I am not productive

Wolves

There was a meme doing the rounds not too long ago based on a still from a BBC Frozen Planet documentary that claimed to show a wolf pack formation in which the elderly and sick wolves lead the pack, setting the pace for the rest so as to make sure no wolf would get left behind. The message being, that even wolves, our perennially feared and reviled, hunted to extinction, fairy tale characters used to frighten small children are more compassionate to their sick and elderly than we humans are. I liked this story, I liked it so much I told it to many people I know. Every time I told it, it gave me a sense of grim satisfaction, of vindication. See! even wolves care for their sick for their elderly. The trouble was, it isn’t true, the documentary was misquoted and misrepresented. The sick wolves do not lead the pack and as veterinarian Eugenio Fernandez Suarez put it on AFP fact check, “Wolves are not animals that designate care for older or weak animals”.

This was a blow, I so loved the idea of the wolves caring for their sick and elderly. It stacked neatly on top of a whole hoard of ideas I had been stockpiling in reserve like little gold nuggets to dig out and tell myself and anyone else who might listen as to why it's actually ok that… I am not productive.

Even saying that in our productivity obsessed, growth focused society feels like a confessional. My name is Frances Browning and I am not productive. It's been 1 year and 5 months since I last had a proper job.

I used to use the example of the mosquito too. The original title of this piece was going to be Maybe I'm a Mosquito. I so loved the idea of this tiny, seemingly parasitical annoying arsehole of an insect actually being a useful, even integral part of our ecosystem in surprising ways. When I first learnt mosquitos are primarily pollinators I was elated, as it turns out they get most of their food not from sucking our blood but from floral nectar. Like the universally adored humble bumble bee they are floral nectar guzzlers, helpful, fertilising little visitors. Even the words floral nectar gave me a warm buzzy feeling.

Floral nectar

Floral nectar

Just saying it to myself somehow made me feel better. Trouble is… Once again it turns out the picture is not so simple. While It is true that without their pollination, a particular arctic orchid species, the Platanthera Obtusata would not survive, they are also vectors for malaria and so potentially the most deadly animal on the planet. So yeah… perhaps not such a good example.

Ecosystems are complex, there are so many interrelated moving parts that they are almost impossible to map. We know from the oft cited example of the wolves in Yellowstone what a cascade effect the removal of one species can have on an ecosystem. I so desperately wanted to believe that somehow, though I might on the surface look like a leech from other people’s productive time, that I was in some way, integral, useful in a not immediately obvious way, that I might somehow discover some hidden gold or unlikely well of utility that could after all be plumbed and I could finally, finally be…useful. Like the bryologist who discovered a moss that can absorb heavy metals at usually toxic levels. Or the dude who discovered the bacteria that eats plastic or the discovery of radiotrophic fungi that it turns out can absorb ionising radiation. Maybe I just haven't found my ecosystemic niche, maybe maybe… I am still part of something larger, the intricate, fascinating, wholly unknowable web of life. Maybe, maybe I need to stop obsessively looking to the animal kingdom to assuage my feelings of worthlessness. Maybe, as a friend put it simply...

‘You know you can just look at humans.

Most indigenous groups care for their elderly and sick.’

Humans, the last place I thought to look.

Humans

It’s not that humans don’t value life in and of itself and often selflessly and meticulously care for those who are no longer or have never been ‘productive’ members of the group. They do and always have, just not in our modern, by and large western, individualist context. To some degree we pay lip service to the idea, through frankly paltry disability benefits (mine don’t even cover my bills let alone feed me etc) and healthcare systems, but the amount of obsequious wheedling and debasing yourself you have to do to get it, as well as slowly allowing your soul to atrophy through relentless and inhumane bureaucracy that leaves you wanting to tear your hair out. We are also, it is important to note, no longer cared for by loved ones but have by and large subcontracted this labour out to migrants from less economically developed countries.

