, the pandemic and its happenings felt novel, almost as if this was just a blip in the road and things would get back on track really soon. And because we were collectively going through the same thing together, there was a distinct lack of FOMO, that is present now.
Fast forward to today and it feels like we should be used to all the changes that have happened, but I am anything but. I don’t know if I can ever get used to this season of Earth. It all just seems like the plot has been thickening for months, with news and its corresponding emotions coming in waves that ebb and flow, but never ease up. Phrases like “when corona is over” hardly mean anything to me at this point. 2020 isn’t an anomaly, it is but a symptom of the many ills that our political and economic systems have caused the world. This is real life, even if it doesn’t feel like it. It’s a weird state of mind to be in, to feel like life is on pause while the days roll by and the months pile up. Some days it’s all I can do to write this newsletter and hop around the Internet saving random photos of ugly cats and scrolling mindlessly.
I know I’m incredibly privileged to have the luxury of not having to worry about being able to pay rent, or being able to afford groceries, but I think that recognising this, in some perverted way, adds to the horrid mixture of guilt, boredom, and longing that I’ve felt for a while. Knowing that as I sit in my childhood bedroom and complain about feeling like I’m wasting my life, millions continue to suffer, wildfires blaze on, and our planet inches closer and closer to becoming uninhabitable for humans.
A History of Human Communication
I don’t think we’re made to process information and grief on such a gargantuan, global scale. The other day, I was thinking about how slowly news would get out in the past compared to the instantaneous feeds of information we get today. The average person living in say, 1400, would have almost zero information about someone else on the other side of the world. These thoughts led to a Google search rabbit hole of when different forms of communication were invented. And luckily, the internet pulled through with this, The History of Human Communication.
It wasn’t long ago that humanity created the first alphabet. And then the first postal service, telephone, radio. And now I’m writing this, and now you’re reading this, and for a brief moment, my thoughts occupy the spaces of your mind.
It’s always a fun exercise thinking about being here in this intersection of time and space and all the funny things we take for granted but are actually pretty nifty.
On Love & Other Drugs
I’ve been thinking about what Love & Other Drugs means to me, and I think I’d like for it to be a haven safe from the attention grabbing, negative emotion stroking headlines that constantly occupy my head, but I don’t think it’s possible for my writing to be completely removed from the happenings of our surroundings. I think one of my goals for LAOD is that it triggers difficult conversations and probes at that part of us we’d rather keep hidden, even if we’d ultimately benefit from exploring it. I like to think I put into words things we all think about briefly but never really talk about, for whatever reason. That being said, I’ll try to make sure that edition #2 is as dark as it gets.
Without further ado, let’s dive into the 10 things I’ve consumed this week. (With ‘consume’ being used extremely loosely.)
10 Things I’ve Consumed This Week
This absolute one minute masterpiece of a tribute to Avatar the Last Airbender. If you know me, I’m a huge fan of the show. I think it’s one of the greatest shows of all time. And if you haven’t watched it even when it started trending again randomly sometime within the last few months please do yourself a massive favour and watch it. It is all just *chef’s kiss*.
Self Care Won’t Save Us, a piece that eerily reads like it was written for a time like this, even though it was actually published two years ago. McCrea lambasts the current state of self-prescribed self care, which, in most cases is but a bandaid for the many root issues that we face today. Taking walks, lighting scented candles, practicing yoga—all of these activities are definitely important in helping us live a more balanced and healthy life, but if we are working 60-hour work weeks, dealing with crippling debt, struggling with paying for healthcare, don’t do much except temporarily alleviate the symptoms of the issues we grapple with.
Why are these feelings familiar to so many of us, yet we feel so alone? We are atomized, individualized, struggling under the same system but struggling inwardly and separately. Self-care slots in neatly with capitalism, treating mental ill-health as an individual problem divorced from material and political context, to be solved by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and maybe spending a little money on the way.
I think I’m definitely prone to cynicism, given that it’s hard to imagine a future where, I don’t know, Amazon doesn’t own the whole world. But I think about our ancestors who worked sixteen hour days, six times a week during the Industrial Revolution. A future with six weeks paid vacation, affordable healthcare, and liveable wages for all, probably is to us what whatever we have now is to them. I don’t think it’ll be easy to get there—in fact, we might not even see the fruits of our labour in this life. But that shouldn’t stop us from dreaming, hoping and trying.
This post by Rachel Cargle.
These lamps @alyssainthecity owns. (I saw them on Instagram and mentally bookmarked them for when I eventually own a house and can afford lavish-er expenses.)
Thinking about how warped my sense of time is. Does anyone else remember what it felt like back in January when WW3 memes were all over Twitter? Or the Australian wildfires and the woman who sold her nudes to raise funds for those affected by them? Speaking of this, there’s a Buzzfeed piece on how algorithmic feeds and the 2010s have broken our sense of time. I’m not sure if I completely agree with everything written in it, plus its fixation on discussing Trump seems only loosely relevant, but I do think it’s an interesting read.
What’s Wrong with Capitalism by ContraPoints.
Be warned, it is a long video, but it’s peppered with sarcasm, fever dream-esque plot twists and stunning lighting. I think my favourite part is in Part 2, 5:37 when she reacts to Andrew’s guilt after he partakes of a $2000 gold leaf pizza in Buzzfeed’s Worth It,In a post-scarcity luxury communist utopia, a bad pizza covered in gold would just be a bad pizza covered in gold. You might be mad at the chef for making a disappointing pizza, but you probably wouldn’t be overcome with feelings of emptiness and guilt.
In our world though, a bad pizza covered in a gold leaf is a vulgar, crass display of wealth and a huge slap in the face to the 820 million that go hungry every year. It is precisely this knowledge that makes consuming a $250 slice of pizza painful, guilty, and… hollow. (Plus I don’t think it helps that $250 is probably at least a week’s worth of Andrew’s rent.)
This gorgeous piece by @vincentillustrator on Instagram.
Naked Blue by Kakkmaddafakka.
This tweet by Justin.
Thank you for sharing, Justin.
Realising that college restarts in about two weeks for me. It’s honestly deeply terrifying, considering the last time I used my brain was probably back in March before schools closed. (Actually slightly earlier than that, if you consider that I intended to drop out before March and hence stopped putting effort into anything but eventually didn’t so now I have actually study, but that’s a story for another day.) Does anyone else feel like this? Please tell me I’m not alone in feeling this way.
In Closing
And that is all we have for this week. Once again, thank you so much for reading these things, it’s always a pleasure to perform the propagation of Thoughts from my brain to yours. And the best part is, you can do it right back in the comments section below. Please don’t forget to subscribe if you enjoy reading what I write. I pinky promise not to spam.
And thank you to anyone who has encouraged me, given me critique or even commented. Your support means everything and literally drives this thing.
Love always,
Isabella