--- Title: Culture and the pandemic Date: 03/12/2020 Category: Global News Tags: arts capitalist-morality communal-morality communist-morality covid crisis gastronomy ideology URL: https://marxismo.school/communia/en/culture-and-the-pandemic --- 1 During the past decades it became evident that there was a massive [addiction to antidepressants and anxiolytics](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/aug/10/four-million-people-in-england-are-long-term-users-of-antidepressants). The first months of recession and pandemic have further increased their consumption. Even in Spain, where a medical prescription is required to buy them, we are talking about a [sales increase of 15%](https://www.lasexta.com/noticias/sociedad/confinamiento-disparo-ventas-ansioliticos-antidepresivos_202012015fc62389dd004e0001e55782.html). In France, the news speaks of **_[of hundreds of thousands of people collectively shareing nightmares](https://www.numerama.com/sciences/673083-vos-cauchemars-sur-la-pandemie-refletent-un-traumatisme-collectif.html)_**: distressing dreams which are more intense than usual and in which fear of contagion, the impossibility of touching others and various apocalyptic images appear. 2 There is no need to resort to large theoretical apparatuses to discover the social fears below. In Germany, the yearly [survey of _middle-aged people_ - between 30 and 59 years old](https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/generation-mitte-umfrage-deutschland-verliert-die-hoffnung-a-9bf2c5ad-9518-4f28-ba5d-fdbcddc9e4e8) - reveals that respondents notice that society is increasingly _unsafe, impatient, aggressive, and selfish_. **72% feel greater _fear and uncertainty_; 71% that _aggressiveness_ has increased and 52% believe that _selfishness is rampant_.** The bottom line is also no mystery: more than a quarter of respondents have suffered loss of income, another 13% believe they will suffer it soon. 23% feel an _acute fear_ of losing their own job - in 2019 it was _only_ 14 percent. And we are talking about Germany, not the Mediterranean and Eastern countries. 3 In France, one of the supposedly most _crohesive_ and _communitarian_ countries of the continent, a study published today by the _Fondation de France_ claims that there are already [7 million people living in isolation, 3 million higher than in 2010](https://www.rtl.fr/actu/debats-societe/7-millions-de-francais-en-situation-d-isolement-3-millions-de-plus-qu-en-2010-7800933217). That is, the **percentage of the population without emotional relationships and family and community support increased from 9% to 14% of the population**. Another novelty is that between the ages of 18 and 29, extreme atomization increased from 2% to 13%. Isolation is joined by a _feeling of shame_ which predicts [the worst](https://marxismo.school/communia/en/suicides-do-not-happen-they-are-socially-produced). Reinforcing the aforementioned, the new working methods aggravate isolation and atomization. Teleworking, which was supposed to improve _reconciliation_ and encourage collaborative work in teams, has finally been implemented in such a way that [54% of those who adopted it during the pandemic in France claim to suffer from a feeling of isolation and loneliness](https://www.lefigaro.fr/societes/le-bureau-n-est-pas-mort-les-franciliens-en-redemandent-20201203). 4 In Asia they can talk at length about this often deadly and always crushing mix of fear of unemployment, work pressure, long hours and atomization. A reality so present that it does not cease to express itself in cultural phenomena. The last one: the [surprising success of _Pengsoo_, a children-oriented character on educational television, among young workers](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/02/pengsoo-penguin-south-korea). The mascot, a migrant penguin who has become the _character of the year_ in South Korea, is a success among young people in their 20s and 30s because it reflects their struggle to enter the labor market and their feeling of helplessness in the face of [precariousness](https://dictionary.marxismo.school/Precarization/), endemic violence and authoritarianism in the workplace. The function of the dummy is to propitiate a catharsis... and to avoid unrest or collective organization: > _If the mantra of the previous generation was "grit your teeth and hold on," the mentality of this generation has definitely shifted towards the belief that tolerating the intolerable is not the right thing_, says Yeum, one of the writers of the network. _I think Pengsoo does a refreshing job of highlighting that tension and, in turn, viewers can get the vicarious satisfaction of seeing how he challenges that reality_. > > _Pengsoo_, who appears on the show as a full-time intern at EBS ‎educational television‎, is notorious for workplace antics. It calls its bosses by their first names, never misses a chance to get away from the office, and has frankly stated that _those who contact me during my day off can go to hell_. The penguin has since been unofficially coronated by netizens as _president of the workers_. ## The _comforts_: neither cooking nor Art 5 The rest of the world also does not lack _comforting stuff_ provided by the media apparatus. The most obvious one is the sudden passion for cooking that arose during lockdown and that continues to produce [records of audience for programs like MasterChef](https://www.rtve.es/rtve/20201111/masterchef-celebrity-5-logra-nuevo-record-continua-lider-2569000-espectadores-216/2055045.shtml). MasterChef is truly an aberration: a mixture of Darwinian competition, Taylorist rhythms and employer violence, in which a [recognized employer, known for his abusive treatment of workers](https://marxismo.school/communia/es/la-guia-michelin-habla-por-la-burguesia-espanola), loudly disqualifies the work of participants. It is only the tip of the iceberg. What triumphs in all the televisions of the world are programs of recipes more or less dressed in travels, folklore, cult to the chef or self-help. But the centrality of _recipes_ is not innocent. Only three generations ago, knowing how to cook was not about knowing recipes. It was about