The lies of our society - broken open by a virus

One thing I’ve observed over the last few weeks is that, prior to this situation, we believed we lived in a world built upon an axiomatic framework that could not be changed, how wrong we were.

Introduction

Many things we held true as society seemed to be absolute, that these things couldn’t change and that we couldn't afford for them to change (unless they benefit big business of course). But, when a real crisis arose, one that affected all of us in some way, the scales fell from our eyes. Now it’s up to us to look clearly and deeply and understand what that means to us and that things can be different, better and more sustainable.

In this article, I’m going to go over some lies that we earnestly believed were truths, some of these were lies told to us, some we told ourselves. This isn’t an exhaustive list, please feel free to add your own in the comments.

That you earn your worth and businesses are smarter, because they’re the ones who are rich

The pay to cost of life ratio has widened grotesquely in 30 or so years; in the 70s-00s, a single wage could buy a house and feed a family. Nowadays, many people, even with multiple jobs in the household have found that literally, they’re living pay-check to pay-check with home ownership and accruing savings almost an impossibility unless you're in a profession that pays many times the national average salary.

Businesses were clearly smarter, they could aggressively grow, buy other businesses and report huge figures to shareholders. However, literally days after this situation really hit us, many national-scale brands went under, their liquidity was so poor that they were even more precarious than “pay-check to pay-check”, many didn’t even last a week.

Alongside this, people were guilted into feeling lazy and unmotivated if they couldn’t keep their house clean, admin in order and still keep learning/up-skilling. The media showed flawless houses, people with side-hustles, people rediscovering themselves and growing. Given many families have two working parents out of necessity, there are only so many hours in the day so much of this simply wasn't possible while allowing for any kind of downtime. Now people aren’t commuting or are on furlough, I see many comments that “my house has never been tidier”. We always underestimated the amount of unpaid work that went/goes into maintaining a household and the cost of those hours a day of commuting.

That your employer will reward you for helping them grow and look after you

Big disclaimer on this one, I’m talking about what has happened to society at large, my employer has been brilliant and is going well above and beyond expectations laid down by the government.

Many people found themselves either made redundant, forced to work harder, forced to take unpaid leave, threatened to be fired if they didn’t come in, asked to make up time if they actually caught coronavirus or worse yet, made to work while the company claimed the government furlough payments (which is illegal by the way). Many companies, who harp on about being “people first” have been shown to be first class ba****ds in reality.

Some CEOs tried to argue their businesses were utterly essential (I’m looking at you Sports Direct and Wetherspoons) and some graciously took a tiny pay cut (while still laying their workers off). The single most egregious example of an employer's expectations versus rewards was Jack Ma's assertion that people should be thankful for a 12-hour working day, six days a week, lambasting "China's growing number of slackers" as putting the economy at risk. Sure Jack, work 72 hours a week if you like, you own the company and have made billions, but expecting minimum wage employees to do the same without some kind of equity in your dream is disgusting.

In short, when it comes to big business owners, I prefer to look at actions rather than listen to words.

That the arts are worthless

Industry (and many people) has long since looked down their nose on the arts as indulgent and unnecessary, as they don’t make money for a society and thus have no worth. Right now, if you’re listening, watching, reading, you’re consuming something approximating art (I say approximating, because art is pretty subjective). Many artists and theatres are now providing their content online, for free. If that helps people enjoy themselves in these dark times, I’d say that the arts are of an incredible worth to society.

That the shiny things advertised to you will make you happy

You were led to believe that all the nonsense you were aggressively sold would make you happy or constitutes “fun”, status or wealth.

It’s mostly a distraction, unless you’ve worked on yourself, the second you can’t be distracted, you realise how empty it all is. This is when you realise that human interaction, books, board games, music etc. are all so important.

What's worse is we're often encouraged to get into debt to acquire these shiny things, for a while Paypal's pay screen seemed to have a very suspicious rendering lag that would make you "accidentally" click on paying via PayPal credit. Everywhere we looked, it was all about acquisition, never about actual growth of ourselves.

We’re actively distracted by every form of media from doing any “inner engineering”, anything spiritual (by that I mean working on our thought processes, our egos, finding our inner strength rather than religion), but right now, having the ability to be on your own and visit what’s inside your own head without it taking you to dark places is a real blessing. In my opinion, we should shift our focus to one of growth, of nurturing, teaching it in schools and workplaces, giving people the tools to be alive, rather than just revenue generation units.

That all socialist ideas equal communism

Many of the divisions in politics, ideologies etc. are just illusions, mainly amplified by lack of an actual threat that could hit all of us. The Ayn Rand philosophy of purely personal gain through peak capitalism doesn’t work when money can’t buy your way out of a situation. She advocated a kind of cargo-cult around money and success, but her idea of personal success left her embittered and alone, as it does to many who hoard money like sleeping dragons on vast piles of coins.

However, this situation has proven that when the chips are down, we can club together and that aspects of socialism aren’t so bad after all, paying those who can’t work a basic income, trying to provide a controlled supply of food, communities helping the vulnerable through NHS volunteering or delivering food to those who are forced to isolate, these all look like good things to me.

