how reliant are our identities on time? the resource of time allows us to think about things beyond the practical details of our lives; in other words, we can think more abstractly about ourselves. this makes me wonder about how we own time. we technically always "have" time because we are technically present, experiencing every moment, at work or at home. time is occurring in either case, but in the meaning of the phrase "having the time," it is implied that time can be had and perhaps in having it, it is also owned, owned by me, to do with as i please, or perhaps, owned by someone else.
what does it mean for people not to have enough time to comprehend who they are? what would it mean about our world if people's time was so controlled that they didn't have the luxury to consider the questions posed by their lives?
i am in wonderment at the profundity of the past six months of my life spent in contemplation, of the past two years spent in close isolation with a few chosen people.
i have had a lot of time to consider my identity and have had a number of seismic shifts over the course: the realization that i am and have always been deeply queer; coming to terms with my transness and navigating personal and familial relationships through that; cluing into my neuro-divergence; and the bulk of it resulting in the setting of new boundaries, of finding new flows through new words that better capture the nuances of my perspective.
this all leads me to think about a term that's been floating around the reddit message boards, which is the acronym, F.O.G. (fear, obligation, guilt). It's used to describe the behaviors exhibited by a narcissistic abuser, of the fog that keeps you ensnared, a fog comprised of fear, obligation, and guilt.
i made a joke the other day that our society has a non-consent kink, with bosses pressing their employees back to the office after a blissful change to work from home; with the slow extraction of dignity from the working class to the ruling class; all of which have the distinct flavor of sadism (and not the fun kind). fear, obligation, and guilt.
the processes keeping us plugged in seem to fit within the narcissistic relational paradigm. the motivation to keep productive being tinged with guilt, guilt for taking rest, guilt for "productionless" processes--like thought, self-exploration, pleasure, and joy. i have fear around deadlines and expectations pressing down. they represent much much more than i feel capable of handling. the people who are imposing them, are also mere slaves to the frenetic pace of do, do, do. how could i possibly let them down? how could i possibly let the weight fall on them alone? if i don't do my part, i'm going to be poor again, hungry, homeless. fear, obligation, guilt.
i read a lot about conspiracy culture and my thinking about it (in this moment) could be summed up with the question: which is scarier, the thought that there is a hidden "them" controlling us and keeping us all in line, or that there's no one in control at all? this problem represents a relationship and, i am suggesting, an abusive one. it seems to me like we are enmeshed and that makes it very difficult to distinguish between you and i (and perhaps, us and them).
so, what do you do when you can't leave? where do you find space to be you when there's another identity pressing itself into your space? is there a way through abuse that doesn't involve whisking yourself away and getting a restraining order? i mean, can i please have a restraining order against the incessant progress of neoliberal capitalism? white-supremacy? eco-cidal corporate terrorism?
to even get a restraining order, you need to submit an address. so, where do you go that's not here. because "here" increasingly refers to the whole world, with no place left to hide. i think that the problem is an essential "here" and "away," "us" and "them" problem. the "away's" and the "them's" of the world are being slowly depleted and the shortage means that we've started looking for "them's" even amongst ourselves. we have a populace who's being corralled, cornered, controlled, but by who? other people who are corralled, cornered, controlled. the colonized colonize, it's an the ethos, a religion. the trumps of the world watch fox news. fox news watches the trumps. we created a golden vision and stepped inside of it: wherever you go there you are.
as i begin to re-engage with the world and all of its devices, i ask myself, how do we manage the ownership of time? what kinds of tasks are productive and to what ends? who is it that is enforcing this pace? and how do we reterritorialize our moments and spaces back under our own control?
having cancer seems, in many ways, a deeply unproductive activity. you suffer, you eat, you lay still, and you experience yourself, your body, your perceived limits, your real limits. and there you are, unable to engage in labour, to produce. yet, something was produced, during another unproductive time, during the pandemic--a self.
what does it mean to wrest back time for the benefit of the working class and what might it mean for us to be able to engage in the labour of identity building, capacity building, community building? the idea of violent revolution is floating around, but perhaps before that happens, what if we began to lay stakes around our time, making a new commons, laying claim to our inheritance, the very moments of our lives? what would happen then? what will happen then?
because thinking about "them" hasn't produced very solid scientific results, because even when we did manage to burn down the palaces, we made new kings. maybe there isn't a them. maybe the temporarily embarrassed millionaires would also stand on our necks given the chance. perhaps we needed to dilate time, to experience ourselves very profoundly and directly and maybe in this way we can also be thankful for the horrors and death of both a global pandemic and cancer.
the price for these moments was 15 million lives and i keep thinking that i want to make the next ones pay dividends. i want to spend my moments like a billionaire buying their yacht a yacht. i want to be someone and to know that person. i want to live here.
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