Capitalism of Self

A Voices from the FOLD: Year 7 original essay.

BY NADINE NAKAGAWA

Lately, when people ask what I’m up to I tell them that I’m spending a lot of time looking at moss and mushrooms. That I’m learning to cook for myself and for loved ones. When I tell people this, I’m sometimes confronted by confused looks. Some smile at the whimsy. People have told me that it’s a charming or sweet idea. I don’t mean it to be charming or sweet. I do mean for it to be whimsical because all things in my life should be filled with whimsy. I also mean for it to be radical. I quit my job so I can wander around looking at the small delights of the natural world. So I can nourish myself with food that is substantial and delicious, and that I ripped and tossed and seasoned with my own hands. If this doesn’t sound radical, let me outline my previous state of being. Picture this: Two jobs totaling around fifty-five hours per week, eight hours commuting, plus a bunch of side projects. On any given day, I would get home at 9:15 p.m. and make a quick dinner of frozen, bagged vegetables with rice and salty sauce from a bottle. I’d eat it, sitting in bed and feeling guilty that I wasn’t working on my community projects or responding to email. I felt bad if I didn’t go to all the events, run a million side projects, and try to tackle everything from climate change, the housing crisis, and food security all at. I truly felt that I should be working constantly and that my personal value was attached to my productivity. I call this capitalism of the self. I wasn’t particularly attached to profit—except that I live in an expensive community and need to be able to pay rent and buy kitty litter and have shampoo and to be able to go out to the nice vegan restaurants—but I was tying my value to production. Even though that production was in the form of social service work and activism, it felt never-ending and demoralizing.

In conversations I fought against the need to apologize for not doing enough.

When are we going to admit that this isn’t sustainable, that we aren’t meant to live like this? And that this pace of life contributes to further unhealthy practices for ourselves, our communities and our planet?

I decided to quit. And I’ve felt really guilty ever since. When people ask me where I’m working, what I’m doing, I feel really ashamed to say that I’m only doing city council work and my activism projects. As if that’s not enough. But as an able-bodied, mid-career woman with no kids it seems that the norm has to be working full time plus. When are we going to admit that this isn’t sustainable, that we aren’t meant to live like this? And that this pace of life contributes to further unhealthy practices for ourselves, our communities and our planet? Eating dinner in bed sadly and guiltily was not good for my mental health. I was burnt out. This presented itself in weakened ability to make decisions and poor memory. I’m sure I was not as great a friend as I could have been. A lot of my social time involved alcohol. The burnout also contributed to overconsumption—because I didn’t feel like I was able to cook for myself, I ate a lot of takeout. I ordered pretty dresses and earrings online as a kind of reward for a tough week. I had privilege even within my state of burnout.

That guilt I felt wasn’t a coincidence: it was manufactured by the capitalist belief that we need to constantly be doing more. Capitalism wants us to do, do, do then consume, consume, consume.

When people are going through times of stress, whether in their personal life or resulting from work, they are often encouraged to indulge in self-care. As if the cortisol created by commuting in rush hour traffic can be remedied by a warm bubble bath. As if providing community support for friends encountering systems of racism is fixed by a beautiful smelling candle and some deep breathing. Or that, in my case, receiving endless emails calling me an idiot and social media comments calling me whiny, entitled, divisive, and pretentious can be relieved by chocolate.

Self-care first emerged as a medical concept and was often used as a recommendation for people working in caring professions like nurses and social workers. The idea has always been to fill your cup before you try to fill others’. Put the oxygen mask on yourself first.

Soon after, feminists and activists began claiming self-care as political resistance. “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare,” said Audre Lorde. This was in response to the social determinants of health which explained why people who are poor and on the margins are also less healthy. It’s not because poor people are negligent; it’s because poverty creates poor health. Black and Indigenous women are often

denied healthcare because it has been believed that they don’t feel pain the same way that white people do. That offensive concept is still believed by too many doctors. In fact, a 2016 study showed that half of white medical trainees falsely believed that Black people’s skin was thicker than white people’s, leading them to inaccurately treat pain. For this reason, it makes sense for many people to recognize that the system isn’t going to look after them—it’s on them to take care of themselves.

