Several years ago, before the pandemic, the Institute for Precarious Consciousness released a zine: “We Are All Very Anxious.”
The thesis of the zine was that capitalism generally has a dominant affect that changes over time. The earliest, according to the zine, was misery. Misery was the affect of the industrial revolution through to World War II, when the standard of living, at least in the popular imagination, rose for everyone. Of course, this was a lie. The boom of prosperity in America following the war was not equally distributed but it did usher in a new dominant affect: boredom.
Boredom. Yes, you have basic material security but the “public secret” is that everyone is bored. There are no opportunities to live, only to stay alive. But boredom was your ticket to security, and so it went until it didn’t.
The zine argues that our current affect is anxiety. Anxiety is a good umbrella term under which I’d place fear: fear of precarity being the greatest motivator.
Social media, video games, streaming, and other forms of distraction have been offered as escapes from boredom. Now, we have the “social factory – a field in which the whole society is organized like a workplace” (hi, LinkedIn).
You’re scared but you’re distracted. Fair enough. Capitalism is nothing if not adaptable. Every crisis sees a pivot to a new affect. But the zine argues that we have no strategies as yet for fighting anxiety (and that capitalism has always managed to absorb prior strategies).
Think about your workplace: do you feel at ease? Do you feel secure in speaking to your colleagues? Are you afraid? Nervous? Do you worry about saying the wrong thing to the wrong person?
Good (for your bosses). You’re anxious and, by extension, policing your own behavior – and that’s not your fault. Yes, excessive anxiety is a real disorder but it’s not always, or even often, just an individual problem. When your ability to access healthcare is dependent upon job security, who wouldn’t be anxious?
Alienation and anxiety are poisoning us all. Capitalism survived the pandemic because of these two qualities, and alienation was only exacerbated by it. Now, with the rise of generative AI “companions” – the project to seek a better way of living is even more daunting; and don’t believe for a moment that these “companions” will be anything other than means for further social control. Once a company knows your deepest secrets, you’ll never be completely secure again. Your inner life is compromised.
I don’t have a solution here. That’s not really what this is meant to do.
I just want more people to acknowledge that it’s not all just in our heads: systemic anxiety and fear ensure we accept our lot, and our lot is not great. Even for someone like me, raised middle class, the path to traditional markers of prosperity is largely blocked by my credit score.
As the zine mentions: “Precarity differs from misery in that the necessities of life are not simply absent. They’re available, but withheld conditionally.”
This is something that I believe most of us feel in our bodies but cannot always name, or mistake for personal neurosis. Again, mental illness is real but not everything is mental illness. Knowing something is wrong isn’t an indication of weakness or unfitness. It’s awareness.
I’d argue that the fear and anxiety have become so pervasive that you can almost sense them as miasma in the air. As someone mentioned to me recently: “No one wants a target on their back.” It’s especially helpful (to capitalism) if you believe the target is already there and someone has their finger on the trigger: your just don’t know who.
As the zine points out: “precarity leads to generalized hopelessness; a constant bodily excitation without release.”
So, name it, and name it to others. We failed miserably against the COVID-19 pandemic. We don’t have to fail here.
Author’s note: I also recommend visiting https://crimethinc.com/ for similar analyses to the one found in “We Are All Very Anxious.” Take care of yourself. You’re all you’ve got.
An Unhappy Consciousness 