Money is like blood. It gives life if it flows. Money is like Christ. It blesses you if you share it. Money is like Buddha, if you don't work, you don't get it. Money enlightens those who use it, to open the flower of the world, And damns those who glorify it, confounding riches with the soul. - Alejandro Jodorowsky

I'm not advocating socialism in its entirety, but you have to understand, it feels like we're in late-stage capitalism here, which is a terminal illness with a mortality rate of 99.99%. Coronavirus, as deadly as it is, thankfully has a far lower mortality rate and we can see the results of our actions far sooner. Coronavirus might just be the cowpox to the smallpox of late-stage capitalism, giving us an opportunity to develop a societal vaccine.

That we can’t stop polluting our planet

Many companies would have had us believe that we couldn’t possibly end our commuting culture, it’s impossible to work from home. Sure, for some industries, that’s true, but for many, it absolutely isn’t. Our ability to adapt so quickly bust this one wide open and you can’t undo that. Suddenly, we’re burning less petrol and we have a couple more hours a day of our lives to ourselves.

Further to this, many people are finding themselves highly productive, despite employers’ initial distrust of their workers, imagining they’d suddenly have a free 12-week holiday.

We also believed that food is plentiful, practically free and came from magic food places that would always be accessible to us. How many of us check the country of origin on our foods? When the supply chains from other countries were disrupted, things started looking more complex. We, as a nation, wasted up to 30% of the food in our fridges, but as shopping is currently much more difficult and some things in short supply, I’d wager this figure has dropped significantly.

That Britain is far better off with Brexit and “they took our jobs” 

Of the eight doctors who’ve died, all have been immigrants. Not only did they stay after that ugly set of scenes, but they sacrificed our lives for us. Add to that the lack of crop pickers pushing up the price of broccoli around six times, and suddenly that “we’re fine on our own” line just doesn’t seem to hold true. Plus, all that pooled EU crisis money (34 billion Euros so far) to help balance things out shows that working as a larger organisation would help smooth out impact across a wider area.

When we come out of all of this, we'll need to build our businesses back up, and doing that in a vast - and importantly open - economy would have been simpler than our restrictive model.

That teachers are overpaid for such an easy job

Not much to say on this one other than a couple of quotes I read: “Homeschooling isn’t working, our relationship is ruined”, “We’ve decided that schooling just isn’t going to happen, so it’s XBox until September” and “Can I claim my job is essential so I can send my child back to school?”. Yeah, it’s hard, long work and maybe people will appreciate that more now. However, we've recently seen teachers leaving the profession due to long hours, stress and low pay. How many more will leave because of this situation? We need to rethink our attitude to our educators and the system we're desperately trying to dismantle through abdication of control in the form of academies.

That the NHS would be better off private, like the American model

Sure, our NHS is beleaguered, but it’s holding together better from what I’ve seen than some of the alarmist media graphs suggested. It’s incredibly unfortunate that some planned care has had to be put on pause, but that’s just a sign we should be putting more into it, not moving towards privatisation. Our stretched NHS now needs more people than ever, with the deficit being filled by people working 14 hour shifts. If we were in the American model right now, I shudder to think how bad things would be and how many people would be bankrupted or left to die. One thing for sure, is we cannot rely on a private "insurance" model for our health as I can guarantee they would pull some force majeure nonsense or promptly fold upon a mass claim like this, they'd have our money and be somewhere holed up in the Cayman Islands, we would be dying on the streets.

That politicians, billionaires and religious leaders must run the world

I think more of us than ever are now questioning this status quo, we were too placated, safe, in an opium haze of box-sets and corrupt media keeping us just scared enough not to do anything too radical...

Paraphrasing something I read recently, although anybody of any class or level of wealth can get Coronavirus, how it affects the ones who don't have it throws our system under the spotlight. The upper class have retreated to their mansions, with their resources seemingly endless. The middle class, continuing to work from home virtually, sit at home nervously, worried about their over-stretched mortgages and car loans. The working class are mostly sat unpaid and relying on food banks, or forced to work as they're now essential workers, putting their lives on the line for minimum or below average wages, given suspicious looks when they have to take a child to a supermarket as they have no childcare.

Maybe this will change, as we live in a democracy and if we realise this, we can make it change!

Conclusion

Humans aren't good with abstraction in general, that's why markets can be so confounding, as the further you abstract a concept, the more factors involved and the longer it takes to see an effect to a given cause, the more trouble we have processing it. However this has been a short, sharp shock. Cause and effect seen quickly with very little ability for the politicians and media to weasel-word their way out of it.

I’d like to think that many of us will come out of this as changed people, having thought deeply about what we really enjoy, what we care about and what we want to spend our precious little time on. I hope many of us read up on how to feel better inside (able to manage our fears and emotions), visit the people important to us, stop putting things off because “there’s always tomorrow”. In short, we can come out from the dream that was our “normal” lives and start living, mindfully and in the moment.