Every day is a new crisis, new crisis layered on old crisis, ongoing crisis, future crisis, past crisis. Crisis all the way down. A state of perpetual crisis.
“Crisis” originates from the Greek word “decision”. If crisis means a pivotal decision, perpetual crisis means decision paralysis. We’re in a state of collective freeze.
Well, I’m sick of it. I want an end to perpetual crisis. I want the safety that freedom, liberty, independence are implicitly predicated on. I want solutions. I want decency and civility. I want goodwill. And I feel entitled to it. Not entitled in a shallow way, of it being given to me if I whine enough, but in a strong way; I believe it is possible to achieve and should be achieved and will only be achieved if I do it and by extension we do it. Life should exist with these qualities. We’re living half-lives and I want more.
I think this state of perpetual crisis is part real, part manufactured. Crisis is exhausting. Crisis breaks down one’s resolve, hopes, dreams. It wears down and destroys the capacity to imagine something different, something more. It gives way to meekness, of wanting less and less of life. Crisis destroys the will to strive, and leaves only the instinct to survive. A half-life is good enough if it means carving out a little space to be safe, to be comfortable. I think this is the real intent of manufactured crisis, it forces a compromised existence; to be okay with a small life. It is a Faustian bargain. To be okay with a small life is to give crisis manufacturers more license to take.
At the root of dictatorship is an abdication of responsibility. In crisis, real or manufactured, people are met with pivotal decisions, and fear being accountable for the outcomes of their actions. In such a time, a dictator provides an escape hatch from accountability: “it wasn’t my fault, I was just doing my job”. Only the dictator is accountable, and in a position to act decisively. Perpetual crisis turns into an abdication of responsibility and centralization of authority.
Real and not, I want something else, something more, and intend to get it. But how? One implicit quality of our perpetual crisis is alienation. There is a quality of being alone in it and on my own I am weak, I am stupid, I am ignorant, I am insufficient. On my own I cannot change anything, I cannot even imagine what to do! I am so deeply, woefully inadequate. And I know it’s utterly, depressingly true. Alienation turns this truth into meekness, a disgruntled assent to living a small, stillborn life.
A prerequisite to doing something, anything, is destroying this sense of alienation. Alone, we are weak. Alone, we’re divided and conquered. But together?
For me, I discovered this accidentally, fortunately. There is a path out of alienation, and that’s the first step towards ending this state of perpetual crisis.
Change starts at home, literally.
For me, I discovered my own alienation by living with friends during the Pandemic. As the world shut down, I was trapped with friends, and somehow, miraculously, life got better instead of worse. This was a eureka moment, something was going on and I needed to figure it out.
In general, but especially during the Pandemic, my home is a large part of my world. Not only do I spend a freaky share of my life there, but it is the only tangible space where I have agency and authorship to do what I want. I can construct a new world within my own home. Living in community, even with a few friends, has a different flavor. Something is distinct about it. It is harder for sure, and scarier, and messier, but is quietly radical. It’s a different world.
In that hardness and messiness there is something real. Coming from a nuclear family where conflict avoidance and dissociation were the norm, nothing feels real. The fear becomes greater than the object of the fear, symbolic and mental importance overshadow the real thing. When I argue with housemates about dirty dishes, my needs are actually heard. I’m not repressing them out of some compulsive fear of conflict. I’m not invalidating them through smothering silence. I lend them a voice, because I have to. The alternative is even more intolerable. This is a feature, not a bug. It means learning you have a voice and experiencing others listening to it. It means beginning to connect.
In the broader world, what people label as “listening” is actually “judging”. “Judging” is an interpretation strictly on my terms. Listening means taking a message on your terms. The hard part of it is learning what those terms are, and realizing just how different everyone’s lived experience and needs are. Listening means verging on an understanding of others, and in doing so, beginning to connect with them. When this happened, I realized just how alien I had been my entire life. And in that realization, I got the tiniest glimpse of what being a human could feel like.
Living in community is inherently constrained. Its closeness and messiness means conflict avoidance is impossible. This leaves only conflict resolution or breakdown. Resolution requires some degree of listening and connection. Coliving is an environment where solutions and reconnecting go hand in hand. The alternative is breakdown and disbandment.
Co-renting is already the norm, the only difference between co-renting and co-living is intent, an intent to connect. “Co” means “together”, co-living is “living together”. A change of intent is the beginning of the end of alienation, and ending alienation is the first step to dealing with our state of perpetual crisis. Living fully together.
“Religion” comes from re-ligio, to re-connect. For me, coliving is my path to re-connecting. Focusing on living fully together is the solution, but at the most local level. I feel like shorting out my own home first is providing the metaphors, tools, and team I need to begin sorting out the bigger picture.
It is the most selfish and selfless thing to sort out my own home. I cannot fix the world’s problems, but I can sort out my own home. And then and only then will I have the safety and independence to focus on the bigger picture. Reforming home is a necessary foundation for anything else; that’s where my change is starting.