Burning Mansions, Freeing Slaves

Pandemic. Lockdown. Boris Johnson. Tories killing British wildlife. Anti-vaxxers. Scousers and Mancunians uniting over their hatred of 5G masts. And then burning them down. A lot has happened since my PhD-induced hiatus from writing these pieces. 

I don't think I can provide too much regular, original and exclusive insight into lockdown as an autistic person, and for that I recommend @commaficionado and @emkburke on Twitter, yet I can and am allowed to get irrationally and unnecessarily worked up over minor things that most people would not let enter their lexicon of labours and daily travails. So let us crank that hood open and warm this engine up, baby.

Firstly, 'social distancing'. It is literally a term that makes zero contextual sense, being misused daily. A term that reeks of medical advice that has been given by a Tory-strongarmed scientific adviser, a vignette of Westminster itself: desperately requiring something catchy to paper over near-total indifference to human welfare. Social distancing implies anomie, a feeling of seperation, detachment, isolation; yet we are more socially connected than ever. Technological and sociological phenomena such as social media, video conferencing, smartphones, smart TVs, and a plethora of other gadgets ensures we are nourished with socially meaningful interaction and exchange. By 'social distancing', what the political and scientific advisors mean is, quite literally, physical distancing. You are not allowed to physically interact with anybody less than 2m away, unless they are inside your household or social bubble. I am not totally sure I see the issue in replacing 'social' with 'physical' distancing. Sure, it sounds less politically marketable, but it is more direct, straight to the point, and describes quite literally in the most understable way what we are not recommended to do. 

I understand that a lack of physical interaction implies a lack of social interaction. But to autistic people, a lot of physical activities and excursions are necessarily not social enterprises. Getting on the bus is not a social enterprise, even for many neurotypical people, so I am sure you can imagine *my* level of total incredulity when a man not only plonks himself directly next to me, spreading out across both his and my seat as *men* are wont to do, but starts hacking up his internal organs and guffawing down his phone. I think compounding the idea of physical distancing, and not social distancing, would have adequately hard-pressed this chap to just, you know, not do that. To many people, and not just autistic people, being present and on the bus is necessarily social distancing. Going to the shops is necessarily social distancing. Reading a book in the park is necessarily social distancing. A level of detachment from those around us, however asocial, is required to elevate our functional abilities, and to help prevent becoming overwhelmed by the exactions of modern life. It is not my intention to transform into the most typical of university Head Social Justice Warriors, but 'social distancing' smells of a term that was conceived by the most neurotypical of 'normal' brains. To many people, physical activities that are now being couched in terms of 'social distancing' are already and necessarily socially distanced.

I understand that in life, we are required to pick our battles, but for the autistic people that already often feel left behind, it is a term that doesn't make sense that has been finger-pressed right into the flesh and matter of our political and cultural discourse and discussions. Words matter. We cannot think beyond or outside of language. So let us help each other out a little bit more.

As for the physical isolation brought about by the spasmodic fits of national and local lockdowns: it has been extremely strange to experience. On the one hand, being unable to access physical spaces at university and in archives led to the most crippling inertia. Carrying undertones of a total breakdown, I emailed my thesis supervisor explaining that, well, I can't really explain what's wrong, and miraculously, he understood. We devised a work-life timetable that, with hindsight, was an extremely simple solution to a very muddy problem. But, notoriously, autistic people, I especially, cannot abide change. So much so, that I am sometimes reduced to tears when having a clear-out. Change doesn't always represent progress but time marches on and the universe continues to expand. I am lucky, though. For others, the experience has been alienating and horrifying, so much so that intake in hospitals of autistic people having developed eating disorders has increased. 

On the other hand, it has been quite nice, from a selfish point of view, to experience a moment in time where everything stops. A limbic haze, it feels like I have more time to experience the same activities and tasks I do every day, whilst everybody else returns to normality, experiencing time more regularly. My emotions and memory are slightly dulled, as I am not engaging in dense cultural theory every hour of every day, but for normalcy to resume for everybody but you, for the Earth to revolve and the economy to start machinating again whilst you watch the birds from your work desk, is something I don't think I'll experience again. I'll attempt to savour it. 

One event that broke the mould that lockdown was forming was the horrifying murder of George Floyd. The ensuing protests, as murderers, some protected by the state, continued to exact disturbing levels of force on other black people, provided some insight for me into the state of discourse about history in general. History does not repeat itself. History does not even rhyme. History is an amalgam of chaotic forces that are pulled apart, smashed together, and whatever inertia forms inside an historical epoch is decimated by another external, random, amoral, asignificant, indifferent force. In 1864, during the American Civil War, Union General Sherman captured the city of Atlanta from the Confederate forces holding it, and then famously 'Marched to the Sea', destroying everything in his path. He famously "burned mansions, and freed slaves". It provided the re-election campaign of Abraham Lincoln the nox boost it needed to get over the line, and swung the tide of the war firmly in the United States' favour.

Contemporaneously, people saw this as a moment in human history where, in the immediate aftermath, anything could happen. One of an infinite trajectory of developments could occur; millions of black people were suddenly, often overnight, emancipated from slavery; the South's social order had almost completely collapsed; Americans continued the removal and extermination of Indians in the West; and property-owning, free-labour capitalism had 'won out' in the North. But, we got it wrong. By 1876, racism was endemic, had expanded to facilitate organisations like the Sons of Malta and the KKK, and the Jim Crow laws of racial segregation were constitutionally enshrined. Champions of equality, liberty and racial coalescence such as Thaddeus Stevens, Frederick Douglass and Charles Sumner had, for now, lost. We had so far to go, and we couldn't keep our balance after the first couple of steps. 

The murder of George Floyd is one of those moments. Let us make sure we don't choose the wrong trajectory again. Black Lives Matter.