There used to be a time when part of what made youth and vigour meaningful was the way in which it enabled you to contribute to your community, to do the work that takes strength and to take care of the more frail of the group. Nowadays all our productive, doing, making, producing energy is supposed to be funnelled into economic growth and our own personal betterment. No wonder work so often feels somehow hollow. It seems exciting at first to be out in the world on your own, to be able to have adventures, to stay up all night, to craft your own life out of your own ideas and drive, but fairly soon it all becomes hollow and you start to wonder what the point of it all is.

‘It turns out,’ says writer Paul Kingsnorth, ‘humans cannot be condensed down to their worth as drivers of productivity and growth’.

I think about Kingsnorth’s notion of the machine, what he describes as the ‘giant techno-industrial monstrosity that is in our heads and in the world’. The way in which everything becomes enveloped into its relentless devouring need for more growth, more productivity; how these ideas colonise our minds until we cannot see intrinsic human worth, bureaucratising and automating every area of our lives until the care of our mother in her old age is carried out by machines, and she is given a robotic seal for her to cuddle when the cold, sadness of an encroaching lonely death gets too much to bear. The seals are a real thing btw, I didn't make it up, we are living in the dystopia.

The idea that my worth is dependent on productivity seems to have taken residence in my brain and refuses eviction. I try to tell myself that if it were a friend and not me in this situation I would not judge them. I genuinely don’t judge my fellow chronically ill friends… So why does my self esteem seem so predicated on practical material contribution, capitalist productivity?

Is there a disconnect because I’m not obviously disabled? I have a connective tissue disorder, my disability is invisible and also changeable. Some days I’m pretty much fine; others I can barely get out of bed. It’s a confusing liminal space to occupy. I am perennially terrified of being accused of malingering, of scrounging and simultaneously terrified of pushing myself too hard and ending up more ill again.

I think about my aunt and uncle. My aunt is fairly physically disabled, she can only walk a few steps with walking aids and so is substantially reliant on my uncle for moving from room to room, going to the bathroom, for doing the majority of the cooking, housework etc. He gives her a considerable amount of support so that she can have a rich and varied life, so she can be taken care of. It occupies a substantial amount of his time and planning and yet I have no doubt that his life is far richer and more full of love and meaning than it would have been without her. Her place in the family is central, she remembers everyone’s birthdays, always has photos to show of everyone’s children and at family reunions is always sat on the sofa exuding good-heartedness and giving great hugs. Our family would be significantly diminished in some ineffable but substantial way without her presence. Not once have I been frustrated at her for not making a meal or doing the washing up for example, the idea is ridiculous, but I struggle to extend the same latitude to myself on ‘bad days’.

An ex boyfriend of mine once wept after spending time with us as a family, seeing the way my uncle cares for my aunt. He said ‘he didn’t know families could be like that’. I had never seen him cry before. He was always someone to whom productivity, the grind and ‘added value’ was paramount. Clearly we were fundamentally mismatched and inevitably our relationship did not last but I often think of him, in that moment, properly ugly crying in the way men rarely do, so moved by having seen love and duty, family and devotion.

What is it about human frailty that so often makes people uneasy, makes them not want to have to bear witness to its more stark examples. We have built up whole industries which separate us from human frailty, from the old and from the sick. I think it makes us more frightened of it, evident frailty not being an intrinsic part of everyday life in the way it would have been in extended families at one time.It would have been rare for there not be a least one immobile or unwell relative in the family. That is still true today but they are often sequestered somewhere in a nursing home out of sight. We don’t like to look at the truth of the human experience, which is that we will all end up there one day, perhaps sooner rather than later if we look at the growing numbers of cancers, autoimmune conditions and other diseases caused by modern lifestyles and environmental toxins. One day, if we’re lucky enough to live a long life, we will most likely reach a stage where once again, like our infant years, we will become substantially reliant on others. Nowadays that person will more likely be someone hired, mostly likely from a ‘developing’ country rather than a family member. Human life and its suffering has been sanitised and hidden from view to our own detriment, I believe.

