Simone Weil
This week it was announced that the UK currently has the highest rate of excess deaths from Coronavirus in the world, the same day the new ‘test and trace’ system has been hastily – and likely prematurely - launched, conveniently synchronised with the ever-developing story of the PM’s right-hand man flouting the lockdown he orchestrated (too late, though it was) in order to trial a novel form of eye-test involving a 60-mile round trip drive with a child in the back of the car, 260 miles from his primary residence. If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be comic. And laugh, we nearly did. Macabre humour is a useful coping mechanism in such a time of crisis, particularly when engaging with the reality of the situation, both globally and particularly in the UK, would inevitably leave us despairing. Yet, thinking with French philosopher and Christian mystic Simone Weil, must we risk feeling overwhelmed in order to pay attention to the reality we are facing, in order for true hope to rise?
Alongside dark humour, the lockdown has been accompanied by heart-warming scenes of community spirit. Neighbourhood mutual-aid groups have sprung up to support those facing sudden financial hardship, shielding or simply on the hunt for flour; streets band together to clap for our carers every Thursday evening through windows adorned with rainbows for the NHS; 99-year-old Captain Tom Moore has been knighted after raising around £9 million for the NHS by walking round his back garden. While these signs of solidarity are to be celebrated, I am reminded of Jia Toenlntion’s essay on mutual aid in the New Yorker: ‘There’s a certain kind of news story that is presented as heart-warming but actually evinces the ravages of American inequality under capitalism.’ This might be one of those stories. While mutual-aid properly conceived is a radical political act of solidarity that seeks to challenge the structures that create inequality in the first place, there is a danger these community efforts are being co-opted by the state promoting voluntarism, distracting from the lack of social security caused by austerity. We clap alongside Boris on our doorsteps while the government passes legislation (later retracted) increasing the health immigration surcharge on non-EU migrant NHS and care workers. Tom Moore is knighted by the state for his commendable achievement, but the NHS is not a charity, rather a state-funded service that the government’s political choice has starved of resources and money.
Our tendency to be distracted from the suffering surrounding us is explored by Simone Weil, who urges us to pay attention, even when it hurts. The crisis we are facing has forced us to look at the lack in our society – lack of PPE, leadership, social welfare etc – caused by a neoliberal political agenda that has left social care in the hands of market economics. The danger is that rather than remaining attentive to it, we find ways to avert our gaze, finding the reality too much to bear. Writing in the 1930s, during a different period of crisis, Weil describes how our natural response to affliction is to recoil and divert our thoughts to anything other than the suffering in front of us. When faced with such stark realities, we distract ourselves to dilute our despair. Despite this innate tendency to avoid seeing suffering, Weil insists paying attention to its reality is crucial in developing a loving response. The reason she posits that we find it so hard to look at suffering is that we are creatures who – at our sacred core – relentlessly hope for the good; we are hurt when we see the opposite occurring. She is not ignorant of how we are impacted by suffering, recognising that in truly engaging with it, we can be left bewildered and inarticulate. Weil’s style is severe – she avoids sentimentality and easy comfort – but in doing so offers a way to engage with the reality of the situation, creating potential for hopeful responses to arise from deep within us. She suggests it is through God’s grace that we might resist averting our gaze, and slowly begin to imagine a response.
While latent real hope can emerge, we must resist its impersonators. There are false hopes propagated to distract us from paying attention to the reality of the situation we are facing. If we allow ourselves to really pay attention, it is overwhelming, leaving us inarticulate and in shock. In this state we are vulnerable to those in power manipulating our desire for good, to varying degrees of success. Those who pay lip service to the pain that we have identified, so as to soothe our suffering and meet our need for hope, while seeking to return to business as usual, must be resisted. The timing of the early-release test and trace system might be a thinly veiled distraction technique from the Cummings fiasco, seeking to capture our need for good news and exploit it to avoid accountability, with potentially deadly consequences. We are offered hope of early release from lockdown, claiming to follow the science, while political agendas are at play that locate the responsibility of any second peak on the public’s poor judgment. Neoliberal economic agendas are prioritised in the midst of a crisis partly of its own making (the NHS would once have been prepared for such a crisis, had not lots of it been privatised and underfunded, and as scientific adviser Dame Angela McLean said, it is possible to build a ‘rapid and reliable testing system’, as other European governments have done.). Back to work for those who cannot work from home, ignoring the rising death toll of public transport workers; sending children back to school, while many private schools remain closed; prioritising horse-racing and Nandos opening over being able to see family members. These priorities are emblematic of a political and economic agenda that has roots in the Thatcherite government and spans decades.
It is bewildering. Weil invites us to dwell in this space of inarticulacy – practicing attention, recognising our hopes for good, and how far our reality is from them. While there is not a rush to articulacy, as we pay attention, might we begin to rupture the dominant forces at play, and create space for honest reflection and creative response. Rather than rushing to articulacy, might we allow the inarticulacy of true attention to affect us. Might we attend to reality, not falling for sentimentality, but strive to respond to reality. This is a slower and riskier task in a climate where those who refuse to do this work will act quicker. However, this is where we must look to those who are well practiced in paying attention to the affliction present in our society to lead us. We need to trust in those sources that existed before this particular crisis as voices of wisdom. We must look out for those who have a history of paying attention, listening to the voices of those well acquainted with affliction, who have fought to become articulate. From here might we begin to imagine and work to establish what real hope might look like.
Florence Taylor is a PhD researcher in the Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University. Her research studies women's experiences of addiction through the lens of political theology.