Emotional Health for Individuals, for Society

 Depression rammed my feelings into a rancid state. Writing has helped me deal with them. Also, helpful: reading philosophy and joining the Orthodox Christian church.

I think Facts that Care about your Feelings: A Conversation with Astra Taylor des a fine job of touching on the emotional problems of modern life and points out problems I did not see before my reading of the interview.

Writer, documentary filmmaker, organizer, and former professional guitarist Astra Taylor is working across disciplines to advance a multi-container political and social project. As the Co-Founder of the Debt Collective, the nation’s first debtors union, Taylor works to build solidarity and community for American debtors, rallying them around the idea that people are not loans and should not be defined by theirs. In her documentaries Examined Life and What is Democracy?, she rigorously interrogates elements of our lives and politics that we presume are given, normal, or fixed. Her new book The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart targets the increasingly entrenched idea that systemic insecurities–of food, income, and housing–are an inevitable and ubiquitous part of contemporary American life.

The Age of Insecurity delivers a “cultural diagnosis” for our times. But Taylor isn’t pathologizing; instead, she suggests that in times of crisis–of mental health, ecological decay, and authoritarianism—responding by compulsively navel-gazing, over-exercising, or developing a 10-step skincare routine is not exactly illogical. These coping mechanisms actually make total sense; they’re mired in the logic of an ill-functioning social order that demands the most of our bodies and minds, promises instant fulfillment, then neglects to offer anything real in return.

So, to transform our pandemonium into a world of connectedness and, ideally, of raised consciousness, we have to get real about our feelings. Taylor conceives of our emotional worlds not as pests, interlopers, or problems to solve, but rather as complex agents which act upon us, whether we like it or not. These worlds have more to do with our material conditions, cultures, and communities than we may realize, credit, or be able to process deliberately. Her book presents a historically-grounded framework for holistically addressing this age of insecurity, touching on issues ranging from the enclosure of the commons to the Magna Carta to unschooling.

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AT: Right? Whereas I think the emotional alchemy that progressives and left wing people need to do is one that turns shame and insecurity into solidarity. Obviously, we want to emphasize the threats that are facing us, but, okay, in people’s day-to-day lives, how do they feel?

They feel vulnerable, they feel apprehensive about the future, they feel threatened. Instead of repressing that, so it comes out sideways, in some toxic way, let’s be honest about it. Other folks can relate when we start talking honestly about these real material struggles in emotionally honest ways.

And then we can be more analytical. Why is it that you feel like the rug can be pulled out from under you? Oh, it’s because actually, you don’t have any basic labor rights at your job. It’s because you’re actually objectively underpaid. It’s because these corporations have huge war chests that they’re using to make sure that they’re not regulated, that they can continue predatory business practices. And then we can build solidarity and strategy out of that.

The left’s emotional and intellectual approach is just more complicated than the right wing’s. The right wing is all about inspiring fear, keeping people insecure so that a handful of people can rule in the interest of making as much money as possible.

And that’s actually an ancient playbook. I mean, they do it in all sorts of ingenious ways by taking over the courts and bribing elected officials–but the basics of it are just really simple. And despite the claims about facts, they’re perfectly willing to lie, as long as those lies serve the political project of instilling fear and concentrating power. And the left I want to be part of is committed to the truth, which is much more complicated. We’re trying to ultimately build a coalition that shares power widely, and you have to work to weave that coalition together. So, you know, we have a much harder political project, but I think we’re making it more difficult than it needs to be by not having an approach that, honestly, speaks to people’s insecurity and begins from there.

We are feeling beings. And maybe it’s just American culture, I don’t know, but there are so many realms where there is this kind of separating, right? Even when people speak about the psychology of economics, it’s in the sense of behavioral economics; it’s not like, how do you fucking feel day to day because you can’t pay your bills?

I just find it really strange. Or if you’re in the world of philosophy and you think that we’re all just brains in vats having these abstract debates, and that somehow, philosophical conversations are totally severed from our embodiment. I think one thing you can see in my work over and over is that I’m like, no, we’re heads and hearts. And we are bodies and minds. I refuse that separation.

I believe this is a problem touching all of us and which we can join the fight. No, a fight we must all join before the species does itself in. 

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