Tea at Trianon: We’ve Already Stopped Baking Bread

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, August 29, 2020

We’ve Already Stopped Baking Bread

From Medium:

We may think neglecting our leisure is not a big loss. Certainly in the line-up of addiction, depression, anxiety, and suicide all at their highest rates, the “leisure” distortion is not going to rank high on the list of psycho-social dilemmas. But what we are doing to repair our minds and bodies for another day of work is probably closer to numbing than recuperation. We’re creating for ourselves what Pieper would call a “fraudulent world.” One that safeguards us from every possible agitating stimulus, but also, as he suggests, “the truth that discloses itself only in silence.”
For the clients that are looking to be engaged in restorative activities, this is a “truth” Byock encourages her clients to look for.
“I think this honestly requires a full self-assessment, which is why it’s probably so scary. I think it requires asking oneself the question, probably over and over again, and probably when feelings of anxiety and depression arise: why do I want to escape from my life? What small things could be changed so that I don’t feel the desire to escape? What large things are intolerable to me? What’s stopping me from having the courage to make these changes? Often these questions aren’t easy. They may go back to healing childhood traumas, for instance. An unfortunate truth for many, many of us. Some of the answers might be hard, and some might be rage at a society that traps so many people in cycles of survival versus anything approaching thriving. But the larger issue is how people can reclaim lives that feel meaningful and joyful to be living in.”
It’s possible that for many of us the “concupiscence” is a willful choice to remove oneself from disturbing, anxiety-inducing thoughts or realities. I spoke with several other psychotherapists for this article who actually prescribe measures like binge-watching television for such a purpose. But for many of us, like myself, it could be that this concupiscence happened slowly, or unknowingly. It was five minutes on Instagram that became 30, every night. It was one binge-week to finish The Mandalorian that became a perennial tv watching habit. It was an isolated ASMR video that turned chronic.
This capitalistic pause is an opportunity for a reset. In the past four months people have been baking, painting, knitting, embroidering, charading, guitar-picking, vinyassa-ing, to a degree rarely seen outside of the television era or a power outage. Board games, yoga mats and yeast are among the most popular items stocked up on in the toilet paper frenzy. Families are going viral together.
“In this last couple of weeks, for my clients who aren’t on ‘the front lines’ of this virus in some way or another, I’m seeing some chronically anxious and unhappy people suddenly emerge into joy in a way that they did not think was possible.” explains Byock, “For people who have been identified in various ways with unhappy work and stress and surviving economically, this return to seemingly endless ‘time off’ — versus time that is always about to be interrupted by the need to go to work or some other social function — has caused a dramatic physiological relaxation. Their bodies are relaxed into time in a different way and new rhythms and joy is being uncovered.”
Now that staying home is the appropriate thing to do, those normally governed by economic expectations are driven towards self-care and introspection. This is not an attempt to pull a silver lining out of a situation that has caused considerable grief, economic strain, loneliness, and fear for millions, but merely to point out that for many of us in the motors of capitalism, it quite literally took a quarantine for us to reconcile with leisure. (Read more.)