I was struck recently by a piece I read about the retirement villages in Florida. That these places are run like a slightly more docile university dorm with pickleball courts galore, endless sunshine and bottomless martinis. For the boomers the party has never stopped. On the surface this might sound like a good time, a good way to play out your last years, until you think about the unmarked hearses and ambulances that stealthily slink down its streets, discreetly disposing of the bodies of the newly deceased, placing a new tenant in their condo often before they are in the ground. In fact they are often cremated en masse, no one attends the funeral. It’s all a party until it's not and you’re gone, no time for contemplation, no being surrounded by loved ones. The thing that struck me most was the writer’s assertion that these boomers are not only giving themselves bizarre twilight years and a strange Brave New World type death but they are totally neglecting their duty as elders in their community, choosing to focus their last years on themselves and their skills on the pickleball court rather than dispensing wisdom and grandmother/fatherly love. I keep coming back to this idea that in a disenchanted desacralised world we have placed having fun and being happy as the ultimate goal in life, rather than truth and meaning, love, family and duty. Indeed the word duty has come to take on a regressive patriarchal whiff and yet I look around at my peers’ fun seeking, atomised lives, with no connection to place and no duty to family and they have Instagram feeds full of glamorous photos of them living their best lives, big smiles, and crippling depression. Maybe fun is not so fun in the long run.

Wolves again

(Omegas)

Despite everything I struggled to let the wolf thing go. It felt like there was still some nugget there, some chimera of insight dancing just out of sight and I followed my nose and continued to obsessively research wolves. I think perhaps I wanted to at least find some kind of redeeming factor in wolf behaviour. But it turns out wolf packs are hierarchical and complex, sometimes brutal to the omegas. I was about to give it up in despair but the more I read about omegas the more I became fascinated with their behaviour and I stumbled across something really interesting…

As part of their mission to research and promote truth and understanding about wolves, Living With Wolves have spent huge amounts of time following and observing particular wolf packs. One such pack, The Sawtooth pack, and its internal politics has been observed and documented at length. In studying the omega of the pack, named Lakota, some really interesting things came to light.

Firstly, Lakota had not been the ‘initial choice for pack omega’ but the killing of his predecessor by a mountain lion had forced him into that position and he ‘began to adapt to it’ despite being ‘a huge wolf, larger than the three other mid-ranking wolves and possibly even larger than his brother, Kamots, the alpha.’ There was clearly ‘more to rank than mere size and strength’.

The writer asserts that ‘ It may sound odd, but he became a wonderful omega’.

He goes on to explain how the position of omega is more complex than might be initially thought when observing the pack more superficially. He talks about how the omega is like the ‘court jester’, that he ‘must suffer terrible abuse at the hands of the king and court, but he is undeniably loved. Like a jester, the omega is often the one to instigate play and act the fool’.The omega is the one to lure others into games, even at risk to his safety but usually with boundless payoffs and more resulting fun for the whole pack. He is the one to de-escalate violence and deftly play-act the fool, or flip over in surrender when he could have won a fight. What might seem like suffering at the bottom of the pecking order of a violent hierarchy might be the most playful, wise and complex role in the whole pack.

Even more fascinating was what was heard when the individual howling of each wolf in the pack was recorded.

‘I made an effort to record each wolf’s individual voice as cleanly as possible. I would try to find an occasion when a wolf was howling more or less by himself, rather than right in the middle of the group.’

‘When I first recorded his howl, I was amazed at what was coming through my headphones. Lakota, eyes shut and head thrown back, was just pouring his heart out. His rich, mournful voice soared into the evening and hung in the air for what seemed like forever. I actually found myself welling up at the sheer beauty and expressiveness of his song. I felt as though I were listening to him sing the blues, giving voice to all the loneliness and pain that his social position brought him….no member of the Sawtooth Pack ever came close to comparing with the beauty and sadness of Lakota’s howl’.

Something about this gave me full body tingles. It had the texture of something christian and mystical about it.

The first shall become the last, the meek shall inherit the earth.