having a knowledge of how to mix and process food. Our great-grandmothers and grandmothers didn't know how to make _paella valenciana_ or _cocido madrileño_ or any other standardized dish by following some predetermined steps. They knew how to make rice and stew according to _what was available_. In great numbers, _whatever there was_, in each place and in each season, expressed ecological and economic optima. And _knowing how to cook_ was one of the forms that gave power of resistance to the working and peasant families, who did not pass on recipes from generation to generation, but rather knowledge, techniques and stories learned during hours in front of the stove. First appeared [the state, which as part of the process of national construction homogenized and codified that knowledge in recipes](https://marxismo.school/communia/es/saca-tu-patria-de-mis-fogones), always the same, conceived to reduce knowledge to a pile of lists of ingredients and steps. It was like going from knowing how to program to knowing how to load software programs for each task. A loss of knowledge and sovereignty of the families in favor of the state. And with that logic already installed, things like the [Thermomix appeared, whose recipe books](https://www.recetario.es/) make it almost impossible to develop new techniques even by analogy with the familiar recipes. And later, when the food markets opened up and new foodstuffs arrived, television cooking shows appeared. Today the kitchen is pure politics: the same apparatus in charge of creating public opinion from the state and the media, modifies the diet and the ways of cooking by inventing traditions and fashions with decreasing resistance. The kitchen as defined by the media and the authorities does not regain ground against general [alienation](https://dictionary.marxismo.school/Alienation), but feeds on atomization, family uprooting and loneliness to create false autonomies and commercially profitable securities. 6 But what about Art? As it [could not be otherwise](https://marxismo.school/communia/es/pandemia-y-crisis-de-civilizacion), more decadent than ever. Has anyone felt that _understood_ his own and the world's situation during the pandemic thanks to some plastic work or some exhibition? Even when the media [wonder who is shaping the market](https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/kunstranking-power-100-die-supermaechte-haben-hashtags-a-8c0fe493-a6ef-404c-ac91-5238ca5c7aad), we see a civilization incapable of providing real cultural development. The art that can be bought -which includes works that were once Art in its full sense- is a speculative market. And as in all speculative markets, the ones who in the end influence it are the funds and the billionaires, the academics who advise them and the activists who entertain them by creating internal discourses and debates. Everything revolves around the valuation and revaluation of a production that has long since divorced from society and has no impact on the understanding of the world, not only of the great majorities, but of the very classes that buy these works. [Museums](https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3868) and [the media](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24819441) teach us to associate characterizations such as _decadent art_ to Nazi repression and totalitarianisms. The only alternative to this [_non-art_, to the dead art of the market](https://marxismo.school/communia/es/la-muerte-del-arte), would be the most inhuman and totalitarian propaganda, as dead as Art itself, of the [fascisms](https://dictionary.marxismo.school/Fascism/) and the [stalinism](https://dictionary.marxismo.school/Stalinism/). But the reality of galleries, museums and collections makes clear the social irrelevance of a mercantile activity that can no longer have a place for anything that does not express [decadence](https://dictionary.marxismo.school/Decadence/). ## Conclusions 7 Our era's culture reflects a [social order increasingly confronted with the most basic human needs](https://marxismo.school/communia/en/the-covid-massacre-this-november-is-not-a-product-of-personal-irresponsibility-it-is-a-result-of-political-priorities). The _great steamroller_ routinely produces murder, occupational accidents, mental illness, but also - on a massive and almost general scale - feelings of fear, helplessness, and anguish. The more contradictions the system suffers, the more difficult it is to sustain [accumulation](https://dictionary.marxismo.school/Accumulation%20of%20capital), and the more it needs to atomize and deny us as a class. Because reducing us to solitude and isolation allows it to reproduce and aggravate without resistance that which is its reason for being: [exploiting our work](https://dictionary.marxismo.school/Capital). In doing so, it also destroys what would allow us to better resist the daily consequences of that exploitation: from solidarity among friends and neighbors to family relationships, to such basic things as eating decently or [keeping high our daily morale and mood](https://marxismo.school/cuadernos/Que%20es%20la%20moral%20comunista). The irremediable result is a decadent, sick culture, as deformed and dissolving of human development as the very system which animates it. As in everything else, the pandemic and the recession have only further accelerated the anti-human trends that have already been accelerating for decades. At this point, when even [the _opium of the masses_ is an adulterated synthetic drug](https://marxismo.school/communia/es/las-iglesias-y-la-colonizacion-sectaria-de-los-barrios) and [playing and gaming are synonymous with industrially organized destructive addiction](http://antorcha.info/contra-las-casas-de-apuestas/), it no longer makes sense to even speak of _false comforts_ and criticize them as such. One cannot separate the [struggles in the workplace](https://marxismo.school/communia/en/strikes-boom-in-india-and-scale-in-the-rest-of-the-world) from the action in the neighborhoods aimed at defending ourselves from the effects of atomization and at strengthening our capacity for grouping and resistance. We are waiting for you.