The old forms of the left are moribund and the new forms are stupid. We're making a podcast that discusses the need to organize a dialectical pessimism and develop a Marxist salvage project capable of putting up a good fight as the world burns around us. A clean, honest, and unsentimental melancholy is required; we are cultivating one and would like to share it with you.
https://www.patreon.com/theregrettablecentury
episode 18: Isolated Together: Anxiety, Alienation, and Despair in the Age of Covid
This week Chris is temporarily replaced by a special guest that long time listeners will remember from the early days of the pod, Jenny.
The gang talks about the loneliness of social distancing, the long term effects of pandemic based hyper-alienation, and what the political prospects moving forward look like.
Society of the Spectacle (sections 28, 172, 221)
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm
The pandemic has unleashed the age of individualism
https://www.livemint.com/opinion/columns/the-pandemic-has-unleashed-the-age-of-individualism-11608132621601.html
22 percent of millennials say they have “no friends”
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/8/1/20750047/millennials-poll-loneliness?fbclid=IwAR1Z7EBeAAXgcUTw5mUA_eOGIQDk_0dM5GUweA6OOv4Fe1B5gbN8qtpCCnc
Pandemic shaming: is it helping us keep our distance?
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/apr/04/pandemic-shaming-is-it-helping-us-keep-our-distance?fbclid=IwAR3FsljvgtF4TqI2DbwJvZFBISsKk-7anRcP0YO-f0F8xLsgh2bqEOnRGOU
Isolation, Stress, and Poverty: Capitalism and Our Declining Mental Health
https://www.socialistalternative.org/2020/11/23/isolation-stress-and-poverty-capitalism-and-our-declining-mental-health/
Music: Joy Divison- Isolation