The Malady Of Reasonable Expectations

There is only one known cure

Are you angry that a pandemic virus is spreading uncontrolled?

Frustrated that the media is ignoring the world’s leading cause of death by infectious disease?

Aghast at new fossil fuel projects as the climate melts down?

Then you are probably suffering from reasonable expectations.

This can be a devastating affliction, and experts say the best solution is simply to adjust your expectations.

Studies have found that individuals with low expectations are actually free of the damaging thoughts that plague those with reasonable expectations.

Jokes aside, this has to be part of the psychology of the moment, doesn’t it?

People who demand action to stop the spread of a pandemic or the burning of fossil fuels that are suiciding us are considered oddities at best and outright enemies of the culture at worst.

Let’s think about what this means.

It means a culture and an economy has been created that cannot now co-exist WITHOUT a pandemic or a climate crisis.

To stop either of these things would throw such a huge wrench into our societies that the ongoing functioning of the system is contingent on the existence of a pandemic and a climate crisis.

Getting to this point has been a long process.

By its nature an individualistic consumer culture cannot care about the health of the whole.

And this is just how the capitalists planned it.

From the start of modern history, just after the establishment of the post-second world war consensus, capitalist interests have been working to undo everything that was good for us.

They literally planned it.

In 1945, after throwing millions of young men into a meat grinder for the second time in twenty years over quibbles between royal families and lines on a map, some sense prevailed.

Leaders emerged in a moment born from mass death and perpetual horror and they said, you know what, maybe it would be good for people other than those who live in castles to start having things like access to healthcare and warm homes.

Maybe people shouldn’t die because the water is laced with shit.

Maybe people shouldn’t be forced to send their children to mine coal to survive.

And ever since that day, the capitalists have been fighting back.

From the 1940s, those who hated the post-war consensus, led by a couple of goons called Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, began creating a neoliberal, transatlantic network of academics, businessmen, journalists and activists to undo this switch.

The process of deregulation, privatisation, breaking up the unions, scrapping guaranteed pay rises, removing high tax brackets, removing caps on high pay, ‘unburdening’ business and so much more was meticulously planned and led us to this point.

And what is this point?

The point where the shit is back in the water and the viruses are killing people en masse again.

The point where the possibilities for large-scale, pro-social change within this system are being snuffed out.

The point where many have internalised their own suffering as ‘just the way things are.’

Capitalist interests have got it locked down.

This is why they freaked out so badly in those first months of the pandemic. They thought social solidarity was a thing of the past!

For a few months they saw people organise to set up mutual aid groups. They saw governments put the health and well-being of ordinary people above profits and they couldn’t believe it. They could not believe it.

They saw governments give people free money to stay away from their factories or offices.

They watched as their precious greed generating machines were briefly stopped.

They saw that capitalism could be paused at a whim.

Of course they couldn’t countenance this. So they fought back, and they fought back hard.

They pumped millions into supposedly organic movements that decried the loss of freedom and the government over-reach.

They signed up credentialed medical experts to proclaim that the best thing to do in a pandemic is just to let the virus spread (the so-called Great Barrington Declaration).

These experts said it was mild, it didn’t harm children, and if it did there was a fate worse than death, and that fate was not able to dine indoors for a few months.

The media happily platformed it all.

And now we’re left with the fact that people’s imaginations have been purposefully hollowed out and their expectations stomped to a watery pulp.

No one expects anyone to come and save them. Most people now expect to die for capitalism.

People were not radicalised when the government unleashed mass infection with a biohazard safety level 3 virus on them.

They were radicalised when asked to stay at home to stop it.

Because in a society where consumption is God, having consumption options withdrawn is a crime against the religion.

And in the meantime, expectations engineered to rock bottom, many are unable to face sad things.

Because as we have established, nothing can be done about those sad things. The levers of power accessible to the ordinary person have been corroded away by the acid of neoliberal capitalism.

So we end up with a civilisation pathologically wallowing in consumptive good vibes only.

BARBENHEIMER!

This is a key part of the psychology behind existing in modern society. Avoid the sad things. Re-wire your brain to think happy thoughts.

This psychology of happiness also strongly feeds climate and covid inaction.

The right might actively deny these things exist, but most people, whatever their political inclinations, don’t want to face them. Too sad. Too powerless.

But the real cure for reasonable expectations is not low expectations.

It’s higher expectations.

And to get there, we’re going to have to get revolutionary.

And angry.

And maybe even a bit sad.

(Artwork by @ronniefurbear on Instagram)