However, buying smelly candles and taking bubble baths are simply examples of the capitalism of self-care. Our capitalist system has exposed us to this overwhelming influx of stress and as a result, we should consume self-care. We’re now at a point where self-care seems to mean that you need to work harder, do more and look good doing it. Buy some essential oils, take a yoga class from a white woman who will lead you through three oms, have that glass of wine and you will feel better. As if these things aren’t interlinked. For one thing, much self-care is related to doing more. Do yoga, go for a walk, meditate. It’s also related to consumption in the form of sweets and treats, and face masks. And too often, there are unaddressed issues of cultural appropriation (yoga), as well as race and migration (ever got a mani-pedi from a young Vietnamese woman?). I should also point out how gendered self-care is, but that’s a whole other story in and of itself. For me, self-care needs to be structural and community-based. When Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Panthers talked about self-care, it was focused on needed community services and not mani-panis delivered by young Vietnamese women, recently immigrated and kneeling in front of you. Self-care needs to be rooted in taking care of ourselves, others and the planet. It has nothing to do with consumption and should be about subtracting not adding to our lives. But even subtracting can be a problem. “Don’t check your email in the evenings” and “take twenty extra minutes away from your desk to walk or stretch” the women’s magazines and wellness websites suggest. This only works if you won’t be punished for not responding to evening emails and that the extra twenty minutes away are related to twenty minutes of reduced workload. These things aren’t subtractive. They are carving out blobs of time to relax our overstressed nervous systems only to return to the same work that caused the stress in the first place. What if you work multiple jobs? What if your caregiving responsibilities don’t turn off at five p.m.?

This pace of life is costing us. Anxiety and depression rates are skyrocketing in adults and children. We are destroying our home planet. Nearly a quarter of Canadian adults have hypertension. People feel lonely and unconnected. We need to recognize that this pace of life is entirely constructed by capitalism. That the concept of full-time work being forty hours a week is completely arbitrary and decided by the market. We could collectively choose differently. That’s why I decided to stop working so hard and spend more time just being. I want to reignite my curiosity and have time to look and wonder and wander. I want to take my dog for a walk without hurrying him when he’s smelling the story left behind by another canine. I want to crouch and watch a bee rubbing their furry body on the stamens of a crocus. I want to learn how to make soba noodle salad and be proud enough of the result to share it with bereaved friends. I want to write. I want to turn my face to the sun and to stretch and to read the stack of books on my side table. I want to run my fingers along the different types of moss and wonder at their springy texture and their verdant greenness. I want to notice the tiniest fungi and lichen growing along a fallen log and to see a tiny shell on the pavement in downtown New Westminster. I want to pet my cat until she tires of it (it hasn’t happened yet) and leaves my chest of her own accord. I sometimes feel like I’ve given up so much—the ability to save for my next trip or for retirement, to buy dinner for friends, to purchase packages of yoga classes, and pay for massage and acupuncture. I’m hoping to gain so much more. It’s taken me a while to slow down and recover. As I emerge from the fog of burnout, the world looks brighter. I’m more ready than ever to fight the righteous fights, to raise my voice on issues I care about, but now I can consider my words and phrasing with more intention. I’ve learned to make myself coffee in my bodum and have mastered rice noodles of various thicknesses. And on a gloriously sunny spring day, I’m sitting down to write.

Slowing down has led to more financial precarity, but it has allowed me to learn cyprus trees have a flat branching pattern compared to a pine tree and I have been able to make care packages when my friend’s dog had to have nine cancerous lumps removed from his tiny body. In giving up wage labour for the time being, I feel like a bulb planted in the cold soil of autumn. Invisible from the surface, there are magical things happening in my depths. Storing up all the peace and quiet will allow me to thrust from still frosty soil and bloom in the brightest way possible. But only for a short time before I need to close up and rest again. Unlike spring-time ephemerals, my blooming season will be aimed at injustice and ripping down the systems of oppression that create this capitalism of the self.

Not only does this way of being give me the strength to fight the good fight, it in itself is a political act just as Audre said all those years ago.

For me, looking at moss and mushrooms is part of the revolution.