Perhaps the most ‘lowly’, those living on the fringe, ostracised or maligned are often having the deepest, richest, most human, most animal, most wolf-like experience possible. Running the gamut from pain to ecstasy and back on a daily basis. Artfully managing the energy and relationships of the group. Dancing between true bravery and shows of surrender. That being the one on the sidelines can put you in an interesting position for both observation of the group but also for forging new and unlikely ally-ships across species.

‘Over the years that I observed him, Lakota would often approach me and timidly lick my face. During these occasions, I would run my hand down his back through his fur coat. Sadly, his skin was riddled with small bumps and scabs where the other wolves had nipped him, and there were small scars on his muzzle where the fur would not grow back…As I would sit with him, he would begin to relax a little, beginning to trust that I wasn’t going to hurt him. Then, he would take his paw, gently place it on my shoulder, and gaze at me with his sweet, wise, amber eyes. We would sit that way for quite a while’

The tingle that ran down my spine as I imagined the sound of Lakota’s mournful cries and his deep ‘amber eyes’ made me think there was something transcendent about this quest that I had been missing, that it was ultimately a spiritual question.

Humans again

If we want to move beyond a materialist world, where nothing truly means anything or is worth anything beyond its productive capacity, then we need an immaterial solution. One that will not inevitably produce the same results we are trying to get away from, in the vein of Audre Lordes’ famous quote “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. Calls for compassion within a materialist system only ever amount to a kind of obsequious begging for crumbs (this is what it has felt like to me to claim benefits for disability, not a judgment on others who do), rather than an integral acknowledgment of the divine and miraculous within all humans. Or in a more animist tradition, within all things.

But what if our worth wasn’t based on our capacity to give up our life force in order to support ‘the machine’ and constant growth, economic progress, but innate, inherent, sacred.

Progress towards what? I might add, Where are we trying to get to and are we sure that's the direction we want to be heading and not say… down, in, back, around, cyclical.

As I wrote in my The times they are a-changing- again piece, we can feel that we are living in ways that are an affront to the spirit, that feel wrong because they are wrong. That treating people like machines is wrong, not just because the end result is it makes them miserable but because they contain a spark of the divine, which on some level they know, that’s why it hurts so much to be treated otherwise.

In a world where we don’t have a spiritual centre, endlessly feeling the push and pull between left and right, a concession here, a win there but still steeped in ‘machine’ thinking, extraction, expansion, production, progress, we will never truly shift the way we value human and non human life. It may seem trite to say but it bears repeating, that all the things that really matter to us cannot be quantified in terms of productivity and we have made a fatal error in our bureaucratisation of everything down to the way we designate care for our loved ones and to the most vulnerable. Almost everything seems to be ascribed a numeric value now, even people are now a 10 or a 5. We have to find a way to step outside of machine thinking and I truly believe the only way we can achieve this is to refuse. To refuse to see ourselves and our fellow creatures this way.

Everyone has value, we each have a different role to play in this endless rolling, intricate, fascinating, wholly unknowable web of life.

And so perhaps my eco-systemic niche is to be an omega wolf, covered in scars. To howl, howl beautifully, as Rumi would put it to ‘cry out in my weakness’. To feel it all, the pain and ecstasy of a human life and not allow myself to be turned into a machine.

To be a ‘canary in the coal mine’ alerting us to society's excesses and times where we are hurtling towards the edge of a cliff.

To watch from my ‘unproductive’ sideline and see more clearly from my vantage point how people suffer through attempting to make their lives fun, joyful and meaningful by largely individualistic means that do not work.

Being with your nan as she dies works, not curating an Instagram feed of glamorous individuality. I am convinced that neither power, nor fun, nor an easy life are good aims. Real meaning is found in all the places we in this modern world are given licence to run away from as we chase our individual dreams.

Perhaps I might turn out to have some surprising, not immediately obvious, beneficial effects on my ecosystem after all, who knows. At the very least I refuse to contribute to the machine’s encroachment into every area of our lives, to seeing my fellow humans as units of productivity or to allow our webs of relationality to become mechanistic, bureaucratised networks of productivity, instead of what they ought to be, an ecosystem.